"People don't risk their necks for the sake of ideas. I've
settled my own little business. I'm no fool."
But aunt Dide was no longer listening to him. She was murmuring: "He had
his hands covered with blood. They'll kill him like the other one. His
uncles will send the gendarmes after him."
"What are you muttering there?" asked her son, as he finished picking
the bones of the chicken. "You know I like people to accuse me to
my face. If I have sometimes talked to the little fellow about the
Republic, it was only to bring him round to a more reasonable way of
thinking. He was dotty. I love liberty myself, but it mustn't degenerate
into license. And as for Rougon, I esteem him. He's a man of courage and
common-sense."
"He had the gun, hadn't he?" interrupted aunt Dide, whose wandering mind
seemed to be following Silvere far away along the high road.
"The gun? Ah! yes; Macquart's carbine," continued Antoine, after casting
a glance at the mantel-shelf, where the fire-arm was usually hung. "I
fancy I saw it in his hands. A fine instrument to scour the country
with, when one has a girl on one's arm. What a fool!"
Then he thought he might as well indulge in a few coarse jokes. Aunt
Dide had begun to bustle about the room again. She did not say a word.
Towards the evening Antoine went out, after putting on a blouse, and
pulling over his eyes a big cap which his mother had bought for him.
He returned into the town in the same manner as he had quitted it, by
relating some nonsensical story to the national guards who were on duty
at the Rome Gate.
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