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Updated: July 1, 2025
The Rougon Macquart Family is less a novel or series of novels than it is a dissertation on the Second Empire from a hostile point of view. As a gallery of historical pictures, painted by an able and contemporaneous hand, it is a work of considerable value, but this value is in spite of, not on account of, the story.
Rougon, always on the alert, found her behind a pillar, an hour after she had seen her there before, Martine excused herself, blushing like a servant who had been caught idling, saying: "I was praying for monsieur." Meanwhile Pascal and Clotilde enlarged still more their domain, taking longer and longer walks every day, extending them now outside the town into the open country.
Rougon and Aristide consequently had an enthusiastic reception; on their arrival all hands were held out to them. Some of the guests went so far as to embrace them. Angele sat on the sofa, by the side of her mother-in-law, feeling very happy, and gazing at the table with the astonishment of a gourmand who has never seen so many dishes at once.
"Roudier was certainly dreaming," exclaimed Rougon, rather disdainfully. But the marquis, whose ears were quick, had begun to listen. "Ah!" he observed in his clear voice, "I hear the tocsin." At this they all leant over the parapet, holding their breath. And light and pure as crystal the distant tolling of a bell rose from the plain. The gentlemen could not deny it. It was indeed the tocsin.
And she took the dibble again and planted a leek, in her rage for work; while old Mme. Rougon went away, somewhat tranquillized; certain, she said, that the marriage would take place. Pascal, in effect, seemed to accept Clotilde's marriage as a thing settled, inevitable.
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.
All the Republicans who had not yet left the town were soon assembled on the Cours Sauvaire. It was this band that Rougon had perceived as he was hastening to conceal himself in his mother's house.
"That's just what I was afraid of," the doctor said; "she is mad. The blow has been too heavy for a poor creature already subject, as she is, to acute neurosis. She will die in a lunatic asylum like her father." "But what could she have seen?" asked Rougon, at last venturing to quit the corner where he had hidden himself. "I have a terrible suspicion," Pascal replied.
La Conquete de Plassans spoke of life in the south of France. La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret treated of the results of celibacy. Son Excellence Eugene Rougon dealt with official life. L'Assommoir was a tract against the vice of drunkenness. Some think this the strongest of the naturalist series. Its success was prodigious. In this the marvellous talent of Zola for minute description is evinced.
These gentlemen, astounded by the dramatic encounter between the two brothers, and, foreseeing some stormy passages, had retired to a corner of the room. Rougon, however, formed a heroic resolution. He advanced towards the group, and in a very proud tone exclaimed: "We will keep this man here. When he has reflected on his position he will be able to give us some useful information."
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