me to render an account. I will tell them the old woman has squandered
everything. They will never dare to go to law with me about it." A week
afterwards, the party-wall no longer existed: a plough had turned up
the vegetable beds; the Fouques' enclosure, in accordance with young
Rougon's wish, was about to become a thing of the past. A few months
later, the owner of the Jas-Meiffren even had the old market-gardener's
house, which was falling to pieces, pulled down.

When Pierre had secured the fifty thousand francs he married Felicite
Puech with as little delay as possible. Felicite was a short, dark
woman, such as one often meets in Provence. She looked like one of
those brown, lean, noisy grasshoppers, which in their sudden leaps often
strike their heads against the almond-trees. Thin, flat-breasted, with
pointed shoulders and a face like that of a pole-cat, her features
singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age;
she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only
nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline
slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet
holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with
delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin,
parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the countenance
of an artful dwarf, a living mask of intrigue, an active, envious
ambition. With all her ugliness, however, Felicite possessed a sort of
gracefulness which rendered her seductive. People said of her that she
could be pretty or ugly as she pleased. It would depend on the fashion
in which she tied her magnificent hair; but it depended still more on
the triumphant smile which illumined her golden complexion when she
thought she had got the better of somebody. Born under an evil star,
and believing herself ill-used by fortune, she was generally content
to appear an ugly creature. She did not, however, intend to abandon the