wealthy mistress so completely upset the gossips, that they even spoke
gently of Adelaide. "Poor thing! She's gone quite mad," they would say.
"If she had any relatives she would have been placed in confinement long
ago." And as they never knew anything of the history of those strange
amours, they accused that rogue Macquart of having taken advantage of
Adelaide's weak mind to rob her of her money.

The legitimate son, little Pierre Rougon, grew up with his mother's
other offspring. The latter, Antoine and Ursule, the young wolves as
they were called in the district, were kept at home by Adelaide, who
treated them as affectionately as her first child. She did not appear to
entertain a very clear idea of the position in life reserved for these
two poor creatures. To her they were the same in every respect as her
first-born. She would sometimes go out holding Pierre with one hand and
Antoine with the other, never noticing how differently the two little
fellows were already regarded.

It was a strange home. For nearly twenty years everyone lived there
after his or her fancy, the children like the mother. Everything went
on free from control. In growing to womanhood, Adelaide had retained the
strangeness which had been taken for shyness when she was fifteen. It
was not that she was insane, as the people of the Faubourg asserted,
but there was a lack of equilibrium between her nerves and her blood,
a disorder of the brain and heart which made her lead a life out of
the ordinary, different from that of the rest of the world. She was
certainly very natural, very consistent with herself; but in the eyes of
the neighbours her consistency became pure insanity. She seemed
desirous of making herself conspicuous, it was thought she was wickedly
determined to turn things at home from bad to worse, whereas with great
naivete she simply acted according to the impulses of her nature.