ld into the future, into the
unknown, like a human beast foaming with the hereditary virus, who must
communicate his malady with every bite he gives. Sidonie Rougon, who
had for a time disappeared, weary of disreputable affairs, had lately
retired to a sort of religious house, where she was living in monastic
austerity, the treasurer of the Marriage Fund, for aiding in the
marriage of girls who were mothers. Octave Mouret, proprietor of the
great establishment _Au Bonheur des Dames_, whose colossal fortune still
continued increasing, had had, toward the end of the winter, a third
child by his wife Denise Baudu, whom he adored, although his mind was
beginning to be deranged again. The Abbe Mouret, cure at St. Eutrope, in
the heart of a marshy gorge, lived there in great retirement, and very
modestly, with his sister Desiree, refusing all advancement from his
bishop, and waiting for death like a holy man, rejecting all medicines,
although he was already suffering from consumption in its first stage.
Helene Mouret was living very happily in seclusion with her second
husband, M. Rambaud, on the little estate which they owned near
Marseilles, on the seashore; she had had no child by her second husband.
Pauline Quenu was still at Bonneville at the other extremity of France,
in face of the vast ocean, alone with little Paul, since the death
of Uncle Chanteau, having resolved never to marry, in order to devote
herself entirely to the son of her cousin Lazare, who had become a
widower and had gone to America to make a fortune. Etienne Lantier,
returning to Paris after the strike at Montsou, had compromised himself
later in the insurrection of the Commune, whose principles he had
defended with ardor; he had been condemned to death, but his sentence
being commuted was transported and was now at Noumea. It was even said
that he had married immediately on his arrival there, and that he had
had a child, the sex of which, however, was not known with certainty.
Finally, Jean Macquart, who had received his discharge after the Bloody
Week, had settled at Valqueyras, near Plassans, where he had had the
good fortune to marry a healthy girl, Melanie Vial, the daughter of a
well-to-do peasant, whose lands he farmed, and his wife had borne him a
son in May.

"Yes, it is true," he resumed, in a low voice; "races degenerate. There
is here a veritable exhaustion, rapid deterioration, as if our family,
in their fury of enjoyment, in the gluttonou