Plassans is a sub-prefecture with about ten thousand inhabitants. Built
on a plateau overlooking the Viorne, and resting on the north side
against the Garrigues hills, one of the last spurs of the Alps, the
town is situated, as it were, in the depths of a cul-de-sac. In 1851 it
communicated with the adjoining country by two roads only, the Nice
road, which runs down to the east, and the Lyons road, which rises to
the west, the one continuing the other on almost parallel lines. Since
that time a railway has been built which passes to the south of the
town, below the hill which descends steeply from the old ramparts to
the river. At the present day, on coming out of the station on the
right bank of the little torrent, one can see, by raising one’s head,
the first houses of Plassans, with their gardens disposed in terrace
fashion. It is, however, only after an uphill walk lasting a full
quarter of an hour that one reaches these houses.
About twenty years ago, owing, no doubt, to deficient means of
communication, there was no town that had more completely retained the
pious and aristocratic character of the old Provencal cities. Plassans
then had, and has even now, a whole district of large mansions built in
the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., a dozen churches, Jesuit and
Capuchin houses, and a considerable number of convents. Class
distinctions were long perpetuated by the town’s division into various
districts. There were three of them, each forming, as it were, a
separate and complete locality, with its own churches, promenades,
customs, and landscapes.
The district of the nobility, called Saint-Marc, after the name of one
of its parish churches, is a sort of miniature Versailles, with
straight streets overgrown with grass, and large square houses which
conceal extensive gardens. It extends to the south along the edge of
the plateau. Some of the mansions built on the declivity itself have a
double row of terraces whence one can see the whole valley of the
Viorne, a most charming vista much vaunted in that part of the country.
Then on the north-west, the old quarter, formed of the original town,
rears its narrow, tortuous lanes bordered with tottering hovels. The
Town-Hall, the Civil Court, the Market, and the Gendarmerie barracks
are situated here. This, the most populous part of the Plassans, is
inhabited by working-men and shop-keepers, all the wretched, toiling,
common folk. The new town forms a sort of parallelogram to the
north-east; the well-to-do, those who have slowly amassed a fortune,
and those engaged in the liberal professions, here occupy houses set
out in straight lines and coloured a light yellow. This district, which
is embellished by the Sub-Prefecture, an ugly plaster building
decorated with rose-mouldings, numbered scarcely five or six streets in
1851; it is of quite recent formation, and it is only since the
construction of the railway that it has been growing in extent.
One circumstance which even at the present time tends to divide
Plassans into three distinct independent parts is that the limits of
the districts are clearly defined by the principal thoroughfares. The
Cours Sauvaire and the Rue de Rome, which is, as it were, a narrow
extension of the former, run from west to east, from the Grand’-Porte
to the Porte de Rome, thus cutting the town into two portions, and
dividing the quarter of the nobility from the others. The latter are
themselves parted by the Rue de la Banne. This street, the finest in
the locality, starts from the extremity of the Cours Sauvaire, and
ascends northwards, leaving the black masses of the old quarter on its
left, and the light-yellow houses of the new town on its right. It is
here, about half-way along the street, that stands the Sub-Prefecture,
in the rear of a small square planted with sickly trees; the people of
Plassans are very proud of this edifice.
As if to keep more isolated and shut up within itself, the town is
belted with old ramparts, which only serve to increase its gloom and
render it more confined. These ridiculous fortifications, preyed upon
by ivy and crowned with wild gillyflowers, are about as high and as
thick as the walls of a convent, and could be demolished by gunshot.
They have several openings, the principal of which, the Porte de Rome
and the Grand’-Porte, afford access to the Nice road and the Lyons
road, at the other end of town. Until 1853 these openings were
furnished with huge wooden two-leaved gates, arched at the top, and
strengthened with bars of iron. These gates were double-locked at
eleven o’clock in summer, and ten o’clock in winter. The town having
thus shot its bolts like a timid girl, went quietly to sleep. A keeper,
who lived in a little cell in one of the inner corners of each gateway,
was authorised to admit belated persons. But it was necessary to stand
parleying a long time. The keeper would not let people in until, by the
light of his lantern, he had carefully scrutinised their faces through
a peep-hole. If their looks displeased him they had to sleep outside.
This custom of locking the gates every evening was highly
characteristic of the spirit of the town, which was a commingling of
cowardice, egotism, routine, exclusiveness, and devout longing for a
cloistered life. Plassans, when it had shut itself up, would say to
itself, “I am at home,” with the satisfaction of some pious bourgeois,
who, assured of the safety of his cash-box, and certain that no noise
will disturb him, duly says his prayers and retires gladly to bed. No
other town, I believe, has so long persisted in thus incarcerating
itself like a nun.
The population of Plassans is divided into three groups, corresponding
with the same number of districts. Putting aside the functionaries—the
sub-prefect, the receiver of taxes, the mortgage commissioner, and the
postmaster, who are all strangers to the locality, where they are
objects of envy rather than of esteem, and who live after their own
fashion—the real inhabitants, those who were born there and have every
intention of ending their days there, feel too much respect for
traditional usages and established boundaries not to pen themselves of
their own accord in one or other of the town’s social divisions.
The nobility virtually cloister themselves. Since the fall of Charles
X. they scarcely ever go out, and when they do they are eager to return
to their large dismal mansions, and walk along furtively as though they
were in a hostile country. They do not visit anyone, nor do they even
receive each other. Their drawing-rooms are frequented by a few priests
only. They spend the summer in the chateaux which they possess in the
environs; in the winter, they sit round their firesides. They are, as
it were, dead people weary of life. And thus the gloomy silence of a
cemetery hangs over their quarter of the town. The doors and windows
are carefully barricaded; one would think their mansions were so many
convents shut off from all the tumult of the world. At rare intervals
an abbé, whose measured tread adds to the gloomy silence of these
sealed houses, passes by and glides like a shadow through some
half-opened doorway.
The well-to-do people, the retired tradesmen, the lawyers and notaries,
all those of the little easy-going, ambitious world that inhabits the
new town, endeavour to infuse some liveliness into Plassans. They go to
the parties given by the sub-prefect, and dream of giving similar
entertainments. They eagerly seek popularity, call a workman “my good
fellow,” chat with the peasants about the harvest, read the papers, and
walk out with their wives on Sundays. Theirs are the enlightened minds
of the district, they are the only persons who venture to speak
disparagingly of the ramparts; in fact, they have several times
demanded of the authorities the demolition of those old walls, relics
of a former age. At the same time, the most sceptical among them
experience a shock of delight whenever a marquis or a count deigns to
honour them with a stiff salutation. Indeed, the dream of every citizen
of the new town is to be admitted to a drawing-room of the Saint-Marc
quarter. They know very well that their ambition is not attainable, and
it is this which makes them proclaim all the louder that they are
freethinkers. But they are freethinkers in words only; firm friends of
the authorities, they are ready to rush into the arms of the first
deliverer at the slightest indication of popular discontent.
The group which toils and vegetates in the old quarter is not so
clearly defined as the others. The labouring classes are here in a
majority; but retail dealers and even a few wholesale traders are to be
found among them. As a matter of fact, Plassans is far from being a
commercial centre; there is only just sufficient trade to dispose of
the products of the country—oil, wine, and almonds. As for industrial
labour, it is represented almost entirely by three or four
evil-smelling tanyards, a felt hat manufactory, and some soap-boiling
works, which last are relegated to a corner of the Faubourg. This
little commercial and industrial world, though it may on high days and
holidays visit the people of the new district, generally takes up its
quarters among the operatives of the old town. Merchants, retail
traders, and artisans have common interests which unite them together.
On Sundays only, the masters make themselves spruce and foregather
apart. On the other hand, the labouring classes, which constitute
scarcely a fifth of the population, mingle with the idlers of the
district.
It is only once a week, and during the fine weather, that the three
districts of Plassans come together face to face. The whole town
repairs to the Cours Sauvaire on Sunday after vespers; even the
nobility venture thither. Three distinct currents flow along this sort
of boulevard planted with rows of plane-trees. The well-to-do citizens
of the new quarter merely pass along before quitting the town by the
Grand’-Porte and taking the Avenue du Mail on the right, where they
walk up and down till nightfall. Meantime, the nobility and the lower
classes share the Cours Sauvaire between them. For more than a century
past the nobility have selected the walk on the south side, which is
bordered with large mansions, and is the first to escape the heat of
the sun; the lower classes have to rest content with the walk on the
north, where the cafes, inns, and tobacconists’ shops are located. The
people and the nobility promenade the whole afternoon, walking up and
down the Cours without anyone of either party thinking of changing
sides. They are only separated by a distance of some seven or eight
yards, yet it is as if they were a thousand leagues away from each
other, for they scrupulously follow those two parallel lines, as though
they must not come in contact here below. Even during the revolutionary
periods each party kept to its own side. This regulation walk on Sunday
and the locking of the town gates in the evening are analogous
instances which suffice to indicate the character of the ten thousand
people inhabiting the town.
Here, amidst these surroundings, until the year 1848, there vegetated
an obscure family that enjoyed little esteem, but whose head, Pierre
Rougon, subsequently played an important part in life owing to certain
circumstances.
Pierre Rougon was the son of a peasant. His mother’s family, the
Fouques, owned, towards the end of the last century, a large plot of
ground in the Faubourg, behind the old cemetery of Saint-Mittre; this
ground was subsequently joined to the Jas-Meiffren. The Fouques were
the richest market-gardeners in that part of the country; they supplied
an entire district of Plassans with vegetables. However, their name
died out a few years before the Revolution. Only one girl, Adélaïde,
remained; born in 1768, she had become an orphan at the age of
eighteen. This girl, whose father had died insane, was a long, lank,
pale creature, with a scared look and strange ways which one might have
taken for shyness so long as she was a little girl. As she grew up,
however, she became still stranger; she did certain things which were
inexplicable even to the cleverest folk of the Faubourg, and from that
time it was rumoured that she was cracked like her father.
She had scarcely been an orphan six months, in possession of a fortune
which rendered her an eagerly sought heiress, when it transpired that
she had married a young gardener named Rougon, a rough-hewn peasant
from the Basses-Alpes. This Rougon, after the death of the last of the
male Fouques, who had engaged him for a term, had remained in the
service of the deceased’s daughter. From the situation of salaried
servant he ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband. This
marriage was a first shock to public opinion. No one could comprehend
why Adélaïde preferred this poor fellow, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarce
able to speak French, to those other young men, sons of well-to-do
farmers, who had been seen hovering round her for some time. And, as
provincial people do not allow anything to remain unexplained, they
made sure there was some mystery at the bottom of this affair, alleging
even that the marriage of the two young people had become an absolute
necessity. But events proved the falsity of the accusation. More than a
year went by before Adélaïde had a son. The Faubourg was annoyed; it
could not admit that it was wrong, and determined to penetrate the
supposed mystery; accordingly all the gossips kept a watch upon the
Rougons. They soon found ample matter for tittle-tattle. Rougon died
almost suddenly, fifteen months after his marriage, from a sunstroke
received one afternoon while he was weeding a bed of carrots.
Scarcely a year then elapsed before the young widow caused unheard-of
scandal. It became known, as an indisputable fact, that she had a
lover. She did not appear to make any secret of it; several persons
asserted that they had heard her use endearing terms in public to poor
Rougon’s successor. Scarcely a year of widowhood and a lover already!
Such a disregard of propriety seemed monstrous out of all reason. And
the scandal was heightened by Adélaïde’s strange choice. At that time
there dwelt at the end of the Impasse Saint-Mittre, in a hovel the back
of which abutted on the Fouques’ land, a man of bad repute, who was
generally referred to as “that scoundrel Macquart.” This man would
vanish for weeks and then turn up some fine evening, sauntering about
with his hands in his pockets and whistling as though he had just come
from a short walk. And the women sitting at their doorsteps as he
passed: “There’s that scoundrel Macquart! He has hidden his bales and
his gun in some hollow of the Viorne.” The truth was, Macquart had no
means, and yet ate and drank like a happy drone during his short
sojourns in the town. He drank copiously and with fierce obstinacy.
Seating himself alone at a table in some tavern, he would linger there
evening after evening, with his eyes stupidly fixed on his glass,
neither seeing nor hearing anything around him. When the landlord
closed his establishment, he would retire with a firm step, with his
head raised, as if he were kept yet more erect by inebriation.
“Macquart walks so straight, he’s surely dead drunk,” people used to
say, as they saw him going home. Usually, when he had had no drink, he
walked with a slight stoop and shunned the gaze of curious people with
a kind of savage shyness.
Since the death of his father, a journeyman tanner who had left him as
sole heritage the hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre, he had never been
known to have either relatives or friends. The proximity of the
frontiers and the neighbouring forests of the Seille had turned this
singular, lazy fellow into a combination of smuggler and poacher, one
of those suspicious-looking characters of whom passers-by observe: “I
shouldn’t care to meet that man at midnight in a dark wood.” Tall, with
a formidable beard and lean face, Macquart was the terror of the good
women of the Faubourg of Plassans; they actually accused him of
devouring little children raw. Though he was hardly thirty years old,
he looked fifty. Amidst his bushy beard and the locks of hair which
hung over his face in poodle fashion, one could only distinguish the
gleam of his brown eyes, the furtive sorrowful glance of a man of
vagrant instincts, rendered vicious by wine and a pariah life. Although
no crimes had actually been brought home to him, no theft or murder was
ever perpetrated in the district without suspicion at once falling upon
him.
And it was this ogre, this brigand, this scoundrel Macquart, whom
Adélaïde had chosen! In twenty months she had two children by him,
first a boy and then a girl. There was no question of marriage between
them. Never had the Faubourg beheld such audacious impropriety. The
stupefaction was so great, the idea of Macquart having found a young
and wealthy mistress so completely upset the gossips, that they even
spoke gently of Adélaïde. “Poor thing! She’s gone quite mad,” they
would say. “If she had any relatives she would have been placed in
confinement long ago.” And as they never knew anything of the history
of those strange amours, they accused that rogue Macquart of having
taken advantage of Adélaïde’s weak mind to rob her of her money.
The legitimate son, little Pierre Rougon, grew up with his mother’s
other offspring. The latter, Antoine and Ursule, the young wolves as
they were called in the district, were kept at home by Adélaïde, who
treated them as affectionately as her first child. She did not appear
to entertain a very clear idea of the position in life reserved for
these two poor creatures. To her they were the same in every respect as
her first-born. She would sometimes go out holding Pierre with one hand
and Antoine with the other, never noticing how differently the two
little fellows were already regarded.
It was a strange home. For nearly twenty years everyone lived there
after his or her fancy, the children like the mother. Everything went
on free from control. In growing to womanhood, Adélaïde had retained
the strangeness which had been taken for shyness when she was fifteen.
It was not that she was insane, as the people of the Faubourg asserted,
but there was a lack of equilibrium between her nerves and her blood, a
disorder of the brain and heart which made her lead a life out of the
ordinary, different from that of the rest of the world. She was
certainly very natural, very consistent with herself; but in the eyes
of the neighbours her consistency became pure insanity. She seemed
desirous of making herself conspicuous, it was thought she was wickedly
determined to turn things at home from bad to worse, whereas with great
naivete she simply acted according to the impulses of her nature.
Ever since giving birth to her first child she had been subject to
nervous fits which brought on terrible convulsions. These fits recurred
periodically, every two or three months. The doctors whom she consulted
declared they could do nothing for her, that age would weaken the
severity of the attacks. They simply prescribed a dietary regimen of
underdone meat and quinine wine. However, these repeated shocks led to
cerebral disorder. She lived on from day to day like a child, like a
fawning animal yielding to its instincts. When Macquart was on his
rounds, she passed her time in lazy, pensive idleness. All she did for
her children was to kiss and play with them. Then as soon as her lover
returned she would disappear.
Behind Macquart’s hovel there was a little yard, separated from the
Fouques’ property by a wall. One morning the neighbours were much
astonished to find in this wall a door which had not been there the
previous evening. Before an hour had elapsed, the entire Faubourg had
flocked to the neighbouring windows. The lovers must have worked the
whole night to pierce the opening and place the door there. They could
now go freely from one house to the other. The scandal was revived,
everyone felt less pity for Adélaïde, who was certainly the disgrace of
the suburb; she was reproached more wrathfully for that door, that
tacit, brutal admission of her union, than even for her two
illegitimate children. “People should at least study appearances,” the
most tolerant women would say. But Adélaïde did not understand what was
meant by studying appearances. She was very happy, very proud of her
door; she had assisted Macquart to knock the stones from the wall and
had even mixed the mortar so that the work might proceed the quicker;
and she came with childish delight to inspect the work by daylight on
the morrow—an act which was deemed a climax of shamelessness by three
gossips who observed her contemplating the masonry. From that date,
whenever Macquart reappeared, it was thought, as no one then ever saw
the young woman, that she was living with him in the hovel of the
Impasse Saint-Mittre.
The smuggler would come very irregularly, almost always unexpectedly,
to Plassans. Nobody ever knew what life the lovers led during the two
or three days he spent there at distant intervals. They used to shut
themselves up; the little dwelling seemed uninhabited. Then, as the
gossips had declared that Macquart had simply seduced Adélaïde in order
to spend her money, they were astonished, after a time, to see him
still lead his wonted life, ever up hill and down dale and as badly
equipped as previously. Perhaps the young woman loved him all the more
for seeing him at rare intervals, perhaps he had disregarded her
entreaties, feeling an irresistible desire for a life of adventure. The
gossips invented a thousand fables, without succeeding in giving any
reasonable explanation of a connection which had originated and
continued in so strange a manner. The hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre
remained closed and preserved its secrets. It was merely guessed that
Macquart had probably acquired the habit of beating Adélaïde, although
the sound of a quarrel never issued from the house. However, on several
occasions she was seen with her face black and blue, and her hair torn
away. At the same time, she did not display the least dejection or
grief, nor did she seek in any way to hide her bruises. She smiled, and
seemed happy. No doubt she allowed herself to be beaten without
breathing a word. This existence lasted for more than fifteen years.
At times when Adélaïde returned home she would find her house upside
down, but would not take the least notice of it. She was utterly
ignorant of the practical meaning of life, of the proper value of
things and the necessity for order. She let her children grow up like
those plum-trees which sprout along the highways at the pleasure of the
rain and sun. They bore their natural fruits like wild stock which has
never known grafting or pruning. Never was nature allowed such complete
sway, never did such mischievous creatures grow up more freely under
the sole influence of instinct. They rolled among the vegetables,
passed their days in the open air playing and fighting like
good-for-nothing urchins. They stole provisions from the house and
pillaged the few fruit-trees in the enclosure; they were the
plundering, squalling, familiar demons of this strange abode of lucid
insanity. When their mother was absent for days together, they would
make such an uproar, and hit upon such diabolical devices for annoying
people, that the neighbours had to threaten them with a whipping.
Moreover, Adélaïde did not inspire them with much fear; if they were
less obnoxious to other people when she was at home, it was because
they made her their victim, shirking school five or six times a week
and doing everything they could to receive some punishment which would
allow them to squall to their hearts’ content. But she never beat them,
nor even lost her temper; she lived on very well, placidly, indolently,
in a state of mental abstraction amidst all the uproar. At last,
indeed, this uproar became indispensable to her, to fill the void in
her brain. She smiled complacently when she heard anyone say, “Her
children will beat her some day, and it will serve her right.” To all
remarks, her utter indifference seemed to reply, “What does it matter?”
She troubled even less about her property than about her children. The
Fouques’ enclosure, during the many years that this singular existence
lasted would have become a piece of waste ground if the young woman had
not luckily entrusted the cultivation of her vegetables to a clever
market-gardener. This man, who was to share the profits with her,
robbed her impudently, though she never noticed it. This circumstance
had its advantages, however; for, in order to steal the more, the
gardener drew as much as possible from the land, which in the result
almost doubled in value.
Pierre, the legitimate son, either from secret instinct or from his
knowledge of the different manner in which he and the others were
regarded by the neighbours, domineered over his brother and sister from
an early age. In their quarrels, although he was much weaker than
Antoine, he always got the better of the contest, beating the other
with all the authority of a master. With regard to Ursule, a poor,
puny, wan little creature, she was handled with equal roughness by both
the boys. Indeed, until they were fifteen or sixteen, the three
children fraternally beat each other without understanding their vague,
mutual hatred, without realising how foreign they were to one another.
It was only in youth that they found themselves face to face with
definite, self-conscious personalities.
At sixteen, Antoine was a tall fellow, a blend of Macquart’s and
Adélaïde’s failings. Macquart, however, predominated in him, with his
love of vagrancy, his tendency to drunkenness, and his brutish
savagery. At the same time, under the influence of Adélaïde’s nervous
nature, the vices which in the father assumed a kind of sanguinary
frankness were in the son tinged with an artfulness full of hypocrisy
and cowardice. Antoine resembled his mother by his total want of
dignified will, by his effeminate voluptuous egotism, which disposed
him to accept any bed of infamy provided he could lounge upon it at his
ease and sleep warmly in it. People said of him: “Ah! the brigand! He
hasn’t even the courage of his villainy like Macquart; if ever he
commits a murder, it will be with pin pricks.” Physically, Antoine
inherited Adélaïde’s thick lips only; his other features resembled
those of the smuggler, but they were softer and more prone to change of
expression.
In Ursule, on the other hand, physical and moral resemblance to the
mother predominated. There was a mixture of certain characteristics in
her also; but born the last, at a time when Adélaïde’s love was warmer
than Macquart’s, the poor little thing seemed to have received with her
sex a deeper impress of her mother’s temperament. Moreover, hers was
not a fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxtaposition, a
remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at
times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then
she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse
lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at
times had a scared expression like those of Adélaïde, were as limpid as
crystal, similar to those of kittens doomed to die of consumption.
In presence of those two illegitimate children Pierre seemed a
stranger; to one who had not penetrated to the roots of his being he
would have appeared profoundly dissimilar. Never did child’s nature
show a more equal balance of the characteristics of its parents. He was
the exact mean between the peasant Rougon and the nervous Adélaïde.
Paternal grossness was attenuated by the maternal influence. One found
in him the first phase of that evolution of temperaments which
ultimately brings about the amelioration or deterioration of a race.
Although he was still a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face
less heavy, his intellect more capacious and more supple. In him the
defects of his father and his mother had advantageously reacted upon
each other. If Adélaïde’s nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her
rebellious nerves, had combated and lessened Rougon’s full-bodied
ponderosity, the latter had successfully prevented the young woman’s
tendency to cerebral disorder from being implanted in the child. Pierre
knew neither the passions nor the sickly ravings of Macquart’s young
whelps. Very badly brought up, unruly and noisy, like all children who
are not restrained during their infancy, he nevertheless possessed at
bottom such sense and intelligence as would always preserve him from
perpetrating any unproductive folly. His vices, his laziness, his
appetite for indulgence, lacked the instinctiveness which characterised
Antoine’s; he meant to cultivate and gratify them honourably and
openly. In his plump person of medium height, in his long pale face, in
which the features derived from his father had acquired some of the
maternal refinement, one could already detect signs of sly and crafty
ambition and insatiable desire, with the hardness of heart and envious
hatred of a peasant’s son whom his mother’s means and nervous
temperament had turned into a member of the middle classes.
When, at the age of seventeen, Pierre observed and was able to
understand Adélaïde’s disorders and the singular position of Antoine
and Ursule, he seemed neither sorry nor indignant, but simply worried
as to the course which would best serve his own interests. He was the
only one of the three children who had pursued his studies with any
industry. When a peasant begins to feel the need of instruction he most
frequently becomes a fierce calculator. At school Pierre’s playmates
roused his first suspicions by the manner in which they treated and
hooted his brother. Later on he came to understand the significance of
many looks and words. And at last he clearly saw that the house was
being pillaged. From that time forward he regarded Antoine and Ursule
as shameless parasites, mouths that were devouring his own substance.
Like the people of the Faubourg, he thought that his mother was a fit
subject for a lunatic asylum, and feared she would end by squandering
all her money, if he did not take steps to prevent it. What gave him
the finishing stroke was the dishonesty of the gardener who cultivated
the land. At this, in one day, the unruly child was transformed into a
thrifty, selfish lad, hurriedly matured, as regards his instincts, by
the strange improvident life which he could no longer bear to see
around him without a feeling of anguish. Those vegetables, from the
sale of which the market-gardener derived the largest profits, really
belonged to him; the wine which his mother’s offspring drank, the bread
they ate, also belonged to him. The whole house, the entire fortune,
was his by right; according to his boorish logic, he alone, the
legitimate son, was the heir. And as his riches were in danger, as
everybody was greedily gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means
of turning them all out—mother, brother, sister, servants—and of
succeeding immediately to his inheritance.
The conflict was a cruel one; the lad knew that he must first strike
his mother. Step by step, with patient tenacity, he executed a plan
whose every detail he had long previously thought out. His tactics were
to appear before Adélaïde like a living reproach—not that he flew into
a passion, or upbraided her for her misconduct; but he had acquired a
certain manner of looking at her, without saying a word, which
terrified her. Whenever she returned from a short sojourn in Macquart’s
hovel she could not turn her eyes on her son without a shudder. She
felt his cold glances, as sharp as steel blades pierce her deeply and
pitilessly. The severe, taciturn demeanour of the child of the man whom
she had so soon forgotten strangely troubled her poor disordered brain.
She would fancy at times that Rougon had risen from the dead to punish
her for her dissoluteness. Every week she fell into one of those
nervous fits which were shattering her constitution. She was left to
struggle until she recovered consciousness, after which she would creep
about more feebly than ever. She would also often sob the whole night
long, holding her head in her hands, and accepting the wounds that
Pierre dealt her with resignation, as if they had been the strokes of
an avenging deity. At other times she repudiated him; she would not
acknowledge her own flesh and blood in that heavy-faced lad, whose
calmness chilled her own feverishness so painfully. She would a
thousand times rather have been beaten than glared at like that. Those
implacable looks, which followed her everywhere, threw her at last into
such unbearable torments that on several occasions she determined to
see her lover no more. As soon, however, as Macquart returned she
forgot her vows and hastened to him. The conflict with her son began
afresh, silent and terrible, when she came back home. At the end of a
few months she fell completely under his sway. She stood before him
like a child doubtful of her behaviour and fearing that she deserves a
whipping. Pierre had skilfully bound her hand and foot, and made a very
submissive servant of her, without opening his lips, without once
entering into difficult and compromising explanations.
When the young man felt that his mother was in his power, that he could
treat her like a slave, he began, in his own interest, to turn her
cerebral weakness and the foolish terror with which his glances
inspired her to his own advantage. His first care, as soon as he was
master at home, was to dismiss the market-gardener and replace him by
one of his own creatures. Then he took upon himself the supreme
direction of the household, selling, buying, and holding the cash-box.
On the other hand, he made no attempt to regulate Adélaïde’s actions,
or to correct Antoine and Ursule for their laziness. That mattered
little to him, for he counted upon getting rid of these people as soon
as an opportunity presented itself. He contented himself with
portioning out their bread and water. Then, having already got all the
property in his own hands, he awaited an event which would permit him
to dispose of it as he pleased.
Circumstances proved singularly favourable. He escaped the conscription
on the ground of being a widow’s eldest son. But two years later
Antoine was called out. His bad luck did not affect him much; he
counted on his mother purchasing a substitute for him. Adélaïde, in
fact, wished to save him from serving; Pierre, however, who held the
money, turned a deaf ear to her. His brother’s compulsory departure
would be a lucky event for him, and greatly assist the accomplishment
of his plans. When his mother mentioned the matter to him, he gave her
such a look that she did not venture to pursue it. His glance plainly
signified, “Do you wish, then, to ruin me for the sake of your
illegitimate offspring?” Forthwith she selfishly abandoned Antoine, for
before everything else she sought her own peace and quietness. Pierre,
who did not like violent measures, and who rejoiced at being able to
eject his brother without a disturbance, then played the part of a man
in despair: the year had been a bad one, money was scarce, and to raise
any he would be compelled to sell a portion of the land, which would be
the beginning of their ruin. Then he pledged his word of honour to
Antoine that he would buy him out the following year, though he meant
to do nothing of the kind. Antoine then went off, duped, and half
satisfied.
Pierre got rid of Ursule in a still more unexpected manner. A
journeyman hatter of the Faubourg, named Mouret, conceived a real
affection for the girl, whom he thought as white and delicate as any
young lady from the Saint-Marc quarter. He married her. On his part it
was a love match, free from all sordid motives. As for Ursule, she
accepted the marriage in order to escape a home where her eldest
brother rendered life intolerable. Her mother, absorbed in her own
courses, and using her remaining energy to defend her own particular
interests, regarded the matter with absolute indifference. She was even
glad of Ursule’s departure from the house, hoping that Pierre, now that
he had no further cause for dissatisfaction, would let her live in
peace after her own fashion. No sooner had the young people been
married than Mouret perceived that he would have to quit Plassans, if
he did not wish to hear endless disparaging remarks about his wife and
his mother-in-law. Taking Ursule with him, he accordingly repaired to
Marseilles, where he worked at his trade. It should be mentioned that
he had not asked for one sou of dowry. When Pierre, somewhat surprised
by this disinterestedness, commenced to stammer out some explanations,
Mouret closed his mouth by saying that he preferred to earn his wife’s
bread. Nevertheless the worthy son of the peasant remained uneasy;
Mouret’s indifference seemed to him to conceal some trap.
Adélaïde now remained to be disposed of. Nothing in the world would
have induced Pierre to live with her any longer. She was compromising
him; it was with her that he would have liked to make a start. But he
found himself between two very embarrassing alternatives: to keep her,
and thus, in a measure, share her disgrace, and bind a fetter to his
feet which would arrest him in his ambitious flight; or to turn her
out, with the certainty of being pointed at as a bad son, which would
have robbed him of the reputation for good nature which he desired.
Knowing that he would be in want of everybody, he desired to secure an
untarnished name throughout Plassans. There was but one method to
adopt, namely, to induce Adélaïde to leave of her own accord. Pierre
neglected nothing to accomplish this end. He considered his mother’s
misconduct a sufficient excuse for his own hard-heartedness. He
punished her as one would chastise a child. The tables were turned. The
poor woman cowered under the stick which, figuratively, was constantly
held over her. She was scarcely forty-two years old, and already had
the stammerings of terror, and vague, pitiful looks of an old woman in
her dotage. Her son continued to stab her with his piercing glances,
hoping that she would run away when her courage was exhausted. The
unfortunate woman suffered terribly from shame, restrained desire and
enforced cowardice, receiving the blows dealt her with passive
resignation, and nevertheless returning to Macquart with the
determination to die on the spot rather than submit. There were nights
when she would have got out of bed, and thrown herself into the Viorne,
if with her weak, nervous, nature she had not felt the greatest fear of
death. On several occasions she thought of running away and joining her
lover on the frontier. It was only because she did not know whither to
go that she remained in the house, submitting to her son’s contemptuous
silence and secret brutality. Pierre divined that she would have left
long ago if she had only had a refuge. He was waiting an opportunity to
take a little apartment for her somewhere, when a fortuitous
occurrence, which he had not ventured to anticipate, abruptly brought
about the realisation of his desires. Information reached the Faubourg
that Macquart had just been killed on the frontier by a shot from a
custom-house officer, at the moment when he was endeavouring to smuggle
a load of Geneva watches into France. The story was true. The
smuggler’s body was not even brought home, but was interred in the
cemetery of a little mountain village. Adélaïde’s grief plunged her
into stupor. Her son, who watched her curiously, did not see her shed a
tear. Macquart had made her sole legatee. She inherited his hovel in
the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and his carbine, which a fellow-smuggler,
braving the balls of the custom-house officers, loyally brought back to
her. On the following day she retired to the little house, hung the
carbine above the mantelpiece, and lived there estranged from all the
world, solitary and silent.
Pierre was at last sole master of the house. The Fouques’ land belonged
to him in fact, if not in law. He never thought of establishing himself
on it. It was too narrow a field for his ambition. To till the ground
and cultivate vegetables seemed to him boorish, unworthy of his
faculties. He was in a hurry to divest himself of everything recalling
the peasant. With his nature refined by his mother’s nervous
temperament, he felt an irresistible longing for the enjoyments of the
middle classes. In all his calculations, therefore, he had regarded the
sale of the Fouques’ property as the final consummation. This sale, by
placing a round sum of money in his hands, would enable him to marry
the daughter of some merchant who would take him into partnership. At
this period the wars of the First Empire were greatly thinning the
ranks of eligible young men. Parents were not so fastidious as
previously in the choice of a son-in-law. Pierre persuaded himself that
money would smooth all difficulties, and that the gossip of the
Faubourg would be overlooked; he intended to pose as a victim, as an
honest man suffering from a family disgrace, which he deplored, without
being soiled by it or excusing it.
For several months already he had cast his eyes on a certain Félicité
Puech, the daughter of an oil-dealer. The firm of Puech & Lacamp, whose
warehouses were in one of the darkest lanes of the old quarter, was far
from prosperous. It enjoyed but doubtful credit in the market, and
people talked vaguely of bankruptcy. It was precisely in consequence of
these evil reports that Pierre turned his batteries in this direction.
No well-to-do trader would have given him his daughter. He meant to
appear on the scene at the very moment when old Puech should no longer
know which way to turn; he would then purchase Félicité of him, and
re-establish the credit of the house by his own energy and
intelligence. It was a clever expedient for ascending the first rung of
the social ladder, for raising himself above his station. Above all
things, he wished to escape from that frightful Faubourg where
everybody reviled his family, and to obliterate all these foul legends,
by effacing even the very name of the Fouques’ enclosure. For that
reason the filthy streets of the old quarter seemed to him perfect
paradise. There, only, he would be able to change his skin.
The moment which he had been awaiting soon arrived. The firm of Puech
and Lacamp seemed to be at the last gasp. The young man then negotiated
the match with prudent skill. He was received, if not as a deliverer,
at least as a necessary and acceptable expedient. The marriage agreed
upon, he turned his attention to the sale of the ground. The owner of
the Jas-Meiffren, desiring to enlarge his estate, had made him repeated
offers. A low, thin, party-wall alone separated the two estates. Pierre
speculated on the eagerness of his wealthy neighbour, who, to gratify
his caprice, offered as much as fifty thousand francs for the land. It
was double its value. Pierre, whoever, with the craftiness of a
peasant, pulled a long face, and said that he did not care to sell;
that his mother would never consent to get rid of the property where
the Fouques had lived from father to son for nearly two centuries. But
all the time that he was seemingly holding back he was really making
preparations for the sale. Certain doubts had arisen in his mind.
According to his own brutal logic, the property belonged to him; he had
the right to dispose of it as he chose. Beneath this assurance,
however, he had vague presentiments of legal complications. So he
indirectly consulted a lawyer of the Faubourg.
He learnt some fine things from him. According to the lawyer, his hands
were completely tied. His mother alone could alienate the property, and
he doubted whether she would. But what he did not know, what came as a
heavy blow to him, was that Ursule and Antoine, those young wolves, had
claims on the estate. What! they would despoil him, rob him, the
legitimate child! The lawyer’s explanations were clear and precise,
however; Adélaïde, it is true, had married Rougon under the common
property system; but as the whole fortune consisted of land, the young
woman, according to law, again came into possession of everything at
her husband’s death. Moreover, Macquart and Adélaïde had duly
acknowledged their children when declaring their birth for
registration, and thus these children were entitled to inherit from
their mother. For sole consolation, Pierre learnt that the law reduced
the share of illegitimate children in favour of the others. This,
however, did not console him at all. He wanted to have everything. He
would not have shared ten sous with Ursule and Antoine.
This vista of the intricacies of the Code opened up a new horizon,
which he scanned with a singularly thoughtful air. He soon recognised
that a shrewd man must always keep the law on his side. And this is
what he devised without consulting anyone, even the lawyer, whose
suspicions he was afraid of arousing. He knew how to turn his mother
round his finger. One fine morning he took her to a notary and made her
sign a deed of sale. Provided she were left the hovel in the Impasse
Saint-Mittre, Adélaïde would have sold all Plassans. Besides, Pierre
assured her an annual income of six hundred francs, and made the most
solemn promises to watch over his brother and sister. This oath
satisfied the good woman. She recited, before the notary, the lesson
which it had pleased her son to teach her. On the following day the
young man made her place her name at the foot of a document in which
she acknowledged having received fifty thousand francs as the price of
the property. This was his stroke of genius, the act of a rogue. He
contented himself with telling his mother, who was a little surprised
at signing such a receipt when she had not seen a centime of the fifty
thousand francs, that it was a pure formality of no consequence
whatever. As he slipped the paper into his pocket, he thought to
himself, “Now, let the young wolves ask me to render an account. I will
tell them the old woman has squandered everything. They will never dare
to go to law with me about it.” A week afterwards, the party-wall no
longer existed: a plough had turned up the vegetable beds; the Fouques’
enclosure, in accordance with young Rougon’s wish, was about to become
a thing of the past. A few months later, the owner of the Jas-Meiffren
even had the old market-gardener’s house, which was falling to pieces,
pulled down.
When Pierre had secured the fifty thousand francs he married Félicité
Puech with as little delay as possible. Félicité was a short, dark
woman, such as one often meets in Provence. She looked like one of
those brown, lean, noisy grasshoppers, which in their sudden leaps
often strike their heads against the almond-trees. Thin, flat-breasted,
with pointed shoulders and a face like that of a pole-cat, her features
singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she
looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only
nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline
slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet
holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with
delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin,
parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the
countenance of an artful dwarf, a living mask of intrigue, an active,
envious ambition. With all her ugliness, however, Félicité possessed a
sort of gracefulness which rendered her seductive. People said of her
that she could be pretty or ugly as she pleased. It would depend on the
fashion in which she tied her magnificent hair; but it depended still
more on the triumphant smile which illumined her golden complexion when
she thought she had got the better of somebody. Born under an evil
star, and believing herself ill-used by fortune, she was generally
content to appear an ugly creature. She did not, however, intend to
abandon the struggle, for she had vowed that she would some day make
the whole town burst with envy, by an insolent display of happiness and
luxury. Had she been able to act her part on a more spacious stage,
where full play would have been allowed her ready wit, she would have
quickly brought her dream to pass. Her intelligence was far superior to
that of the girls of her own station and education. Evil tongues
asserted that her mother, who had died a few years after she was born,
had, during the early period of her married life, been familiar with
the Marquis de Carnavant, a young nobleman of the Saint-Marc quarter.
In fact, Félicité had the hands and feet of a marchioness, and, in this
respect, did not appear to belong to that class of workers from which
she was descended.
Her marriage with Pierre Rougon, that semi-peasant, that man of the
Faubourg, whose family was in such bad odour, kept the old quarter in a
state of astonishment for more than a month. She let people gossip,
however, receiving the stiff congratulations of her friends with
strange smiles. Her calculations had been made; she had chosen Rougon
for a husband as one would choose an accomplice. Her father, in
accepting the young man, had merely had eyes for the fifty thousand
francs which were to save him from bankruptcy. Félicité, however, was
more keen-sighted. She looked into the future, and felt that she would
be in want of a robust man, even if he were somewhat rustic, behind
whom she might conceal herself, and whose limbs she would move at will.
She entertained a deliberate hatred for the insignificant little
exquisites of provincial towns, the lean herd of notaries’ clerks and
prospective barristers, who stand shivering with cold while waiting for
clients. Having no dowry, and despairing of ever marrying a rich
merchant’s son, she by far preferred a peasant whom she could use as a
passive tool, to some lank graduate who would overwhelm her with his
academical superiority, and drag her about all her life in search of
hollow vanities. She was of opinion that the woman ought to make the
man. She believed herself capable of carving a minister out of a
cow-herd. That which had attracted her in Rougon was his broad chest,
his heavy frame, which was not altogether wanting in elegance. A man
thus built would bear with ease and sprightliness the mass of intrigues
which she dreamt of placing on his shoulders. However, while she
appreciated her husband’s strength and vigour, she also perceived that
he was far from being a fool; under his coarse flesh she had divined
the cunning suppleness of his mind. Still she was a long way from
really knowing her Rougon; she thought him far stupider than he was. A
few days after her marriage, as she was by chance fumbling in the
drawer of a secretaire, she came across the receipt for fifty thousand
francs which Adélaïde had signed. At sight of it she understood things,
and felt rather frightened; her own natural average honesty rendered
her hostile to such expedients. Her terror, however, was not unmixed
with admiration; Rougon became in her eyes a very smart fellow.
The young couple bravely sought to conquer fortune. The firm of Puech &
Lacamp was not, after all, so embarrassed as Pierre had thought. Its
liabilities were small, it was merely in want of ready-money. In the
provinces, traders adopt prudent courses to save them from serious
disasters. Puech & Lacamp were prudent to an excessive degree; they
never risked a thousand crowns without the greatest fear, and thus
their house, a veritable hole, was an unimportant one. The fifty
thousand francs that Pierre brought into it sufficed to pay the debts
and extend the business. The beginnings were good. During three
successive years the olive harvest was an abundant one. Félicité, by a
bold stroke which absolutely frightened both Pierre and old Puech, made
them purchase a considerable quantity of oil, which they stored in
their warehouse. During the following years, as the young woman had
foreseen, the crops failed, and a considerable rise in prices having
set in, they realised large profits by selling out their stock.
A short time after this haul, Puech & Lacamp retired from the firm,
content with the few sous they had just secured, and ambitious of
living on their incomes.
The young couple now had sole control of the business, and thought that
they had at last laid the foundation of their fortune. “You have
vanquished my ill-luck,” Félicité would sometimes say to her husband.
One of the rare weaknesses of her energetic nature was to believe
herself stricken by misfortune. Hitherto, so she asserted, nothing had
been successful with either herself or her father, in spite of all
their efforts. Goaded by her southern superstition, she prepared to
struggle with fate as one struggles with somebody who is endeavouring
to strangle one. Circumstances soon justified her apprehensions in a
singular manner. Ill-luck returned inexorably. Every year some fresh
disaster shook Rougon’s business. A bankruptcy resulted in the loss of
a few thousand francs; his estimates of crops proved incorrect, through
the most incredible circumstances; the safest speculations collapsed
miserably. It was a truceless, merciless combat.
“You see I was born under an unlucky star!” Félicité would bitterly
exclaim.
And yet she still struggled furiously, not understanding how it was
that she, who had shown such keen scent in a first speculation, could
now only give her husband the most deplorable advice.
Pierre, dejected and less tenacious than herself, would have gone into
liquidation a score of times had it not been for his wife’s firm
obstinacy. She longed to be rich. She perceived that her ambition could
only be attained by fortune. As soon as they possessed a few hundred
thousand francs they would be masters of the town. She would get her
husband appointed to an important post, and she would govern. It was
not the attainment of honours which troubled her; she felt herself
marvellously well armed for such a combat. But she could do nothing to
get together the first few bags of money which were needed. Though the
ruling of men caused her no apprehensions, she felt a sort of impotent
rage at the thought of those inert, white, cold, five-franc pieces over
which her intriguing spirit had no power, and which obstinately
resisted her.
The battle lasted for more than thirty years. The death of Puech proved
another heavy blow. Félicité, who had counted upon an inheritance of
about forty thousand francs, found that the selfish old man, in order
to indulge himself in his old age, had sunk all his money in a life
annuity. The discovery made her quite ill. She was gradually becoming
soured, she was growing more lean and harsh. To see her, from morning
till night, whirling round the jars of oil, one would have thought she
believed that she could stimulate the sales by continually flitting
about like a restless fly. Her husband, on the contrary, became
heavier; misfortune fattened him, making him duller and more indolent.
These thirty years of combat did not, however, bring him to ruin. At
each annual stock-taking they managed to make both ends meet fairly
well; if they suffered any loss during one season, they recouped
themselves the next. However, it was precisely this living from hand to
mouth which exasperated Félicité. She would, by far, have preferred a
big failure. They would then, perhaps, have been able to commence life
over again, instead of obstinately persisting in their petty business,
working themselves to death to gain the bare necessaries of life.
During one third of a century they did not save fifty thousand francs.
It should be mentioned that, from the very first years of their married
life, they had a numerous family, which in the long run became a heavy
burden to them. In the course of five years, from 1811 to 1815,
Félicité gave birth to three boys. Then during the four ensuing years
she presented her husband with two girls. These had but an indifferent
welcome; daughters are a terrible embarrassment when one has no dowry
to give them.
However, the young woman did not regard this troop of children as the
cause of their ruin. On the contrary, she based on her sons’ heads the
building of the fortune which was crumbling in her own hands. They were
hardly ten years old before she discounted their future careers in her
dreams. Doubting whether she would ever succeed herself, she centred in
them all her hopes of overcoming the animosity of fate. They would
provide satisfaction for her disappointed vanity, they would give her
that wealthy, honourable position which she had hitherto sought in
vain. From that time forward, without abandoning the business struggle,
she conceived a second plan for obtaining the gratification of her
domineering instincts. It seemed to her impossible that, amongst her
three sons, there should not be a man of superior intellect, who would
enrich them all. She felt it, she said. Accordingly, she nursed the
children with a fervour in which maternal severity was blended with an
usurer’s solicitude. She amused herself by fattening them as though
they constituted a capital which, later on, would return a large
interest.
“Enough!” Pierre would sometimes exclaim, “all children are ungrateful.
You are spoiling them, you are ruining us.”
When Félicité spoke of sending them to college, he got angry. Latin was
a useless luxury, it would be quite sufficient if they went through the
classes of a little neighbouring school The young woman, however,
persisted in her design. She possessed certain elevated instincts which
made her take a great pride in surrounding herself with accomplished
children; moreover, she felt that her sons must never remain as
illiterate as her husband, if she wished to see them become prominent
men. She fancied them all three in Paris in high positions, which she
did not clearly define. When Rougon consented, and the three youngsters
had entered the eighth class, Félicité felt the most lively
satisfaction she had ever experienced. She listened with delight as
they talked of their professors and their studies. When she heard her
eldest son make one of his brothers decline _Rosa, a rose_, it sounded
like delicious music to her. It is only fair to add that her delight
was not tarnished by any sordid calculations. Even Rougon felt the
satisfaction which an illiterate man experiences on perceiving his sons
grow more learned than himself. Then the fellowship which grew up
between their sons and those of the local big-wigs completed the
parents’ gratification. The youngsters were soon on familiar terms with
the sons of the Mayor and the Sub-Prefect, and even with two or three
young noblemen whom the Saint-Marc quarter had deigned to send to the
Plassans College. Félicité was at a loss how to repay such an honour.
The education of the three lads weighed seriously on the budget of the
Rougon household.
Until the boys had taken their degrees, their parents, who kept them at
college at enormous sacrifices, lived in hopes of their success. When
they had obtained their diplomas Félicité wished to continue her work,
and even persuaded her husband to send the three to Paris. Two of them
devoted themselves to the study of law, and the third passed through
the School of Medicine. Then, when they were men, and had exhausted the
resources of the Rougon family and were obliged to return and establish
themselves in the provinces, their parents’ disenchantment began. They
idled about and grew fat. And Félicité again felt all the bitterness of
her ill-luck. Her sons were failing her. They had ruined her, and did
not return any interest on the capital which they represented. This
last blow of fate was the heaviest, as it fell on her ambition and her
maternal vanity alike. Rougon repeated to her from morning till night,
“I told you so!” which only exasperated her the more.
One day, as she was bitterly reproaching her eldest son with the large
amount of money expended on his education, he said to her with equal
bitterness, “I will repay you later on if I can. But as you had no
means, you should have brought us up to a trade. We are out of our
element, we are suffering more than you.”
Félicité understood the wisdom of these words. From that time she
ceased to accuse her children, and turned her anger against fate, which
never wearied of striking her. She started her old complaints afresh,
and bemoaned more and more the want of means which made her strand, as
it were, in port. Whenever Rougon said to her, “Your sons are lazy
fellows, they will eat up all we have,” she sourly replied, “Would to
God I had more money to give them; if they do vegetate, poor fellows,
it’s because they haven’t got a sou to bless themselves with.”
At the beginning of the year 1848, on the eve of the Revolution of
February, the three young Rougons held very precarious positions at
Plassans. They presented most curious and profoundly dissimilar
characteristics, though they came of the same stock. They were in
reality superior to their parents. The race of the Rougons was destined
to become refined through its female side. Adélaïde had made Pierre a
man of moderate enterprise, disposed to low ambitions; Félicité had
inspired her sons with a higher intelligence, with a capacity for
greater vices and greater virtues.
At the period now referred to the eldest, Eugène, was nearly forty
years old. He was a man of middle height, slightly bald, and already
disposed to obesity. He had his father’s face, a long face with broad
features; beneath his skin one could divine the fat to which were due
the flabby roundness of his features, and his yellowish, waxy
complexion. Though his massive square head still recalled the peasant,
his physiognomy was transfigured, lit up from within as it were, when
his drooping eyelids were raised and his eyes awoke to life. In the
son’s case, the father’s ponderousness had turned to gravity. This big
fellow, Eugène, usually preserved a heavy somnolent demeanour. At the
same time, certain of his heavy, languid movements suggested those of a
giant stretching his limbs pending the time for action. By one of those
alleged freaks of nature, of which, however, science is now commencing
to discover the laws, if physical resemblance to Pierre was perfect in
Eugène, Félicité on her side seemed to have furnished him with his
brains. He offered an instance of certain moral and intellectual
qualities of maternal origin being embedded in the coarse flesh he had
derived from his father. He cherished lofty ambitions, possessed
domineering instincts, and showed singular contempt for trifling
expedients and petty fortunes.
He was a proof that Plassans was perhaps not mistaken in suspecting
that Félicité had some blue blood in her veins. The passion for
indulgence, which became formidably developed in the Rougons, and was,
in fact, the family characteristic, attained in his case its highest
pitch; he longed for self-gratification, but in the form of mental
enjoyment such as would gratify his burning desire for domination. A
man such as this was never intended to succeed in a provincial town. He
vegetated there for fifteen years, his eyes turned towards Paris,
watching his opportunities. On his return home he had entered his name
on the rolls, in order to be independent of his parents. After that he
pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing
to rise above average mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered
thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at
issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion
particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot
himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that
the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with
a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of
money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugène the
least regret for his irrelevant digression. He appeared to regard his
speeches as mere exercises which would be of use to him later on. It
was this that puzzled and disheartened Félicité. She would have liked
to see her son dictating the law to the Civil Court of Plassans. At
last she came to entertain a very unfavourable opinion of her
first-born. To her mind this lazy fellow would never be the one to shed
any lustre on the family. Pierre, on the contrary, felt absolute
confidence in him, not that he had more intuition than his wife, but
because external appearances sufficed him, and he flattered himself by
believing in the genius of a son who was his living image. A month
prior to the Revolution of February, 1848, Eugène became restless; some
special inspiration made him anticipate the crisis. From that time
forward he seemed to feel out of his element at Plassans. He would
wander about the streets like a distressed soul. At last he formed a
sudden resolution, and left for Paris, with scarcely five hundred
francs in his pocket.
Aristide, the youngest son, was, so to speak, diametrically opposed to
Eugène. He had his mother’s face, and a covetousness and slyness of
character prone to trivial intrigues, in which his father’s instincts
predominated. Nature has need of symmetry. Short, with a pitiful
countenance suggesting the knob of a stick carved into a Punch’s head,
Aristide ferretted and fumbled everywhere, without any scruples, eager
only to gratify himself. He loved money as his eldest brother loved
power. While Eugène dreamed of bending a people to his will, and
intoxicated himself with visions of future omnipotence, the other
fancied himself ten times a millionaire, installed in a princely
mansion, eating and drinking to his heart’s content, and enjoying life
to the fullest possible extent. Above all things, he longed to make a
rapid fortune. When he was building his castles in the air, they would
rise in his mind as if by magic; he would become possessed of tons of
gold in one night. These visions agreed with his indolence, as he never
troubled himself about the means, considering those the best which were
the most expeditious. In his case the race of the Rougons, of those
coarse, greedy peasants with brutish appetites, had matured too
rapidly; every desire for material indulgence was found in him,
augmented threefold by hasty education, and rendered the more
insatiable and dangerous by the deliberate way in which the young man
had come to regard their realisation as his set purpose. In spite of
her keen feminine intuition, Félicité preferred this son; she did not
perceive the greater affinity between herself and Eugène; she excused
the follies and indolence of her youngest son under the pretext that he
would some day be the superior genius of the family, and that such a
man was entitled to live a disorderly life until his intellectual
strength should be revealed.
Aristide subjected her indulgence to a rude test. In Paris he led a
low, idle life; he was one of those students who enter their names at
the taverns of the Quartier Latin. He did not remain there, however,
more than two years; his father, growing apprehensive, and seeing that
he had not yet passed a single examination, kept him at Plassans and
spoke of finding a wife for him, hoping that domestic responsibility
would make him more steady. Aristide let himself be married. He had no
very clear idea of his own ambitions at this time; provincial life did
not displease him; he was battening in his little town—eating,
sleeping, and sauntering about. Félicité pleaded his cause so earnestly
that Pierre consented to board and lodge the newly-married couple, on
condition that the young man should turn his attention to the business.
From that time, however, Aristide led a life of ease and idleness. He
spent his days and the best part of his nights at the club, again and
again slipping out of his father’s office like a schoolboy to go and
gamble away the few louis that his mother gave him clandestinely.
It is necessary to have lived in the depths of the French provinces to
form an idea of the four brutifying years which the young fellow spent
in this fashion. In every little town there is a group of individuals
who thus live on their parents, pretending at times to work, but in
reality cultivating idleness with a sort of religious zeal. Aristide
was typical of these incorrigible drones. For four years he did little
but play écarté. While he passed his time at the club, his wife, a
fair-complexioned nerveless woman, helped to ruin the Rougon business
by her inordinate passion for showy gowns and her formidable appetite,
a rather remarkable peculiarity in so frail a creature. Angèle,
however, adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef. She was the daughter
of a retired captain who was called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted
old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs—all his
savings. Pierre, in selecting Angèle for his son had considered that he
had made an unexpected bargain, so lightly did he esteem Aristide.
However, that dowry of ten thousand francs, which determined his
choice, ultimately became a millstone round his neck. His son, who was
already a cunning rogue, deposited the ten thousand francs with his
father, with whom he entered into partnership, declining, with the most
sincere professions of devotion, to keep a single copper.
“We have no need of anything,” he said; “you will keep my wife and
myself, and we will reckon up later on.”
Pierre was short of money at the time, and accepted, not, however,
without some uneasiness at Aristide’s disinterestedness. The latter
calculated that it would be years before his father would have ten
thousand francs in ready money to repay him, so that he and his wife
would live at the paternal expense so long as the partnership could not
be dissolved. It was an admirable investment for his few bank-notes.
When the oil-dealer understood what a foolish bargain he had made he
was not in a position to rid himself of Aristide; Angèle’s dowry was
involved in speculations which were turning out unfavourably. He was
exasperated, stung to the heart, at having to provide for his
daughter-in-law’s voracious appetite and keep his son in idleness. Had
he been able to buy them out of the business he would twenty times have
shut his doors on those bloodsuckers, as he emphatically expressed it.
Félicité secretly defended them; the young man, who had divined her
dreams of ambition, would every evening describe to her the elaborate
plans by which he would shortly make a fortune. By a rare chance she
had remained on excellent terms with her daughter-in-law. It must be
confessed that Angèle had no will of her own—she could be moved and
disposed of like a piece of furniture.
Meantime Pierre became enraged whenever his wife spoke to him of the
success their youngest son would ultimately achieve; he declared that
he would really bring them to ruin. During the four years that the
young couple lived with him he stormed in this manner, wasting his
impotent rage in quarrels, without in the least disturbing the
equanimity of Aristide and Angèle. They were located there, and there
they intended to remain like blocks of wood. At last Pierre met with a
stroke of luck which enabled him to return the ten thousand francs to
his son. When, however, he wanted to reckon up accounts with him,
Aristide interposed so much chicanery that he had to let the couple go
without deducting a copper for their board and lodging. They installed
themselves but a short distance off, in a part of the old quarter
called the Place Saint-Louis. The ten thousand francs were soon
consumed. They had everything to get for their new home. Moreover
Aristide made no change in his mode of living as long as any money was
left in the house. When he had reached the last hundred-franc note he
felt rather nervous. He was seen prowling about the town in a
suspicious manner. He no longer took his customary cup of coffee at the
club; he watched feverishly whilst play was going on, without touching
a card. Poverty made him more spiteful than he would otherwise have
been. He bore the blow for a long time, obstinately refusing to do
anything in the way of work.
In 1840 he had a son, little Maxime, whom his grandmother Félicité
fortunately sent to college, paying his fees clandestinely. That made
one mouth less at home; but poor Angèle was dying of hunger, and her
husband was at last compelled to seek a situation. He secured one at
the Sub-Prefecture. He remained there nearly ten years, and only
attained a salary of eighteen hundred francs per annum. From that time
forward it was with ever increasing malevolence and rancour that he
hungered for the enjoyments of which he was deprived. His lowly
position exasperated him; the paltry hundred and fifty francs which he
received every month seemed to him an irony of fate. Never did man burn
with such desire for self-gratification. Félicité, to whom he imparted
his sufferings, was by no means grieved to see him so eager. She
thought his misery would stimulate his energies. At last, crouching in
ambush as it were, with his ears wide open, he began to look about him
like a thief seeking his opportunity. At the beginning of 1848, when
his brother left for Paris, he had a momentary idea of following him.
But Eugène was a bachelor; and he, Aristide, could not take his wife so
far without money. So he waited, scenting a catastrophe, and ready to
fall on the first prey that might come within his reach.
The other son, Pascal, born between Eugène and Aristide, did not appear
to belong to the family. He was one of those frequent cases which give
the lie to the laws of heredity. During the evolution of a race nature
often produces some one being whose every element she derives from her
own creative powers. Nothing in the moral or physical constitution of
Pascal recalled the Rougons. Tall, with a grave and gentle face, he had
an uprightness of mind, a love of study, a retiring modesty which
contrasted strangely with the feverish ambitions and unscrupulous
intrigues of his relatives. After acquitting himself admirably of his
medical studies in Paris, he had retired, by preference, to Plassans,
notwithstanding the offers he received from his professors. He loved a
quiet provincial life; he maintained that for a studious man such a
life was preferable to the excitement of Paris. Even at Plassans he did
not exert himself to extend his practice. Very steady, and despising
fortune, he contented himself with the few patients sent him by chance.
All his pleasures were centred in a bright little house in the new
town, where he shut himself up, lovingly devoting his whole time to the
study of natural history. He was particularly fond of physiology. It
was known in the town that he frequently purchased dead bodies from the
hospital grave-digger, a circumstance which rendered him an object of
horror to delicate ladies and certain timid gentlemen. Fortunately,
they did not actually look upon him as a sorcerer; but his practice
diminished, and he was regarded as an eccentric character, to whom
people of good society ought not to entrust even a finger-tip, for fear
of being compromised. The mayor’s wife was one day heard to say: “I
would sooner die than be attended by that gentleman. He smells of
death.”
From that time, Pascal was condemned. He seemed to rejoice at the mute
terror which he inspired. The fewer patients he had, the more time he
could devote to his favourite sciences. As his fees were very moderate,
the poorer people remained faithful to him; he earned just enough to
live, and lived contentedly, a thousand leagues away from the rest of
the country, absorbed in the pure delight of his researches and
discoveries. From time to time he sent a memoir to the Academie des
Sciences at Paris. Plassans did not know that this eccentric character,
this gentleman who smelt of death was well-known and highly-esteemed in
the world of science. When people saw him starting on Sundays for an
excursion among the Garrigues hills, with a botanist’s bag hung round
his neck and a geologist’s hammer in his hand, they would shrug their
shoulders and institute a comparison between him and some other doctor
of the town who was noted for his smart cravat, his affability to the
ladies, and the delicious odour of violets which his garments always
diffused. Pascal’s parents did not understand him any better than other
people. When Félicité saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious
mode of life she was stupefied, and reproached him for disappointing
her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide’s idleness because she thought
it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress
of Pascal, his partiality for obscurity and contempt for riches, his
determined resolve to lead a life of retirement. He was certainly not
the child who would ever gratify her vanities.
“But where do you spring from?” she would sometimes say to him. “You
are not one of us. Look at your brothers, how they keep their eyes
open, striving to profit by the education we have given them, whilst
you waste your time on follies and trifles. You make a very poor return
to us, who have ruined ourselves for your education. No, you are
certainly not one of us.”
Pascal, who preferred to laugh whenever he was called upon to feel
annoyed, replied cheerfully, but not without a sting of irony: “Oh, you
need not be frightened, I shall never drive you to the verge of
bankruptcy; when any of you are ill, I will attend you for nothing.”
Moreover, though he never displayed any repugnance to his relatives, he
very rarely saw them, following in this wise his natural instincts.
Before Aristide obtained a situation at the Sub-Prefecture, Pascal had
frequently come to his assistance. For his part he had remained a
bachelor. He had not the least suspicion of the grave events that were
preparing. For two or three years he had been studying the great
problem of heredity, comparing the human and animal races together, and
becoming absorbed in the strange results which he obtained. Certain
observations which he had made with respect to himself and his
relatives had been, so to say, the starting-point of his studies. The
common people, with their natural intuition, so well understood that he
was quite different from the other Rougons, that they invariably called
him Monsieur Pascal, without ever adding his family name.
Three years prior to the Revolution of 1848 Pierre and Félicité retired
from business. Old age was coming on apace; they were both past fifty
and were weary enough of the struggle. In face of their ill fortune,
they were afraid of being ultimately ruined if they obstinately
persisted in the fight. Their sons, by disappointing their
expectations, had dealt them the final blow. Now that they despaired of
ever being enriched by them, they were anxious to make some little
provision for old age. They retired with forty thousand francs at the
utmost. This sum provided an annual income of two thousand francs, just
sufficient to live in a small way in the provinces. Fortunately, they
were by themselves, having succeeded in marrying their daughters Marthe
and Sidonie, the former of whom resided at Marseilles and the latter in
Paris.
After they had settled their affairs they would much have liked to take
up their abode in the new town, the quarter of the retired traders, but
they dared not do so. Their income was too small; they were afraid that
they would cut but a poor figure there. So, as a sort of compromise,
they took apartments in the Rue de la Banne, the street which separates
the old quarter from the new one. As their abode was one of the row of
houses bordering the old quarter, they still lived among the common
people; nevertheless, they could see the town of the richer classes
from their windows, so that they were just on the threshold of the
promised land.
Their apartments, situated on the second floor, consisted of three
large rooms—dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom. The first floor was
occupied by the owner of the house, a stick and umbrella manufacturer,
who had a shop on the ground floor. The house, which was narrow and by
no means deep, had only two storeys. Félicité moved into it with a
bitter pang. In the provinces, to live in another person’s house is an
avowal of poverty. Every family of position at Plassans has a house of
its own, landed property being very cheap there. Pierre kept the
purse-strings well tied; he would not hear of any embellishments. The
old furniture, faded, worn, damaged though it was, had to suffice,
without even being repaired. Félicité, however, who keenly felt the
necessity for this parsimony, exerted herself to give fresh polish to
all the wreckage; she herself knocked nails into some of the furniture
which was more dilapidated than the rest, and darned the frayed velvet
of the arm-chairs.
The dining-room, which, like the kitchen, was at the back of the house,
was nearly bare; a table and a dozen chairs were lost in the gloom of
this large apartment, whose window faced the grey wall of a
neighbouring building. As no strangers ever went into the bedroom,
Félicité had stowed all her useless furniture there; thus, besides a
bedstead, wardrobe, secretaire, and wash-stand, it contained two
cradles, one perched atop of the other, a sideboard whose doors were
missing, and an empty bookcase, venerable ruins which the old woman
could not make up her mind to part with. All her cares, however, were
bestowed upon the drawing-room, and she almost succeeded in making it
comfortable and decent. The furniture was covered with yellowish velvet
with satin flowers; in the middle stood a round table with a marble
top, while a couple of pier tables, surmounted by mirrors, leant
against the walls at either end of the room. There was even a carpet,
which just covered the middle of the floor, and a chandelier in a white
muslin cover which the flies had spotted with black specks. On the
walls hung six lithographs representing the great battles of Napoleon
I. Moreover, the furniture dated from the first years of the Empire.
The only embellishment that Félicité could obtain was to have the walls
hung with orange-hued paper covered with large flowers. Thus the
drawing room had a strange yellow glow, which filled it with an
artificial dazzling light. The furniture, the paper, and the window
curtains were yellow; the carpet and even the marble table-tops showed
touches of yellow. However, when the curtains were drawn the colours
harmonised fairly well and the drawing-room looked almost decent.
But Félicité had dreamed of quite a different kind of luxury. She
regarded with mute despair this ill-concealed misery. She usually
occupied the drawing-room, the best apartment in the house, and the
sweetest and bitterest of her pastimes was to sit at one of the windows
which overlooked the Rue de la Banne and gave her a side view of the
square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. That was the paradise of her
dreams. That little, neat, tidy square, with its bright houses, seemed
to her a Garden of Eden. She would have given ten years of her life to
possess one of those habitations. The house at the left-hand corner, in
which the receiver of taxes resided, particularly tempted her. She
contemplated it with eager longing. Sometimes, when the windows of this
abode were open, she could catch a glimpse of rich furniture and
tasteful elegance which made her burn with envy.
At this period the Rougons passed through a curious crisis of vanity
and unsatiated appetite. The few proper feelings which they had once
entertained had become embittered. They posed as victims of evil
fortune, not with resignation, however, for they seemed still more
keenly determined that they would not die before they had satisfied
their ambitions. In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes,
notwithstanding their advanced age. Félicité professed to feel a
presentiment that she would die rich. However, each day of poverty
weighed them down the more. When they recapitulated their vain
attempts—when they recalled their thirty years’ struggle, and the
defection of their children—when they saw their airy castles end in
this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness they could only conceal by
drawing the curtains, they were overcome with bitter rage. Then, as a
consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune,
seeking all sorts of devices. Félicité would fancy herself the winner
of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while
Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation. They
lived with one sole thought—that of making a fortune immediately, in a
few hours—of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year.
Their whole beings tended to this, stubbornly, without a pause. And
they still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with
that peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they
have sent their children to college without deriving some personal
advantage from it.
Félicité did not appear to have aged; she was still the same dark
little woman, ever on the move, buzzing about like a grasshopper. Any
person walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a girl
of fifteen, from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her
shoulders and waist. Even her face had scarcely undergone any change;
it was simply rather more sunken, rather more suggestive of the snout
of a pole-cat.
As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly
respectable looking citizen, who only lacked a decent income to make
him a very dignified individual. His pale, flabby face, his heaviness,
his languid manner, seemed redolent of wealth. He had one day heard a
peasant who did not know him say: “Ah! he’s some rich fellow, that fat
old gentleman there. He’s no cause to worry about his dinner!” This was
a remark which stung him to the heart, for he considered it cruel
mockery to be only a poor devil while possessing the bulk and contented
gravity of a millionaire. When he shaved on Sundays in front of a small
five-sou looking-glass hanging from the fastening of a window, he would
often think that in a dress coat and white tie he would cut a far
better figure at the Sub-Prefect’s than such or such a functionary of
Plassans. This peasant’s son, who had grown sallow from business
worries, and corpulent from a sedentary life, whose hateful passions
were hidden beneath naturally placid features, really had that air of
solemn imbecility which gives a man a position in an official salon.
People imagined that his wife held a rod over him, but they were
mistaken. He was as self-willed as a brute. Any determined expression
of extraneous will would drive him into a violent rage. Félicité was
far too supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature
she did not attack obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain
something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she
would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all
sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded
almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he,
and tolerated her advice fairly patiently. Félicité, more useful than
the coach fly, would sometimes do all the work while she was thus
buzzing round Pierre’s ears. Strange to say, the husband and wife never
accused each other of their ill-success. The only bone of contention
between them was the education lavished on their children.
The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout,
exasperated by their bad luck, and disposed to lay violent hands on
fortune if ever they should meet her in a byway. They were a family of
bandits lying in wait, ready to rifle and plunder. Eugène kept an eye
on Paris; Aristide dreamed of strangling Plassans; the mother and
father, perhaps the most eager of the lot, intended to work on their
own account, and reap some additional advantage from their sons’
doings. Pascal alone, that discreet wooer of science, led the happy,
indifferent life of a lover in his bright little house in the new town.