The struggle between Pascal
and Clotilde brought them to a knowledge of mutual love, and an illicit
relationship was established between them. He would have married her
(this being legal in France), but having lost most of his money he
was unwilling to sacrifice what he believed to be her interests, and
persuaded her to go to Paris to live with her brother Maxime. Soon after
her departure he was seized with an affection of the heart, and,
after some weeks of suffering, died only an hour before her return.
Immediately after his death his mother, Madame Felicite Rougon, took
possession of his papers, and in an immense _auto-da-fe_ destroyed in an
hour the records of a lifetime of work. Le Docteur Pascal.
ROUGON (PIERRE), born 1787, legitimate son of Adelaide Fouque, was a
thrifty, selfish lad who saw that his mother by her improvident conduct
was squandering the estate to which he considered himself sole heir. His
aim was to induce his mother and her two illegitimate children to remove
from the house and land, and in this he was ultimately successful.
Having sold the property for fifty thousand francs, he induced his
mother, who by this time was of weak intellect, to sign a receipt for
that sum, and was so able to defraud his half-brother and sister of
the shares to which they would have been entitled.
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