d a
noise; it was Martine bringing up the lamp. Toward eleven Felicite, who
was sitting watching in an armchair, seemed to grow restless, got up and
went out of the room, and came back again. From this forth there was a
continual coming and going as of impatient footsteps prowling around
the young woman, who was still awake, her large eyes fixed motionless on
Pascal. Twelve o'clock struck, and one persistent thought alone pierced
her weary brain, like a nail, and prevented sleep--why had she obeyed
him? If she had remained she would have revived him with her youth, and
he would not have died. And it was not until a little before one
that she felt this thought, too, grow confused and lose itself in a
nightmare. And she fell into a heavy sleep, worn out with grief and
fatigue.

When Martine had announced to Mme. Rougon the unexpected death of her
son Pascal, in the shock which she received there was as much of anger
as of grief. What! her dying son had not wished to see her; he had made
this servant swear not to inform her of his illness! This thought sent
the blood coursing swiftly through her veins, as if the struggle between
them, which had lasted during his whole life, was to be continued beyond
the grave. Then, when after hastily dressing herself she had hurried
to La Souleiade, the thought of the terrible envelopes, of all the
manuscripts piled up in the press, had filled her with trembling rage.
Now that Uncle Macquart and Aunt Dide were dead, she no longer feared
what she called the abomination of the Tulettes; and even poor little
Charles, in dying, had carried with him one of the most humiliating
of the blots on the family. There remained only the envelopes, the
abominable envelopes, to menace the glorious Rougon legend which she had
spent her whole life in creating, which was the sole thought of her old
age, the work to the triumph of which she had persistently devoted
the last efforts of her wily and active brain. For long years she had
watched these envelopes, never wearying, beginning the struggle over
again, when he had thought her beaten, always alert and persistent. Ah!
if she could only succeed in obtaining possession of them and destroying
them! It would be the execrable past destroyed, effaced; it would be the
glory of her family, so hardly won, at last freed from all fear, at last
shining untarnished, imposing its lie upon history. And she saw herself
traversing the three quarters of Plassans, saluted