the faintest breeze brought a pungent perfume.

Then abruptly, after a last turn they descended to the valley of the
Tulettes, which was refreshed by springs. In the distance stretched
meadows dotted by large trees. The village was seated midway on the
slope, among olive trees, and the country house of Uncle Macquart
stood a little apart on the left, full in view. The landau turned into
the road which led to the insane asylum, whose white walls they could
see before them in the distance.

Felicite's silence had grown somber, for she was not fond of
exhibiting Uncle Macquart. Another whom the family would be well rid
of the day when he should take his departure. For the credit of every
one he ought to have been sleeping long ago under the sod. But he
persisted in living, he carried his eighty-three years well, like an
old drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol seemed to
preserve. At Plassans he had left a terrible reputation as a
do-nothing and a scoundrel, and the old men whispered the execrable
story of the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, an act of
treachery in the troublous days of December, 1851, an ambuscade in
which he had left comrades with their bellies ripped open, lying on
the bloody pavement. Later, when he had returned to France, he had
preferred to the good place of which he had obtained the promise this
little domain of the Tulettes, which Felicite had bought for him. And
he had lived comfortably here ever since; he had no longer any other
ambition than that of enlarging it, looking out once more for the good
chances, and he had even found the means of obtaining a field which he
had long coveted, by making himself useful to his sister-in-law at the
time when the latter again reconquered Plassans from the legitimists--
another frightful story that was whispered also, of a madman secretly