his strange and sudden
passion, had spread, no one could tell how, by that force of expansion
which sustains curiosity, always on the alert in small towns. The
servant certainly had not spoken, but her air was perhaps sufficient;
words perhaps had dropped from her involuntarily; the lovers might have
been watched over the walls. And then came the buying of the presents,
confirming the reports and exaggerating them. When the doctor, in the
early morning, scoured the streets and visited the jeweler's and the
dressmaker's, eyes spied him from the windows, his smallest purchases
were watched, all the town knew in the evening that he had given her a
silk bonnet, a bracelet set with sapphires. And all this was turned into
a scandal. This uncle in love with his niece, committing a young man's
follies for her, adorning her like a holy Virgin. The most extraordinary
stories began to circulate, and people pointed to La Souleiade as they
passed by.

But old Mme. Rougon was, of all persons, the most bitterly indignant.
She had ceased going to her son's house when she learned that Clotilde's
marriage with Dr. Ramond had been broken off. They had made sport of
her. They did nothing to please her, and she wished to show how deep her
displeasure was. Then a full month after the rupture, during which she
had understood nothing of the pitying looks, the discreet condolences,
the vague smiles which met her everywhere, she learned everything with a
suddenness that stunned her. She, who, at the time of Pascal's illness,
in her mortification at the idea of again becoming the talk of the town
through that ugly story, had raised such a storm! It was far worse
this time; the height of scandal, a love affair for people to regale
themselves with. The Rougon legend was again in peril; her unhappy son
was decidedly doing his best to find some way to destroy the family
glory won with so much difficulty. So that in her anger she, who had
made herself the guardian of this glory, resolving to purify the legend
by every means in her power, put on her hat one morning and hurried to
La Souleiade with the youthful vivacity of her eighty years.

Pascal, whom the rupture with his mother enchanted, was fortunately
not at home, having gone out an hour before to look for a silver buckle
which he had thought of for a belt. And Felicite fell upon Clotilde
as the latter was finishing her toilet, her arms bare, her hair loose,
looking as fresh and smiling as a ros