Zola's Rougon-Macquart Family [pp. 412-422]

Zola's Rougor-Macqiuart Fate/'.
him into the highest place in the govern ment, developing in his heavy nature a
cunning skill and a wonderful energy.
He believed in himself, took his convic tions for reasons, and held everything
subordinate to the augmentation of his
own personal influence. Addicted to no
sensual vice, he yet had secret orgies in
which his reveling was in dreams of ob taining supreme power. He was certainly the greatest of the Rougons.
"Ah, you want to know my story, (do
you?" he says on one occasion.
"Well, it's very easily told. My grandfather sold vegetables. I myself, till I
was forty years old, kicked my heels as
country lawyer in the depths of the provinces. Yesterday I was unknown, I was
nothing. Tomorrow I shall be whatever I like. I am a power. Those other
fellows make me shrug my shoulders
when they prate of their devotion tothe
empire. Do they really love it? Do
they appreciate it? Have n't they conformed themselves to all kinds of governments? I have grown up with the
empire. I have made it, and it has made
me. I was named chevalier after the Ioth
of December, officer in January of'5I,
commander on the I 5th of August,'54,
and grand officer three months ago. Underthe presidency I was entrusted with
the portfolio of public works; later on the
Emperor charged me with a mission to
England; since then I have entered the
council of state and.the senate, "
"And tomorrow what will you enter?"
Clorinde interrupted with a laugh beneath which she tried to conceal her
curiosity.
He stopped short and looked at her.
"You are very inquisitive, Mademoiselle Machiavelli," he said.
His stopping short was much less remarkable than his self-revelation, for he
was a listener, not a talker. In his ponderous power of persistence he closely
resembled our own General Grant. He
was capable of any self-repression demanded by his main purpose. The only
VoIL. XVI. 27.
great longing of his life was to marry
this Clorinde, an Italian adventuress;
but he thought his ambition must be
furthered by a wife of solemn respecta bility, who would give tone to his estab lishment. He had a two-days' struggle,
in which his stern, set face was puffed
out by the contest waging within him,
and his bull-like neck was swollen, and
his muscles strained as if he were chok ing. But he conquered his passion, and
married as ambition dictated. The romantic reader will be glad to learn that
he made a blunder, and owed his final
dismissal from power to the superior influence of the little woman he had
thought unworthy to be his coadjutor
But from his point of view the renunciation was heroic.
Withal he was true to his friends: to
the friends of his obscurity and of his
struggles, as well as those of his glory.
Indeed, their demands upon him, their
assumed ownership of him, are portrayed
with marvelous power. His story is the
political storytlof the empire, and the
best picture that has appeared of the
men and women and measures of that
time. The public speeches given in the
book are the speeches actually made,
quoted from the official reports. The
descriptions, as of the christening of the
prince imperial, are as exact in detail as
they are vivid. The student of French
history will find few books more profitable than "His Excellency Eugene Rou-
gon.
As Eugene was the greatest, so the
second son, Aristide, was the meanest
of the Rougons. His greed was for selfindulgence. His family, coarse peasants
with brute appetites, had matured too
rapidly, and all the desires for sensual
indulgence had centered in Aristide,
augmented by a precocious education,
and rendered more insatiable and dangerous by their deliberateness. "I would
set the whole town afire if I wanted to
warm my feet," he says on one occasion.
Hence as Son Excellence Eugene Ron
18. 0.]
417