l alive, transported to Noumea, there married, with children,
it is said, who cannot, however, be classified.

28. ANNA COUPEAU, alias NANA, born in 1852, gives birth to a child,
Louis, in 1867, loses him in 1870, dies herself of small-pox a few days
later. A blending of characteristics. Moral prepotency of her father.
Physical resemblance to her mother's first lover, Lantier. Heredity of
alcoholism developing into mental and physical perversion. An example of
vice.

Fifth Generation:

29. CHARLES ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1857, dies of hemorrhage in
1873. Reverting heredity skipping three generations. Physical and moral
resemblance to Adelaide Fouque. The last outcome of an exhausted stock.

30. JACQUES LOUIS LANTIER, born in 1860, a case of hydrocephalus, dies
in 1869. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles.

31. LOUIS COUPEAU, called LOUISET, born in 1867, dies of small-pox in
1870. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles.

32. THE UNKNOWN CHILD will be born in 1874. What will it be?

SYNOPSES OF THE PLOTS OF THE ROUGON-MACQUART NOVELS

La Fortune des Rougon.

In the preface to this novel Zola explains his theories of heredity,
and the work itself forms the introductory chapter to that great series
which deals with the life history of a family and its descendants during
the second empire.

The common ancestress of the Rougons and the Macquarts was Adelaide
Fouque, a girl who from youth had been subject to nervous seizures.
From her father she inherited a small farm, and at the age of eighteen
married one of her own labourers, a man named Rougon, who died fifteen
months afterwards, leaving her with one son, named Pierre. Shortly after
her husband's death she fell completely under the influence of Macquart,
a drunken smuggler and poacher, by whom in course of time she had a
son named Antoine and a daughter named Ursule. She became more and more
subject to cataleptic attacks, until eventually her mind was completely
unhinged. Pierre Rougon, her legitimate son, was a man of strong will
inherited from his father, and he early saw that his mother's property
was being squandered by the Macquarts. By means approximating to fraud
he induced his mother, who was then facile, to sell her property and
hand over the proceeds to him. Soon after he married Felicite Peuch, a
woman of great shrewdness and keen intelligence, by whom he had three
sons (Eugene, Aristide, and Pascal