Rougon was feeling slightly feverish on his return. He could not even read the evening papers. Although it was scarcely five o'clock, he went straight to the drawing-room and began to walk up and down while waiting for his guests. The first sunshine of the year, though it was only a pale January sunshine, had given him a touch of headache. His afternoon had left a very vivid impression upon him. All his friends rose before him: those whom he put up with, those of whom he felt afraid, and those for whom he had a genuine affection. They all seemed to be goading him on, forcing him to some decisive step. And this did not displease him; he felt that their impatience was reasonable, and he realised that an anger akin to their own was rising up within himself. It was as though the ground in front of him had gradually diminished, as if the time was near when he would be compelled to make a formidable leap. Then he suddenly thought of Gilquin, whom he had entirely forgotten. He rang for his servant to ask if 'the gentleman in the green overcoat' had called again during his absence. But the servant had seen no one. Then Rougon told him that if Gilquin should call during the evening he was to be shown into his study. 'And you will let me know immediately,' he added, 'even if we are at table.' His curiosity was again roused, and he went to look for Gilquin's card. He read the inscription, 'Very urgent; a strange business,' several times over, without managing to make anything of it. When M. Bouchard and the colonel arrived he slipped the card into his pocket, feeling disturbed, even irritated, by those words, which kept buzzing in his brain. The dinner was a very plain one. M. Bouchard had been a bachelor for the last two days, his wife having had to go into the provinces on a visit to a sick aunt, of whom, strangely enough, she had never previously spoken. The colonel, for whom there was always a cover laid at Rougon's table, had that evening brought his son, whose holidays were on just then. Madame Rougon did the honours in her kindly silent fashion. Under her ever-vigilant eyes the repast was served, slowly, but most carefully, and without the slightest noise. The conversation turned upon the subjects of study in the public schools. The chief clerk quoted some lines from Horace, and spoke of the prizes he had gained in the examinations, about 1813. The colonel said he would have liked a more military form of discipline among the pupils; and then he went on to explain why Auguste had failed in his examination for a bachelor's degree in November. The youth had such a lively intelligence, he said, that he always went beyond the questions asked by the examiners, and this had annoyed them. While his father was thus explaining his failure, Auguste himself was eating some fowl, with a sly smile on his beaming dunce's face.