When pressed upon the point he became terrible.
If Jean were to take up a newspaper after dinner he would at once
exclaim: "You'd better go to bed. You'll be getting up late to-morrow,
and that'll be another day lost. To think of that young rascal coming
home with eight francs short last week! However, I've requested his
master not give him his money in future; I'll call for it myself."
Jean would go to bed to avoid his father's recriminations. He had but
little sympathy with Silvere; politics bored him, and he thought his
cousin "cracked." When only the women remained, if they unfortunately
started some whispered converse after clearing the table, Macquart would
cry: "Now, you idlers! Is there nothing that requires mending? we're
all in rags. Look here, Gervaise, I was at your mistress's to-day, and I
learnt some fine things. You're a good-for-nothing, a gad-about."
Gervaise, now a grown girl of more than twenty, coloured up at
thus being scolded in the presence of Silvere, who himself felt
uncomfortable. One evening, having come rather late, when his uncle was
not at home, he had found the mother and daughter intoxicated before
an empty bottle. From that time he could never see his cousin without
recalling the disgraceful spectacle she had presented, with the maudlin
grin and large red patches on her poor, pale, puny face. He was not
less shocked by the nasty stories that circulated with regard to her.
He sometimes looked at her stealthily, with the timid surprise of a
schoolboy in the presence of a disreputable character.
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