The marquis, though he had bidden farewell to his hopes, continued to come to the Rougons' as regularly as ever.

He enjoyed himself there.

The clash of rival ambitions among the middle classes, and the display of their follies, had become an extremely amusing spectacle to him.

He shuddered at the thought of again shutting himself in the little room which he owed to the beneficence of the Count de Valqueyras.

With a kind of malicious delight, he kept to himself the conviction that the Bourbons' hour had not yet arrived.