it is as if
they were a thousand leagues away from each other, for they scrupulously
follow those two parallel lines, as though they must not come in contact
here below. Even during the revolutionary periods each party kept to
its own side. This regulation walk on Sunday and the locking of the town
gates in the evening are analogous instances which suffice to indicate
the character of the ten thousand people inhabiting the town.

Here, amidst these surroundings, until the year 1848, there vegetated
an obscure family that enjoyed little esteem, but whose head, Pierre
Rougon, subsequently played an important part in life owing to certain
circumstances.

Pierre Rougon was the son of a peasant. His mother's family, the
Fouques, owned, towards the end of the last century, a large plot of
ground in the Faubourg, behind the old cemetery of Saint-Mittre; this
ground was subsequently joined to the Jas-Meiffren. The Fouques were the
richest market-gardeners in that part of the country; they supplied an
entire district of Plassans with vegetables. However, their name
died out a few years before the Revolution. Only one girl, Adelaide,
remained; born in 1768, she had become an orphan at the age of eighteen.
This girl, whose father had died insane, was a long, lank, pale
creature, with a scared look and strange ways which one might have taken
for shyness so long as she was a little girl. As she grew up,
however, she became still stranger; she did certain things which were
inexplicable even to the cleverest folk of the Faubourg, and from that
time it was rumoured that she was cracked like her father.

She had scarcely been an orphan six months, in possession of a fortune
which rendered her an eagerly sought heiress, when it transpired that
she had married a young gardener named Rougon, a rough-hewn peasant from
the Basses-Alpes. This Rougon, after the death of the last of the male
Fouques, who had engaged him for a term, had remained in the service
of the deceased's daughter. From the situation of salaried servant he
ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband. This marriage was
a first shock to public opinion. No one could comprehend why Adelaide
preferred this poor fellow, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarce able to speak
French, to those other young men, sons of well-to-do farmers, who had
been seen hovering round her for some time. And, as provincial people do
not allow anything to remain unexplained, they made sure there w