La Mechain, his mother's cousin, after discovering his paternity, told
the facts to Caroline Hamelin, who, to save Saccard annoyance, paid over
a considerable sum and removed the boy to _L'Oeuvre du Travail_, one of
the institutions founded by the Princess d'Orviedo. Here every effort
was made to reclaim him, but without success; vice and cunning had
become his nature. In the end he made a murderous attack upon Alice
du Beauvilliers, who was visiting the hospital, and having stolen her
purse, made his escape. Subsequent search proved fruitless; he had
disappeared in the under-world of crime. L'Argent.
"In 1873, Victor had altogether vanished, living, no doubt, in the shady
haunts of crime--since he was in no penitentiary--let loose upon the
world like some brute foaming with the hereditary virus, whose every
bite would enlarge that existing evil--free to work out his own future,
his unknown destiny, which was perchance the scaffold." Le Docteur
Pascal.
ROUGON (-----), the child of Doctor Pascal Rougon and of Clotilde
Rougon, born some months after his father's death. Pascal a few
minutes before he died, drew towards him the genealogical tree of the
Rougon-Macquart family, over which he had spent so many years, and in
a vacant space wrote the words: "The unknown child, to be born in 1874.
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