Chapter IV

The exquisite longing Renée had felt amid the disturbing perfumes of the hothouse, while Maxime and Louise sat laughing on a sofa in the little buttercup drawing room, seemed to vanish like a nightmare that leaves behind it nothing but a vague shudder. Throughout...

CHAPTER II

ARistide Rougon swooped down on Paris the day after 2 December,* like a bird of prey scenting the field of battle from afar. He came from Plassans,* a sub-prefecture in the south of France, where his father, in the...

Chapter I

On the drive home, the barouche* was reduced to a crawl by the long line of carriages returning by the side of the lake.* At one point they had to pull up completely. The sun was setting in a grey October sky,*...

Chapter III

Maxime remained at school in Plassans until the holidays of 1854. He was a few months over thirteen and had just finished the second form. It was then that his father decided to let him come to Paris. Saccard felt that a son of...

Chapter VI

There was a costume ball at the Saccards’ on Thursday in mid-Lent. The great event of the evening was the drama, The Loves of Narcissus and Echo,* in three tableaux, which was to be performed by the ladies. The author...

Chapter V

Saccard was haunted by the kiss he had planted on his wife’s neck. He had long ceased to avail himself of his marital rights; this had happened naturally, neither of them caring about a connection that inconvenienced them. Saccard would never think of returning...

Chapter VII

Three months later, on one of those dismal spring mornings, which in Paris recall the greyness and damp of winter, Aristide Saccard got out of a cab in the Place du Château d’Eau* and turned with four other gentlemen into the large...