The negotiations were long and full of pitfalls, being conducted on either side with infinite skill. At first they both indulged in vague complaints, then Félicité, who was surprised to find Macquart almost polite, after the violent manner in which he had behaved at her house on the Sunday evening, assumed a tone of gentle reproach. She deplored the hatred which severed their families. But, in truth, he had so calumniated his brother, and manifested such bitter animosity towards him, that he had made poor Rougon quite lose his head. “But, dash it, my brother has never behaved like a brother to me,” Macquart replied, with restrained violence. “Has he ever given me any assistance? He would have let me die in my hovel! When he behaved differently towards me—you remember, at the time he gave me two hundred francs—I am sure no one can reproach me with having said a single unpleasant word about him. I said everywhere that he was a very good-hearted fellow.” This clearly signified: “If you had continued to supply me with money, I should have been very pleasant towards you, and would have helped you, instead of fighting against you. It’s your own fault. You ought to have bought me.” Félicité understood this so well that she replied: “I know you have accused us of being hard upon you, because you imagine we are in comfortable circumstances; but you are mistaken, my dear brother; we are poor people; we have never been able to act towards you as our hearts would have desired.” She hesitated a moment, and then continued: “If it were absolutely necessary in some serious contingency, we might perhaps be able to make a sacrifice; but, truly, we are very poor, very poor!” Macquart pricked up his ears. “I have them!” he thought. Then, without appearing to understand his sister-in-law’s indirect offer, he detailed the wretchedness of his life in a doleful manner, and spoke of his wife’s death and his children’s flight. Félicité, on her side, referred to the crisis through which the country was passing, and declared that the Republic had completely ruined them. Then from word to word she began to bemoan the exigencies of a situation which compelled one brother to imprison another. How their hearts would bleed if justice refused to release its prey! And finally she let slip the word “galleys!” “Bah! I defy you,” said Macquart calmly. But she hastily exclaimed: “Oh! I would rather redeem the honour of the family with my own blood. I tell you all this to show you that we shall not abandon you. I have come to give you the means of effecting your escape, my dear Antoine.” They gazed at each other for a moment, sounding each other with a look, before engaging in the contest. “Unconditionally?” he asked, at length. “Without any condition,” she replied. Then she sat down beside him on the sofa, and continued, in a determined voice: “And even, before crossing the frontier, if you want to earn a thousand-franc note, I can put you in the way of doing so.”