selfish lad, hurriedly matured, as regards his instincts, by the strange
improvident life which he could no longer bear to see around him without
a feeling of anguish. Those vegetables, from the sale of which the
market-gardener derived the largest profits, really belonged to him;
the wine which his mother's offspring drank, the bread they ate, also
belonged to him. The whole house, the entire fortune, was his by right;
according to his boorish logic, he alone, the legitimate son, was
the heir. And as his riches were in danger, as everybody was greedily
gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means of turning them all
out--mother, brother, sister, servants--and of succeeding immediately to
his inheritance.

The conflict was a cruel one; the lad knew that he must first strike his
mother. Step by step, with patient tenacity, he executed a plan whose
every detail he had long previously thought out. His tactics were to
appear before Adelaide like a living reproach--not that he flew into
a passion, or upbraided her for her misconduct; but he had acquired a
certain manner of looking at her, without saying a word, which terrified
her. Whenever she returned from a short sojourn in Macquart's hovel she
could not turn her eyes on her son without a shudder. She felt his cold
glances, as sharp as steel blades pierce her deeply and pitilessly. The
severe, taciturn demeanour of the child of the man whom she had so soon
forgotten strangely troubled her poor disordered brain. She would fancy
at times that Rougon had risen from the dead to punish her for her
dissoluteness. Every week she fell into one of those nervous fits which
were shattering her constitution. She was left to struggle until she
recovered consciousness, after which she would creep about more feebly
than ever. She would also often sob the whole night long, holding her
head in her hands, and accepting the wounds that Pierre dealt her with
resignation, as if they had been the strokes of an avenging deity. At