Fifteen years before, when he was seventeen, Maxime had had a child by
a servant whom he had seduced. His father Saccard, and his stepmother
Renee--the latter vexed more especially at his unworthy choice--had
acted in the matter with indulgence. The servant, Justine Megot,
belonged to one of the neighboring villages, and was a fair-haired
girl, also seventeen, gentle and docile; and they had sent her back to
Plassans, with an allowance of twelve hundred francs a year, to bring
up little Charles. Three years later she had married there a
harness-maker of the faubourg, Frederic Thomas by name, a good workman
and a sensible fellow, who was tempted by the allowance. For the rest
her conduct was now most exemplary, she had grown fat, and she
appeared to be cured of a cough that had threatened a hereditary
malady due to the alcoholic propensities of a long line of
progenitors. And two other children born of her marriage, a boy who
was now ten and a girl who was seven, both plump and rosy, enjoyed
perfect health; so that she would have been the most respected and the
happiest of women, if it had not been for the trouble which Charles
caused in the household. Thomas, notwithstanding the allowance,
execrated this son of another man and gave him no peace, which made
the mother suffer in secret, being an uncomplaining and submissive
wife. So that, although she adored him, she would willingly have given
him up to his father's family.

Charles, at fifteen, seemed scarcely twelve, and he had the infantine
intelligence of a child of five, resembling in an extraordinary degree
his great-great-grandmother, Aunt Dide, the madwoman at the Tulettes.
He had the slender and delicate grace of one of those bloodless little
kings with whom a race ends, crowned with their long, fair locks,
light as spun silk. His large, clear eyes were expressionless, and on