In Ursule, on the other hand, physical and moral resemblance to the
mother predominated. There was a mixture of certain characteristics in
her also; but born the last, at a time when Adelaide's love was warmer
than Macquart's, the poor little thing seemed to have received with her
sex a deeper impress of her mother's temperament. Moreover, hers was not
a fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxtaposition, a remarkably
close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the
shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would
often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like
a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had
a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal,
similar to those of kittens doomed to die of consumption.

In presence of those two illegitimate children Pierre seemed a stranger;
to one who had not penetrated to the roots of his being he would have
appeared profoundly dissimilar. Never did child's nature show a more
equal balance of the characteristics of its parents. He was the exact
mean between the peasant Rougon and the nervous Adelaide. Paternal
grossness was attenuated by the maternal influence. One found in him the
first phase of that evolution of temperaments which ultimately brings
about the amelioration or deterioration of a race. Although he was still
a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face less heavy, his intellect
more capacious and more supple. In him the defects of his father and his
mother had advantageously reacted upon each other. If Adelaide's nature,
rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated
and lessened Rougon's full-bodied ponderosity, the latter had
successfully prevented the young woman's tendency to cerebral disorder
from being implanted in the child. Pierre knew neither the passions nor
the sickly ravings of Macquart's young whelps. Very badly brought up,