He took up again the genealogical tree which had remained neglected on the table

He took up again the genealogical tree which had remained neglected on the table, spread it out and began to go over it once more with his finger, enumerating now the members of the family who were still living: Eugene Rougon, a fallen majesty, who remained in the Chamber, the witness, the impassible defender of the old world swept away at the downfall of the Empire. Aristide Saccard, who, after having changed his principles, had fallen upon his feet a republican, the editor of a great journal, on the way to make new millions, while his natural son Victor, who had never reappeared, was living still in the shade, since he was not in the galleys, cast forth by the world into the future, into the unknown, like a human beast foaming with the hereditary virus, who must communicate his malady with every bite he gives. Sidonie Rougon, who had for a time disappeared, weary of disreputable affairs, had lately retired to a sort of religious house, where she was living in monastic austerity, the treasurer of the Marriage Fund, for aiding in the marriage of girls who were mothers. Octave Mouret, proprietor of the great establishment _Au Bonheur des Dames_, whose colossal fortune still continued increasing, had had, toward the end of the winter, a third child by his wife Denise Baudu, whom he adored, although his mind was beginning to be deranged again. The Abbe Mouret, cure at St. Eutrope,replica montblanc pens, in the heart of a marshy gorge, lived there in great retirement, and very modestly, with his sister Desiree, refusing all advancement from his bishop, and waiting for death like a holy man, rejecting all medicines, although he was already suffering from consumption in its first stage. Helene Mouret was living very happily in seclusion with her second husband, M. Rambaud, on the little estate which they owned near Marseilles, on the seashore; she had had no child by her second husband. Pauline Quenu was still at Bonneville at the other extremity of France, in face of the vast ocean, alone with little Paul, since the death of Uncle Chanteau, having resolved never to marry, in order to devote herself entirely to the son of her cousin Lazare, who had become a widower and had gone to America to make a fortune. Etienne Lantier, returning to Paris after the strike at Montsou, had compromised himself later in the insurrection of the Commune, whose principles he had defended with ardor; he had been condemned to death, but his sentence being commuted was transported and was now at Noumea. 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, Melanie 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. There is here a veritable exhaustion, rapid deterioration, as if our family, in their fury of enjoyment, in the gluttonous satisfaction of their appetites, had consumed themselves too quickly. Louiset, dead in infancy; Jacques Louis, a half imbecile, carried off by a nervous disease; Victor returned to the savage state, wandering about in who knows what dark places; our poor Charles, so beautiful and so frail; these are the latest branches of the tree, the last pale offshoots into which the puissant sap of the larger branches seems to have been unable to mount. The worm was in the trunk, it has ascended into the fruit, and is devouring it. But one must never despair; families are a continual growth. They go back beyond the common ancestor, into the unfathomable strata of the races that have lived, to the first being; and they will put forth new shoots without end, they will spread and ramify to infinity,nike shox torch ii, through future ages. Look at our tree,moncler jackets women; it counts only five generations. It has not so much importance as a blade of grass, even, in the human forest, vast and dark, of which the peoples are the great secular oaks. Think only of the immense roots which spread through the soil; think of the continual putting forth of new leaves above,moncler jackets men, which mingle with other leaves of the ever-rolling sea of treetops, at the fructifying, eternal breath of life. Well, hope lies there, in the daily reconstruction of the race by the new blood which comes from without. Each marriage brings other elements, good or bad, of which the effect is, however, to prevent certain and progressive regeneration. Breaches are repaired, faults effaced, an equilibrium is inevitably re-established at the end of a few generations, and it is the average man that always results; vague humanity, obstinately pursuing its mysterious labor, marching toward its unknown end."