r our family spring from
the people, they spread themselves through the whole of contemporary
society, invaded every place, impelled by their unbridled appetites, by
that impulse, essentially modern, that eager desire that urges the lower
classes to enjoyment, in their ascent through the social strata. We
started, as I have said, from Plassans, and here we are now arrived once
more at Plassans."

He paused again, and then resumed in a low, dreamy voice:

"What an appalling mass stirred up! how many passions, how many joys,
how many sufferings crammed into this colossal heap of facts! There is
pure history: the Empire founded in blood, at first pleasure-loving
and despotic, conquering rebellious cities, then gliding to a slow
disintegration, dissolving in blood--in such a sea of blood that the
entire nation came near being swamped in it. There are social studies:
wholesale and retail trade, prostitution, crime, land, money, the
_bourgeoisie_, the people--that people who rot in the sewer of
the faubourgs, who rebel in the great industrial centers, all that
ever-increasing growth of mighty socialism, big with the new century.
There are simple human studies: domestic pages, love stories, the
struggle of minds and hearts against unjust nature, the destruction
of those who cry out under their too difficult task, the cry of virtue
immolating itself, victorious over pain, There are fancies, flights
of the imagination beyond the real: vast gardens always in bloom,
cathedrals with slender, exquisitely wrought spires, marvelous tales
come down from paradise, ideal affections remounting to heaven in a
kiss. There is everything: the good and the bad, the vulgar and the
sublime, flowers, mud, blood, laughter, the torrent of life itself,
bearing humanity endlessly on!"

He took up again the genealogical tree which had remained neglected
on the table, spread it out and began to go over it once more with his
finger, enumerating now the members of the family who were still living:
Eugene Rougon, a fallen majesty, who remained in the Chamber, the
witness, the impassible defender of the old world swept away at the
downfall of the Empire. Aristide Saccard, who, after having changed his
principles, had fallen upon his feet a republican, the editor of a great
journal, on the way to make new millions, while his natural son Victor,
who had never reappeared, was living still in the shade, since he was
not in the galleys, cast forth by the wor