La Bete Humaine.
A novel dealing with railway life in France towards the close of the
Second Empire. The hero is Jacques Lantier, the second son of Gervaise
Macquart and August Lantier (_La Fortune des Rougon_ and _L'Assommoir_).
When his parents went to Paris with his two brothers, he remained at
Plassans with his godmother, "Aunt Phasie," who afterwards married
Misard, a railway signalman, by whom she was slowly poisoned to secure
a small legacy which she had concealed. After Jacques had passed
through the School of Arts and Crafts at Plassans he became a railway
engine-driver, and entered the service of the Western Railway Company,
regularly driving the express train between Paris and Havre. He was a
steady man and a competent engineer, but from his early youth he had
been affected by a curious form of insanity, the desire to murder any
woman of whom he became fond. "It seemed like a sudden outburst of blind
rage, an ever-recurring thirst to avenge some very ancient offences,
the exact recollection of which escaped him." There was also in the
employment of the railway company, as assistant station-master at Havre,
a compatriot of Lantier named Roubaud, who had married Severine Aubry,
the godchild of President Grandmorin, a director of the company.
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