Macquart meantime was not discouraged.  He said to himself that he would be able to strangle the Rougons alone if he could ever get them into a corner.  His envious rage and slothful greed were increased by certain successive accidents which compelled him to resume work.  In the early part of 1850 Fine died, almost suddenly, from inflammation of the lungs, which she had caught by going one evening to wash the family linen in the Viorne, and carrying it home wet on her back.  She returned soaked with water and perspiration, bowed down by her load, which was terribly heavy, and she never recovered.

Her death filled Macquart with consternation.  His most reliable source of income was gone.  When, a few days later, he sold the caldron in which his wife had boiled her chestnuts, and the wooden horse which she used in reseating old chairs, he foully accused the Divinity of having robbed him of that strong strapping woman of whom he had often felt ashamed, but whose real worth he now appreciated.  He now also fell upon the children’s earnings with greater avidity than ever.  But, a month later, Gervaise, tired of his continual exactions, ran away with her two children and Lantier, whose mother was dead.  The lovers took refuge in Paris.  Antoine, overwhelmed, vented his rage against his daughter by expressing the hope that she might die in hospital like most of her kind.  This abuse did not, however, improve the situation, which was decidedly becoming bad.  Jean soon followed his sister’s example.  He waited for pay-day to come round, and then contrived to receive the money himself.  As he was leaving he told one of his friends, who repeated it to Antoine, that he would no longer keep his lazy father, and that if the latter should take it into his head to have him brought back by the gendarmes he would touch neither saw nor plane.

On the morrow, when Antoine, having vainly sought him, found himself alone and penniless in the house where for twenty years he had been comfortably kept, he flew into the most frantic rage, kicked the furniture about, and yelled the vilest imprecations.  Then he sank down exhausted, and began to drag himself about and moan like a convalescent.  The fear of having to earn his bread made him positively ill.  When Silvere came to see him, he complained, with tears, of his children’s ingratitude.  Had he not always been a good father to them?  Jean and Gervaise were monsters, who had made him an evil return for all he had done for them.  Now they abandoned him because he was old, and they could not get anything more out of him!

“But uncle,” said Silvere, “you are not yet too old to work!”