He had a way of regarding the triumph of the Republic as a question of personal interest, as an era of happy idleness and endless junketing, which chilled his nephew's purely moral aspirations.

However, he perceived that he was on the wrong track, and plunged into strange bathos, a string of empty but high-sounding words, which Silvere accepted as a satisfactory proof of his civism.

Before long the uncle and the nephew saw each other two or three times a week.

During their long discussions, in which the fate of the country was flatly settled, Antoine endeavoured to persuade the young man that the Rougons' drawing-room was the chief obstacle to the welfare of France.

But he again made a false move by calling his mother "old jade" in Silvere's presence.