collapse. He returned to work, and in the terrible
catastrophe brought about by Souvarine he was cut off at the bottom of
the pit with Chaval and Catherine Maheu. He had always loved Catherine,
and notwithstanding their peril, an old jealousy revived, and in a
struggle with Chaval, Etienne killed him. Days elapsed before rescue
came, and by that time Catherine was dead. After six weeks in hospital,
Etienne left for Paris. Germinal.

At Paris, later on, he took part in the Communist rising, and was
condemned to death. He was respited, and transported to Noumea, where he
married, and became father of a little girl. Le Docteur Pascal.

LANTIER (JACQUES), the second son of Gervaise Macquart and Auguste
Lantier, was born at Plassans in 1844. He was six years old when his
parents went to Paris with his brothers, Claude and Etienne, leaving him
with his godmother, Aunt Phasie, who sent him to the School of Arts
and Crafts. After two years passed on the Orleans Railway, he became an
engineer of the first-class on the Western Railway. At twenty-six he
was a tall, handsome man, with dark hair and a clear complexion. From
childhood he had suffered from a complaint which the doctors did not
understand, a pain in the head, behind the ears, accompanied by fever
and an intense melancholy, which tempted him to hide like a suffering
animal. When about sixteen years of age he became affected by a curious
form of insanity, the desire to murder any woman of whom he became fond.
"On each occasion it seemed like a sudden outburst of blind rage, an
ever-recurring thirst to avenge some very ancient offence, the exact
recollection of which escaped him. Did it date from so far back, from
the harm women had done to his race, from the rancour laid up from male
to male since the first deceptions in the depths of the caverns?" Even
with his cousin Flore, who loved him from childhood, the same terrible
instinct arose, and could only be stilled by flight.

By chance, Jacques was a momentary witness of the murder of President
Grandmorin, and when suspicion fell upon the Roubauds he came to be
of opinion that it was well-founded, a belief which was confirmed by a
subsequent confession to him by Severine. This avowal by Severine placed
her in his mind in a different category from all other woman; she had
killed, and was a person sacred and apart, a woman he could love without
his lust for blood being evoked. At the request of Severine, Jacques
promised