his disquieting beauty lay the shadow of death. And he had neither
brain nor heart--he was nothing but a vicious little dog, who rubbed
himself against people to be fondled. His great-grandmother Felicite,
won by this beauty, in which she affected to recognize her blood, had
at first put him in a boarding school, taking charge of him, but he
had been expelled from it at the end of six months for misconduct.
Three times she had changed his boarding school, and each time he had
been expelled in disgrace. Then, as he neither would nor could learn
anything, and as his health was declining rapidly, they kept him at
home, sending him from one to another of the family. Dr. Pascal, moved
to pity, had tried to cure him, and had abandoned the hopeless task
only after he had kept him with him for nearly a year, fearing the
companionship for Clotilde. And now, when Charles was not at his
mother's, where he scarcely ever lived at present, he was to be found
at the house of Felicite, or that of some other relative, prettily
dressed, laden with toys, living like the effeminate little dauphin of
an ancient and fallen race.

Old Mme. Rougon, however, suffered because of this bastard, and she
had planned to get him away from the gossiping tongues of Plassans, by
persuading Maxime to take him and keep him with him in Paris. It would
still be an ugly story of the fallen family. But Maxime had for a long
time turned a deaf ear to her solicitations, in the fear which
continually haunted him of spoiling his life. After the war, enriched
by the death of his wife, he had come back to live prudently on his
fortune in his mansion on the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne,
tormented by the hereditary malady of which he was to die young,
having gained from his precocious debauchery a salutary fear of
pleasure, resolved above all to shun emotions and responsibilities, so
that he might last as long as possible. Acute pains in the limbs,