Macquart

“ When Marthe got back to Macquart, in the small courtyard, she exclaimed feverishly in a weak, broken voice:
'He is mad! he is mad!'
'There's no doubt he's mad,' said her uncle with a snigger. 'Why, what did you expect to find? People are not brought here for nothing. And the place isn't healthy either. ”

“ MACQUART (MADAME JEAN) , second wife of Jean Macquart. See Melanie Vial. Le Docteur Pascal.
MACQUART (LISA) , born 1827, daughter of Antoine Macquart. When a child of seven she was taken as maid-servant by the wife of the postmaster at Plassans, whom she accompanied to Paris on her removal there in 1839. La Fortune des Rougon.
The old lady became very much attached to the girl, and when she died left her all her savings, amounting to ten thousand francs. Gradelle, a pork-butcher, who had become acquainted with Lisa by seeing her in the shop with her mistress, offered her a situation. ”

“ As Macquart crossed the Place of the Sub-Prefecture he swore to himself that he would never set to work in this blind way again.
As he went up to the room where Marthe lay dying he found Rose sitting on one of the stairs. She was in a fuming rage.
'No, indeed, I will certainly not stop in the room!' she cried. 'I won't look on and see such things. Let her die without me; let her die like a dog! I no longer have any love for her; I have no love for anyone. To send for the poor little fellow to kill him! ”

“ She knew Macquart, and she guessed that there must be some rascality in it all from the expression of delight which she could detect in his eyes.
'You are a strange person,' said he, pretending to get vexed in order to bring Madame Rougon's scrutiny to an end; 'you are always imagining something extraordinary. I can only tell you what I know. I love Marthe more than you do, and I have never done anything that wasn't for her good. ”

“ When the band had reached the top of the Rue de la Banne, Macquart, who had stationed himself at the rear, detained four of his companions, big fellows who were not over-burdened with brains and whom he swayed by his tavern bluster. He easily persuaded them that the enemies of the Republic must be arrested immediately if they wished to prevent the greatest calamities. The truth was that he feared Pierre might escape him in the midst of the confusion which the entry of the insurgents would produce. ”

“ Macquart, while exerting himself to set Silvère against the Rougons, experienced the keenest pleasure on drawing tears of anguish from the young man’s eyes. He detested him, perhaps, more than he did the others, and this because he was an excellent workman and never drank. He brought all his instincts of refined cruelty into play, in order to invent atrocious falsehoods which should sting the poor lad to the heart ”

“ Since the death of his father, a journeyman tanner who had left him as sole heritage the hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre, he had never been known to have either relatives or friends. The proximity of the frontiers and the neighbouring forests of the Seille had turned this singular, lazy fellow into a combination of smuggler and poacher, one of those suspicious-looking characters of whom passers-by observe: “I shouldn’t care to meet that man at midnight in a dark wood.” Tall, with a formidable beard and lean face, Macquart was the terror of the good women of the Faubourg of Plassans ”

“ Uncle Macquart was all there, with his blue cloth suit, and his fur cap, which he wore from one year’s end to the other. Doubtless, as soon as he had begun to burn like a bonfire he had fallen forward, which would account for the chair being only blackened; and nothing of him was left, not a bone, not a tooth, not a nail, nothing but this little heap of gray dust which the draught of air from the door threatened at every moment to sweep away. ”

“ But Clotilde, whom his enthusiasm made smile, said gently:
“No, no, master, you cannot make life anew. There, come. We are the last.”
It was true; the others had already gone. Macquart, on the threshold, followed Félicité and Maxime with his mocking glance as they went away. Aunt Dide, the forgotten one, sat motionless, appalling in her leanness, her eyes again fixed upon Charles with his white, worn face framed in his royal locks.
The drive back was full of constraint. In the heat which exhaled from the earth, the landau rolled on heavily to the measured trot of the horses. ”

“ Always that man! And his dream, in which he saw Plassans at his feet, ended with a sudden vision of the Assize Court, of the judges, the jury, and the public listening to Macquart’s disgraceful revelations; the story of the fifty thousand francs, and many other unpleasant matters; or else, while enjoying the softness of Monsieur Garconnet’s arm-chair, he suddenly pictured himself suspended from a lamp-post in the Rue de la Banne. Who would rid him of that wretched fellow? At last Antoine fell asleep, and then Pierre enjoyed ten good minutes’ pure ecstasy. ”

“ The insurrectionists were expected every moment. The rumour of Macquart’s escape was commented upon in a most alarming manner. It was asserted that he had been rescued by his friends, the Reds, and that he was only waiting for nighttime in order to fall upon the inhabitants and set fire to the four corners of the town. Plassans, closed in and terror-stricken, gnawing at its own vitals within its prison-like walls, no longer knew what to imagine in order to frighten itself. The Republicans, in the face of Rougon’s bold demeanour, felt for a moment distrustful. ”

“ Good heavens! how can people take such absurd fancies into their heads? The master ought to have given her neck a twist, and it would have taught her a lesson, perhaps.'
'Pooh!' said Macquart; 'I'll lay her down on my bed. It won't kill us if we have to sit up round the fire all night.'
He drew aside a calico curtain which hung in front of a recess. Rose proceeded to undress her mistress, growling as she did so. The only thing they could do, she said, was to put a hot brick at her feet.
'Now that she's all snug, we'll have a drop to drink,' resumed Macquart, with his wolfish snigger. ”

“ Our family is a disreputable lot; it’s sad but true. Even that little Maxime, Aristide’s son, that little nine-year-old brat, pokes his tongue out at me when he meets me. That child will some day beat his own mother, and a good job too! Say what you like, all those folks don’t deserve their luck; but it’s always like this in families, the good ones suffer while the bad ones make their fortunes.”
All this dirty linen, which Macquart washed with such complacency before his nephew, profoundly disgusted the young man. ”

“ His tactics were to appear before Adélaïde 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. ”

“ It is not right of you. We have always treated you very well.'
'Oh, very well, indeed!' sniggered Macquart. 'I'm glad you've told me so. Rougon is a skinflint. He treated me like the lowest of the low in the matter of that cornfield. Where is Rougon? Snoozing comfortably in his bed, eh? It's little he cares for all the trouble one takes about the family.'
The smile which accompanied these last words greatly disquieted Félicité. She looked him keenly in the face.
'What trouble have you taken for the family?' she asked. 'Do you grudge having brought poor Marthe back from Les Tulettes? ”

“ Félicité understood this so well that she replied: “I know you have accused us of being hard upon you, because you imagine we are in comfortable circumstances; but you are mistaken, my dear brother; we are poor people; we have never been able to act towards you as our hearts would have desired.” She hesitated a moment, and then continued: “If it were absolutely necessary in some serious contingency, we might perhaps be able to make a sacrifice; but, truly, we are very poor, very poor!”
Macquart pricked up his ears. ”

“ It is like an experiment made in the laboratory, a problem stated and solved on the blackboard. You see below, the trunk, the common stock, Aunt Dide; then the three branches issuing from it, the legitimate branch, Pierre Rougon, and the two illegitimate branches, Ursule Macquart and Antoine Macquart; then, new branches arise, and ramify, on one side, Maxime, Clotilde, and Victor, the three children of Saccard, and Angelique, the daughter of Sidonie Rougon; on the other, Pauline, the daughter of Lisa Macquart, and Claude, Jacques, Étienne, and Anna, the four children of Gervaise, her sister ”

“ Yes! The genealogical tree of Rougon-Macquart! The reading of it begins: There was one Adelaïde Fouqué, who married Rougon-Macquart's friend. Rougon had Eugene Rougon, also Pascal Rougon, also Aristides, also Sidonie, also Martha. Aristides had Maxyme, Clotilde, Victor, and Maxyme had Charles, and so on to the end; but Sidonie had a daughter Angelle, and Martha, who married Mouret, who was from Macquart's family, had three children, etc. ”

“ They have opened up new avenues in literature, and have made possible to others much that was formerly unattainable.
THE ROUGON-MACQUART GENEALOGICAL TREE.
First Generation:
1. ADELAIDE FOUQUE, called AUNT DIDE, born in 1768, married in 1786 to Rougon, a placid, lubberly gardener; bears him a son in 1787; loses her husband in 1788; takes in 1789 a lover, Macquart, a smuggler, addicted to drink and half crazed; bears him a son in 1789, and a daughter in 1791; goes mad, and is sent to the Asylum of Les Tulettes in 1851; dies there of cerebral congestion in 1873 at 105 years of age. ”

“ The insurgents could not think of keeping Plassans in their power. The town was animated by so reactionary a spirit that it seemed impossible even to establish a democratic municipal commission there, as had already been done in other places. So they would simply have gone off without taking any further steps if Macquart, prompted and emboldened by his own private animosities, had not offered to hold Plassans in awe, on condition that they left him twenty determined men. ”

“ Scarcely a year had elapsed before the widow took as her lover a man named Macquart, who lived in a hovel adjoining her own property, and two children were born. The legitimate son, Pierre Rougon, was brought up along with his half brother and sister, Antoine and Ursule, with whom, however, he was not on good terms. From her eighteenth year Adelaide was subject to nervous fits, which brought on convulsions, and though she was not yet insane, these repeated shocks produced cerebral disorders. “She lived from day to day like a child; like a fawning animal yielding to its instincts.” ”

“ Behind Macquart’s hovel there was a little yard, separated from the Fouques’ property by a wall. One morning the neighbours were much astonished to find in this wall a door which had not been there the previous evening. Before an hour had elapsed, the entire Faubourg had flocked to the neighbouring windows. The lovers must have worked the whole night to pierce the opening and place the door there. They could now go freely from one house to the other. The scandal was revived, everyone felt less pity for Adélaïde, who was certainly the disgrace of the suburb ”

“ It was even said that he had married immediately on his arrival there, and that he had had a child, the sex of which, however, was not known with certainty. Finally, Jean Macquart, who had received his discharge after the Bloody Week, had settled at Valqueyras, near Plassans, where he had had the good fortune to marry a healthy girl, Mélanie Vial, the daughter of a well-to-do peasant, whose lands he farmed, and his wife had borne him a son in May.
“Yes, it is true,” he resumed, in a low voice; “races degenerate. ”

“ Of all his talk, however, aunt Dide only heard Silvère’s name.
“Have you seen him?” she asked, opening her lips at last.
“Who? Silvère?” Antoine replied. “He was walking about among the insurgents with a tall red girl on his arm. It will serve him right if he gets into trouble.”
The grandmother looked at him fixedly, then, in a solemn voice, inquired: “Why?”
“Eh! Why, he shouldn’t be so stupid,” resumed Macquart, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “People don’t risk their necks for the sake of ideas. I’ve settled my own little business. I’m no fool.” ”

“ Next week, when they should have ceased to weep, what a rest to be able to say to herself that all this abomination of the Tulettes was at an end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in history!
Then she remembered that she had not answered the involuntary accusation made against her by her son at the notary’s; and she spoke again of Macquart, through bravado:
“You see now that servants are of no use. ”

“ After the death of his mother, he was taken to Paris by Florent, who supported him by teaching. He was at first idle and unsettled, but after Florent’s arrest he was taken in by his uncle Gradelle, to whose business of pork-butcher, as well as to a considerable sum of money, he ultimately succeeded. After his uncle’s death he married Lisa Macquart, who had previously assisted in the shop, and they had a daughter, Pauline. Business prospered, and the Quenus were soon in a position to remove to larger premises. ”

“ JEAN MACQUART, born in 1831, married in 1867 to Francoise Mouche, who dies childless in 1870; remarried in 1871 to Melanie Vial, a sturdy, healthy peasant-girl, by whom he has a son, and who is again enceinte. Innateness, as with Pascal and Helene. First a peasant, then a soldier, then peasant again. Still alive at Valqueyras.
Fourth Generation:
16. MAXIME ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1840, has a son in 1857 by a servant, Justine Megot, the chlorotic daughter of drunken parents; married in 1863 to Louise de Mareuil, who dies childless the same year; succumbs to ataxia in 1873. ”