In the preface to this novel Zola explains his theories of heredity,
and the work itself forms the introductory chapter to that great series
which deals with the life history of a family and its descendants during
the second empire.
The common ancestress of the Rougons and the Macquarts was Adelaide
Fouque, a girl who from youth had been subject to nervous seizures.
From her father she inherited a small farm, and at the age of eighteen
married one of her own labourers, a man named Rougon, who died fifteen
months afterwards, leaving her with one son, named Pierre. Shortly after
her husband's death she fell completely under the influence of Macquart,
a drunken smuggler and poacher, by whom in course of time she had a
son named Antoine and a daughter named Ursule. She became more and more
subject to cataleptic attacks, until eventually her mind was completely
unhinged. Pierre Rougon, her legitimate son, was a man of strong will
inherited from his father, and he early saw that his mother's property
was being squandered by the Macquarts. By means approximating to fraud
he induced his mother, who was then facile, to sell her property and
hand over the proceeds to him.
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