nts which ultimately brings
about the amelioration or deterioration of a race. Although he was still
a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face less heavy, his intellect
more capacious and more supple. In him the defects of his father and his
mother had advantageously reacted upon each other. If Adelaide's nature,
rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated
and lessened Rougon's full-bodied ponderosity, the latter had
successfully prevented the young woman's tendency to cerebral disorder
from being implanted in the child. Pierre knew neither the passions nor
the sickly ravings of Macquart's young whelps. Very badly brought up,
unruly and noisy, like all children who are not restrained during their
infancy, he nevertheless possessed at bottom such sense and intelligence
as would always preserve him from perpetrating any unproductive folly.
His vices, his laziness, his appetite for indulgence, lacked the
instinctiveness which characterised Antoine's; he meant to cultivate
and gratify them honourably and openly. In his plump person of medium
height, in his long pale face, in which the features derived from his
father had acquired some of the maternal refinement, one could already
detect signs of sly and crafty ambition and insatiable desire, with
the hardness of heart and envious hatred of a peasant's son whom his
mother's means and nervous temperament had turned into a member of the
middle classes.

When, at the age of seventeen, Pierre observed and was able to
understand Adelaide's disorders and the singular position of Antoine and
Ursule, he seemed neither sorry nor indignant, but simply worried as to
the course which would best serve his own interests. He was the only
one of the three children who had pursued his studies with any industry.
When a peasant begins to feel the need of instruction he most frequently
becomes a fierce calculator. At school Pierre's playmates roused his
first suspicions by the manner in which they treated and hooted his
brother. Later on he came to understand the significance of many looks
and words. And at last he clearly saw that the house was being pillaged.
From that time forward he regarded Antoine and Ursule as shameless
parasites, mouths that were devouring his own substance. Like the people
of the Faubourg, he thought that his mother was a fit subject for a
lunatic asylum, and feared she would end by squandering all her money,
if he did not take steps to pr