failed, and a considerable rise in prices having set in, they realised
large profits by selling out their stock.

A short time after this haul, Puech & Lacamp retired from the firm,
content with the few sous they had just secured, and ambitious of living
on their incomes.

The young couple now had sole control of the business, and thought
that they had at last laid the foundation of their fortune. "You have
vanquished my ill-luck," Felicite would sometimes say to her husband.

One of the rare weaknesses of her energetic nature was to believe
herself stricken by misfortune. Hitherto, so she asserted, nothing had
been successful with either herself or her father, in spite of all their
efforts. Goaded by her southern superstition, she prepared to struggle
with fate as one struggles with somebody who is endeavouring to strangle
one. Circumstances soon justified her apprehensions in a singular
manner. Ill-luck returned inexorably. Every year some fresh disaster
shook Rougon's business. A bankruptcy resulted in the loss of a few
thousand francs; his estimates of crops proved incorrect, through
the most incredible circumstances; the safest speculations collapsed
miserably. It was a truceless, merciless combat.

"You see I was born under an unlucky star!" Felicite would bitterly
exclaim.

And yet she still struggled furiously, not understanding how it was that
she, who had shown such keen scent in a first speculation, could now
only give her husband the most deplorable advice.