ling her. They had ruined her, and did
not return any interest on the capital which they represented. This
last blow of fate was the heaviest, as it fell on her ambition and her
maternal vanity alike. Rougon repeated to her from morning till night,
"I told you so!" which only exasperated her the more.

One day, as she was bitterly reproaching her eldest son with the large
amount of money expended on his education, he said to her with equal
bitterness, "I will repay you later on if I can. But as you had no
means, you should have brought us up to a trade. We are out of our
element, we are suffering more than you."

Felicite understood the wisdom of these words. From that time she ceased
to accuse her children, and turned her anger against fate, which never
wearied of striking her. She started her old complaints afresh, and
bemoaned more and more the want of means which made her strand, as it
were, in port. Whenever Rougon said to her, "Your sons are lazy fellows,
they will eat up all we have," she sourly replied, "Would to God I had
more money to give them; if they do vegetate, poor fellows, it's because
they haven't got a sou to bless themselves with."

At the beginning of the year 1848, on the eve of the Revolution of
February, the three young Rougons held very precarious positions
at Plassans. They presented most curious and profoundly dissimilar
characteristics, though they came of the same stock. They were in
reality superior to their parents. The race of the Rougons was destined
to become refined through its female side. Adelaide had made Pierre
a man of moderate enterprise, disposed to low ambitions; Felicite
had inspired her sons with a higher intelligence, with a capacity for
greater vices and greater virtues.

At the period now referred to the eldest, Eugene, was nearly forty years
old. He was a man of middle height, slightly bald, and already disposed
to obesity. He had his father's face, a long face with broad features;
beneath his skin one could divine the fat to which were due the flabby
roundness of his features, and his yellowish, waxy complexion. Though
his massive square head still recalled the peasant, his physiognomy was
transfigured, lit up from within as it were, when his drooping eyelids
were raised and his eyes awoke to life. In the son's case, the father's
ponderousness had turned to gravity. This big fellow, Eugene, usually
preserved a heavy somnolent demeanour. At the same time, certain of hi