them with a semblance of life.  When they had induced them to overcome their repugnance so far as to make common cause with the middle classes, they believed themselves certain of victory.  The ground was marvellously well prepared.  This ancient royalist town, with its population of peaceful householders and timorous tradespeople, was destined to range itself, sooner or later, on the side of law and order.  The clergy, by their tactics, hastened the conversion.  After gaining the landlords of the new town to their side, they even succeeded in convincing the little retail-dealers of the old quarter.  From that time the reactionary movement obtained complete possession of the town.  All opinions were represented in this reaction; such a mixture of embittered Liberals, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Clericals had never before been seen.  It mattered little, however, at that time.  The sole object was to kill the Republic; and the Republic was at the point of death.  Only a fraction of the people—­a thousand workmen at most, out of the ten thousand souls in the town—­still saluted the tree of liberty planted in the middle of the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture.

The shrewdest politicians of Plassans, those who led the reactionary movement, did not scent the approach of the Empire until very much later.  Prince Louis Napoleon’s popularity seemed to them a mere passing fancy of the multitude.  His person inspired them with but little admiration.  They reckoned him a nonentity, a dreamer, incapable of laying his hands on France, and especially of maintaining his authority.  To them he was only a tool whom they would make use of, who would clear the way for them, and whom they would turn out as soon as the hour arrived for the rightful Pretender to show himself.[*] However, months went by, and they became uneasy.  It was only then that they vaguely perceived they were being duped:  they had no time, however, to take any steps; the Coup d’Etat burst over their heads, and they were compelled to applaud.  That great abomination, the Republic, had been assassinated; that, at least, was some sort of triumph.  So the clergy and the nobility accepted accomplished facts with resignation; postponing, until later, the realisation of their hopes, and making amends for their miscalculations by uniting with the Bonapartists for the purpose of crushing the last Republicans.

     [*] The Count de Chambord, “Henri V.”

It was these events that laid the foundation of the Rougons’ fortune.  After being mixed up with the various phases of the crisis, they rose to eminence on the ruins of liberty.  These bandits had been lying in wait to rob the Republic; as soon as it had been strangled, they helped to plunder it.

After the events of February 1848, Felicite, who had the keenest scent of all the members of the family, perceived that they were at last on the right track.  So she began to flutter round her husband, goading him on to bestir himself.  The first rumours of the Revolution that had overturned King Louis Philippe had terrified Pierre.  When his wife, however, made him understand that they had little to lose and much to gain from a convulsion, he soon came round to her way of thinking.