e had found himself led to take his own family as an example, struck by
the typical cases which he saw in it, and which helped to support laws
discovered by him. Was it not a perfectly natural field of observation,
close at hand and with which he was thoroughly familiar? And with the
fine, careless justness of the scientist, he had been accumulating for
the last thirty years the most private data, collecting and classifying
everything, raising this genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquarts,
of which the voluminous papers, crammed full of proofs, were only the
commentary.

"Ah, yes," continued Mme. Rougon hotly, "to the fire, to the fire with
all those papers that would tarnish our name!"

And as the servant rose to leave the room, seeing the turn the
conversation was taking, she stopped her by a quick gesture.

"No, no, Martine; stay! You are not in the way, since you are now one of
the family."

Then, in a hissing voice:

"A collection of falsehoods, of gossip, all the lies that our enemies,
enraged by our triumph, hurled against us in former days! Think a little
of that, my child. Against all of us, against your father, against your
mother, against your brother, all those horrors!"

"But how do you know they are horrors, grandmother?"

She was disconcerted for a moment.

"Oh, well; I suspect it! Where is the family that has not had
misfortunes which might be injuriously interpreted? Thus, the mother of
us all, that dear and venerable Aunt Dide, your great-grandmother,
has she not been for the past twenty-one years in the madhouse at the
Tulettes? If God has granted her the grace of allowing her to live to
the age of one hundred and four years, he has also cruelly afflicted her
in depriving her of her reason. Certainly, there is no shame in that;
only, what exasperates me--what must not be--is that they should say
afterward that we are all mad. And, then, regarding your grand-uncle
Macquart, too, deplorable rumors have been spread. Macquart had his
faults in past days, I do not seek to defend him. But to-day, is he not
living very reputably on his little property at the Tulettes, two steps
away from our unhappy mother, over whom he watches like a good son? And
listen! one last example. Your brother, Maxime, committed a great fault
when he had by a servant that poor little Charles, and it is certain,
besides, that the unhappy child is of unsound mind. No matter. Will
it please you if they tell you that your nep