ir thirty years' struggle, and the
defection of their children--when they saw their airy castles end in
this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness they could only conceal by
drawing the curtains, they were overcome with bitter rage. Then, as a
consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune,
seeking all sorts of devices. Felicite would fancy herself the winner
of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while
Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation. They
lived with one sole thought--that of making a fortune immediately, in a
few hours--of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year.
Their whole beings tended to this, stubbornly, without a pause. And they
still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with that
peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they have sent
their children to college without deriving some personal advantage from
it.

Felicite did not appear to have aged; she was still the same dark little
woman, ever on the move, buzzing about like a grasshopper. Any person
walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a girl of
fifteen, from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her
shoulders and waist. Even her face had scarcely undergone any change; it
was simply rather more sunken, rather more suggestive of the snout of a
pole-cat.

As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly
respectable looking citizen, who only lacked a decent income to make him
a very dignified individual. His pale, flabby face, his heaviness,
his languid manner, seemed redolent of wealth. He had one day heard a
peasant who did not know him say: "Ah! he's some rich fellow, that fat
old gentleman there. He's no cause to worry about his dinner!" This
was a remark which stung him to the heart, for he considered it cruel
mockery to be only a poor devil while possessing the bulk and contented
gravity of a millionaire. When he shaved on Sundays in front of a small
five-sou looking-glass hanging from the fastening of a window, he would
often think that in a dress coat and white tie he would cut a far better
figure at the Sub-Prefect's than such or such a functionary of Plassans.
This peasant's son, who had grown sallow from business worries, and
corpulent from a sedentary life, whose hateful passions were hidden
beneath naturally placid features, really had that air of solemn
imbecility wh