Then, as a consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune, seeking all sorts of devices.  Felicite would fancy herself the winner of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation.  They lived with one sole thought—­that of making a fortune immediately, in a few hours—­of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year.  Their whole beings tended to this, stubbornly, without a pause.  And they still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with that peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they have sent their children to college without deriving some personal advantage from it.

Felicite did not appear to have aged; she was still the same dark little woman, ever on the move, buzzing about like a grasshopper.  Any person walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a girl of fifteen, from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her shoulders and waist.  Even her face had scarcely undergone any change; it was simply rather more sunken, rather more suggestive of the snout of a pole-cat.

As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly respectable looking citizen, who only lacked a decent income to make him a very dignified individual.  His pale, flabby face, his heaviness, his languid manner, seemed redolent of wealth.  He had one day heard a peasant who did not know him say:  “Ah! he’s some rich fellow, that fat old gentleman there.  He’s no cause to worry about his dinner!” This was a remark which stung him to the heart, for he considered it cruel mockery to be only a poor devil while possessing the bulk and contented gravity of a millionaire.  When he shaved on Sundays in front of a small five-sou looking-glass hanging from the fastening of a window, he would often think that in a dress coat and white tie he would cut a far better figure at the Sub-Prefect’s than such or such a functionary of Plassans.  This peasant’s son, who had grown sallow from business worries, and corpulent from a sedentary life, whose hateful passions were hidden beneath naturally placid features, really had that air of solemn imbecility which gives a man a position in an official salon.  People imagined that his wife held a rod over him, but they were mistaken.  He was as self-willed as a brute.  Any determined expression of extraneous will would drive him into a violent rage.  Felicite was far too supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature she did not attack obstacles in front.  When she wished to obtain something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously.  He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated her advice fairly patiently.  Felicite, more useful than the coach fly, would sometimes do all the work while she was thus buzzing round Pierre’s ears.  Strange to say, the husband and wife never accused each other of their ill-success.  The only bone of contention between them was the education lavished on their children.