When he heard him mutter indistinct imprecations against those blood-suckers the Republicans, he always expected to hear him moan like a calf; and he could never see him rise from his chair without imagining that he was about to leave the room on all fours.
"Talk to them," his mother used to say in an undertone; "try and make a practice out of these gentlemen." "I am not a veterinary surgeon," he at last replied, exasperated.
One evening Felicite took him into a corner and tired to catechise him.

She was glad to see him come to her house rather assiduously.
She thought him reconciled to Society, not suspecting for a moment the singular amusement that he derived from ridiculing these rich people.
She cherished the secret project of making him the fashionable doctor of Plassans.

It would be sufficient if men like Granoux and Roudier consented to give him a start.

She wished, above all, to impart to him the political views of the family, considering that a doctor had everything to gain by constituting himself a warm partisan of the regime which was to succeed the Republic.
"My dear boy," she said to him, "as you have now become reasonable, you must give some thought to the future.

You are accused of being a Republican, because you are foolish enough to attend all the beggars of the town without making any charge.