nary at Plassans. La
Conquete de Plassans.

After being ordained to the priesthood he was appointed cure of Les
Artaud, a small village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants
he ministered with small success. From his parents he had inherited
the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the form of
morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever resulted,
and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal
Rougon, his uncle, in the hope of saving his reason, removed him to
Paradou, the neglected demesne of a ruined mansion, where he left him in
the care of Albine, the keeper's niece. Here Serge slowly recovered
his health, though the memory of his past was gone, and his mental
development was that of a boy. In that enchanted garden, lush with
foliage and with the scent of flowers, the drama of life unfolded, and
Serge, loving Albine, and oblivious of his vows unwittingly broke them.
A chance meeting with Brother Archangais, and a glimpse of the
world outside the Paradou, recalled to Serge the recollection of his
priesthood, and, filled with horror, he tore himself from Albine and
returned to his cure of souls. A fierce struggle between love and duty
followed, but in the end the Church conquered, and Albine was left to
die, while Serge threw himself even more feverishly than before into the
observances of his faith. La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret.

Sent later to Saint-Eutrope, at the bottom of a marshy gorge, he was
cloistered there with his sister Desiree. He showed a fine humility,
refusing all preferment from his bishop, waiting for death like a holy
man, averse to remedies, although he was already in the early stage of
phthisis. Le Docteur Pascal.

MOURET (SILVERE), born 1834, son of Mouret, the hatter, and Ursule
Macquart, his wife. After the death of his father, Silvere went to live
with his grandmother Adelaide Fouque. Though poorly educated, he was
fond of reading, and his lonely life with this old half-imbecile woman
increased his own tendency to visionary dreamings. "He was predisposed
to Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences; his grandmother's
nervous disorders became in him a chronic enthusiasm, striving after
everything that was grandiose and impossible." His Uncle Antoine
Macquart, who hoped through him to annoy the Rougons, encouraged him
in his Republican views, and after the _Coup d'Etat_ he joined the
insurrection which then arose. Miette Chan