However, another misfortune befell him. He was obliged to remove Gilquin, who had compromised himself by taking a bribe to procure a conscript exemption from the service. It was his wont to promise exemption to peasants' sons on being paid a hundred francs a head. All that Du Poizat could do for Gilquin in the matter was to save him from prosecution and then disown him. So far the sub-prefect had relied entirely upon Rougon, and had tried to make him more and more responsible for every matter that went wrong. Now, however, he probably divined something of the minister's critical position, for he came to Paris without giving him any intimation of his intention to do so. He felt his own position to be very much shaken, and, fearing the collapse of the power which he had so largely helped to ruin, he was already on the look-out for the support of some influential hand. He contemplated asking permission to change his prefecture in order to escape certain dismissal. Indeed, since his father's death and Gilquin's knavery, Niort was becoming quite impossible for him. 'I just met Monsieur Du Poizat in the Faubourg Saint Honoré,' Clorinde mischievously said to the minister one day. 'Aren't you good friends now? He seems very bitter against you.' Rougon avoided making any reply. After being compelled to refuse several favours to the prefect, he had become conscious of increasing coldness between them, and they now simply confined themselves to official intercourse. The desertion was becoming general. Even Madame Correur had abandoned Rougon. On certain evenings he again experienced that feeling of loneliness which he had formerly felt in the Rue Marbeuf when his friends were doubting his star. At the close of his busy days, amidst the crowd of visitors who besieged his drawing-room, he felt alone and lost and heart-broken, because his old familiar friends were not there. And he once more began to feel an overwhelming craving for the continuous praises of the colonel and M. Bouchard, for all the vitalising warmth with which his little court had once encompassed him. He even regretted M. Béjuin's silence. And so he made an attempt to win his old associates back again, by showing himself very pleasant and amiable, writing to them and even venturing to call on them. But the ties were broken, and he could never succeed in getting them all around him. If he contrived to piece up the links at one end of the chain, some mischance kept those at the other end broken; the chain remained imperfect in spite of every endeavour; some of his old friends were invariably absent. At last they all abandoned him. This was the death-agony of his power. He, strong as he was, was bound to those foolish weaklings by the long labour of their common fortune; and, as each deserted him, a piece of his being seemed to be ravished away. His strength and abilities remained as it were useless in this lessening of his importance; his big fists only struck the empty air.