Be frank, what are your real
opinions?"
Pascal looked at his mother with naive astonishment, then with a smile
replied: "My real opinions? I don't quite know--I am accused of being a
Republican, did you say? Very well! I don't feel at all offended. I
am undoubtedly a Republican, if you understand by that word a man who
wishes the welfare of everybody."
"But you will never attain to any position," Felicite quickly
interrupted. "You will be crushed. Look at your brothers, they are
trying to make their way."
Pascal then comprehended that he was not called upon to defend his
philosophic egotism. His mother simply accused him of not speculating
on the political situation. He began to laugh somewhat sadly, and then
turned the conversation into another channel. Felicite could never
induce him to consider the chances of the various parties, nor to enlist
in that one of them which seemed likely to carry the day. However, he
still occasionally came to spend an evening in the yellow drawing-room.
Granoux interested him like an antediluvian animal.
In the meantime, events were moving. The year 1851 was a year of anxiety
and apprehension for the politicians of Plassans, and the cause which
the Rougons served derived advantage from this circumstance. The most
contradictory news arrived from Paris; sometimes the Republicans were
in the ascendant, sometimes the Conservative party was crushing the
Republic. The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative
Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now
in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of
the most clear-sighted.
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