elt 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 Felicite
fortunately sent to college, paying his fees clandestinely. That made
one mouth less at home; but poor Angele 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. Felicite, 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 Eugene 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 Eugene 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 lif