cieties, and of the world!"

His eyes fixed on vacancy, he remained for a time lost in thought. Then,
with an abrupt movement, he came back to the envelopes and, pushing the
tree aside, said:

"We will take it up again presently; for, in order that you may
understand now, it is necessary that events should pass in review before
you, and that you should see in action all these actors ticketed here,
each one summed up in a brief note. I will call for the envelopes, you
will hand them to me one by one, and I will show you the papers in each,
and tell you their contents, before putting it away again up there on
the shelf. I will not follow the alphabetical order, but the order of
events themselves. I have long wished to make this classification. Come,
look for the names on the envelopes; Aunt Dide first."

At this moment the edge of the storm which lighted up the sky caught La
Souleiade slantingly, and burst over the house in a deluge of rain.
But they did not even close the window. They heard neither the peals of
thunder nor the ceaseless beating of the rain upon the roof. She handed
him the envelope bearing the name of Aunt Dide in large characters; and
he took from it papers of all sorts, notes taken by him long ago, which
he proceeded to read.

"Hand me Pierre Rougon. Hand me Ursule Macquart. Hand me Antoine
Macquart."

Silently she obeyed him, her heart oppressed by a dreadful anguish at
all she was hearing. And the envelopes were passed on, displayed their
contents, and were piled up again in the press.

First was the foundress of the family, Adelaide Fouque, the tall, crazy
girl, the first nervous lesion giving rise to the legitimate branch,
Pierre Rougon, and to the two illegitimate branches, Ursule and Antoine
Macquart, all that _bourgeois_ and sanguinary tragedy, with the _coup
d'etat_ of December, 1854, for a background, the Rougons, Pierre and
Felicite, preserving order at Plassans, bespattering with the blood of
Silvere their rising fortunes, while Adelaide, grown old, the miserable
Aunt Dide, was shut up in the Tulettes, like a specter of expiation and
of waiting.

Then like a pack of hounds, the appetites were let loose. The supreme
appetite of power in Eugene Rougon, the great man, the disdainful genius
of the family, free from base interests, loving power for its own sake,
conquering Paris in old boots with the adventurers of the coming
Empire, rising from the legislative body to the senate, passing