devoted themselves to the study of law, and the third passed through
the School of Medicine. Then, when they were men, and had exhausted the
resources of the Rougon family and were obliged to return and establish
themselves in the provinces, their parents' disenchantment began. They
idled about and grew fat. And Felicite again felt all the bitterness of
her ill-luck. Her sons were failing her. They had ruined her, and did
not return any interest on the capital which they represented. This
last blow of fate was the heaviest, as it fell on her ambition and her
maternal vanity alike. Rougon repeated to her from morning till night,
"I told you so!" which only exasperated her the more.

One day, as she was bitterly reproaching her eldest son with the large
amount of money expended on his education, he said to her with equal
bitterness, "I will repay you later on if I can. But as you had no
means, you should have brought us up to a trade. We are out of our
element, we are suffering more than you."

Felicite understood the wisdom of these words. From that time she ceased
to accuse her children, and turned her anger against fate, which never
wearied of striking her. She started her old complaints afresh, and
bemoaned more and more the want of means which made her strand, as it
were, in port. Whenever Rougon said to her, "Your sons are lazy fellows,
they will eat up all we have," she sourly replied, "Would to God I had
more money to give them; if they do vegetate, poor fellows, it's because
they haven't got a sou to bless themselves with."

At the beginning of the year 1848, on the eve of the Revolution of
February, the three young Rougons held very precarious positions
at Plassans. They presented most curious and profoundly dissimilar
characteristics, though they came of the same stock. They were in