The Fortune of the Rougons

When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.

When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

For a moment he [Doctor Pascal] thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.

They again kissed each other and fell asleep. The patch of light on the ceiling now seemed to be assuming the shape of a terrified eye, that stared wildly and fixedly upon the pale, slumbering couple who reeked with crime beneath their very sheets, and dreamt they could see a rain of blood falling in big drops, which turned into golden coins as they plashed upon the floor.

A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families." --Monsieur de Carnavant

Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassan sleeps while Paris fights.

The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, frustrated by their bad luck, and ready to use any means necessary to advance their cause. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to plunder and steal.

Prends garde, mon garçon, on en meurt.

Pascal fixed a penetrating look on the madwoman, and then on his father and uncle. His professional instinct was getting the better of him, and he studied the mother and the sons, with all the keenness of a naturalist observing the metamorphosis of some insect. He pondered over the growth of that family to which he belonged, over the different branches growing from one parent stock, whose sap carried identical germs to the farthest twigs, which bent in divers ways according to the sunshine or shade in which they lived. And for a moment, as by the glow of a lightning flash, he thought he could espy the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of unbridled, insatiate appetites amidst a blaze of gold and blood.

From then on, the pavement of Plassans burned his feet. He was seen prowling on the promenades like a soul in pain. Then he decided suddenly, he left for Paris.