This was the final blow.

On the previous day Rougon had been a Brutus, a stoic soul sacrificing his own affections to his country; now he was nothing but an ambitious villain, who felled his brother to the ground and made use of him as a stepping-stone to fortune.
"You hear, you hear them ?" Pierre murmured in a stifled voice.

"Ah! the scoundrels, they are killing us; we shall never retrieve ourselves." Felicite, enraged, was beating a tattoo on the shutter with her impatient fingers.
"Let them talk," she answered.

"If we get the upper hand again they shall see what stuff I'm made of.

I know where the blow comes from.