f another man and gave him no peace,
which made the mother suffer in secret, being an uncomplaining and
submissive wife. So that, although she adored him, she would willingly
have given him up to his father's family.

Charles, at fifteen, seemed scarcely twelve, and he had the infantine
intelligence of a child of five, resembling in an extraordinary degree
his great-great-grandmother, Aunt Dide, the madwoman at the Tulettes.
He had the slender and delicate grace of one of those bloodless little
kings with whom a race ends, crowned with their long, fair locks, light
as spun silk. His large, clear eyes were expressionless, and on his
disquieting beauty lay the shadow of death. And he had neither brain
nor heart--he was nothing but a vicious little dog, who rubbed himself
against people to be fondled. His great-grandmother Felicite, won by
this beauty, in which she affected to recognize her blood, had at first
put him in a boarding school, taking charge of him, but he had been
expelled from it at the end of six months for misconduct. Three times
she had changed his boarding school, and each time he had been expelled
in disgrace. Then, as he neither would nor could learn anything, and
as his health was declining rapidly, they kept him at home, sending him
from one to another of the family. Dr. Pascal, moved to pity, had tried
to cure him, and had abandoned the hopeless task only after he had kept
him with him for nearly a year, fearing the companionship for Clotilde.
And now, when Charles was not at his mother's, where he scarcely ever
lived at present, he was to be found at the house of Felicite, or that
of some other relative, prettily dressed, laden with toys, living like
the effeminate little dauphin of an ancient and fallen race.

Old Mme. Rougon, however, suffered because of this bastard, and she
had planned to get him away from the gossiping tongues of Plassans, by
persuading Maxime to take him and keep him with him in Paris. It would
still be an ugly story of the fallen family. But Maxime had for a
long time turned a deaf ear to her solicitations, in the fear which
continually haunted him of spoiling his life. After the war, enriched by
the death of his wife, he had come back to live prudently on his fortune
in his mansion on the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, tormented by the
hereditary malady of which he was to die young, having gained from his
precocious debauchery a salutary fear of pleasure, resolved above all