Moreover, this brother was actually playing the gentleman with money stolen from him.

Whenever Macquart touched upon this subject, he became fiercely enraged; he clamoured for hours together, incessantly repeating his old accusations, and never wearying of exclaiming: "If my brother was where he ought to be, I should be the moneyed man at the present time!" And when anyone asked him where his brother ought to be, he would reply, "At the galleys!" in a formidable voice.
His hatred further increased when the Rougons had gathered the Conservatives round them, and thus acquired a certain influence in Plassans.

The famous yellow drawing-room became, in his hare-brained chatter at the cafe, a cave of bandits, an assembly of villains who every evening swore on their daggers that they would murder the people.
In order to incite the starvelings against Pierre, Macquart went so far as to circulate a report that the retired oil-dealer was not so poor as he pretended, but that he concealed his treasures through avarice and fear of robbery.

His tactics thus tended to rouse the poor people by a repetition of absurdly ridiculous tales, which he often came to believe in himself.

His personal animosity and his desire for revenge were ill concealed beneath his professions of patriotism; but he was heard so frequently, and he had such a loud voice, that no one would have dared to doubt the genuineness of his convictions.
At bottom, all the members of this family had the same brutish passions.
Felicite, who clearly understood that Macquart's wild theories were simply the fruit of restrained rage and embittered envy, would much have liked to purchase his silence.