her own fashion.  No sooner had the young people been married than Mouret perceived that he would have to quit Plassans, if he did not wish to hear endless disparaging remarks about his wife and his mother-in-law.  Taking Ursule with him, he accordingly repaired to Marseilles, where he worked at his trade.  It should be mentioned that he had not asked for one sou of dowry.  When Pierre, somewhat surprised by this disinterestedness, commenced to stammer out some explanations, Mouret closed his mouth by saying that he preferred to earn his wife’s bread.  Nevertheless the worthy son of the peasant remained uneasy; Mouret’s indifference seemed to him to conceal some trap.

Adelaide now remained to be disposed of.  Nothing in the world would have induced Pierre to live with her any longer.  She was compromising him; it was with her that he would have liked to make a start.  But he found himself between two very embarrassing alternatives:  to keep her, and thus, in a measure, share her disgrace, and bind a fetter to his feet which would arrest him in his ambitious flight; or to turn her out, with the certainty of being pointed at as a bad son, which would have robbed him of the reputation for good nature which he desired.  Knowing that he would be in want of everybody, he desired to secure an untarnished name throughout Plassans.  There was but one method to adopt, namely, to induce Adelaide to leave of her own accord.  Pierre neglected nothing to accomplish this end.  He considered his mother’s misconduct a sufficient excuse for his own hard-heartedness.  He punished her as one would chastise a child.  The tables were turned.  The poor woman cowered under the stick which, figuratively, was constantly held over her.  She was scarcely forty-two years old, and already had the stammerings of terror, and vague, pitiful looks of an old woman in her dotage.  Her son continued to stab her with his piercing glances, hoping that she would run away when her courage was exhausted.  The unfortunate woman suffered terribly from shame, restrained desire and enforced cowardice, receiving the blows dealt her with passive resignation, and nevertheless returning to Macquart with the determination to die on the spot rather than submit.  There were nights when she would have got out of bed, and thrown herself into the Viorne, if with her weak, nervous, nature she had not felt the greatest fear of death.  On several occasions she thought of running away and joining her lover on the frontier.  It was only because she did not know whither to go that she remained in the house, submitting to her son’s contemptuous silence and secret brutality.  Pierre divined that she would have left long ago if she had only had a refuge.  He was waiting an opportunity to take a little apartment for her somewhere, when a fortuitous occurrence, which he had not ventured to anticipate, abruptly brought about the realisation of his desires.  Information reached the Faubourg that Macquart had