wit, she would have quickly brought her dream to pass.  Her intelligence was far superior to that of the girls of her own station and education.  Evil tongues asserted that her mother, who had died a few years after she was born, had, during the early period of her married life, been familiar with the Marquis de Carnavant, a young nobleman of the Saint-Marc quarter.  In fact, Felicite had the hands and feet of a marchioness, and, in this respect, did not appear to belong to that class of workers from which she was descended.

Her marriage with Pierre Rougon, that semi-peasant, that man of the Faubourg, whose family was in such bad odour, kept the old quarter in a state of astonishment for more than a month.  She let people gossip, however, receiving the stiff congratulations of her friends with strange smiles.  Her calculations had been made; she had chosen Rougon for a husband as one would choose an accomplice.  Her father, in accepting the young man, had merely had eyes for the fifty thousand francs which were to save him from bankruptcy.  Felicite, however, was more keen-sighted.  She looked into the future, and felt that she would be in want of a robust man, even if he were somewhat rustic, behind whom she might conceal herself, and whose limbs she would move at will.  She entertained a deliberate hatred for the insignificant little exquisites of provincial towns, the lean herd of notaries’ clerks and prospective barristers, who stand shivering with cold while waiting for clients.  Having no dowry, and despairing of ever marrying a rich merchant’s son, she by far preferred a peasant whom she could use as a passive tool, to some lank graduate who would overwhelm her with his academical superiority, and drag her about all her life in search of hollow vanities.  She was of opinion that the woman ought to make the man.  She believed herself capable of carving a minister out of a cow-herd.  That which had attracted her in Rougon was his broad chest, his heavy frame, which was not altogether wanting in elegance.  A man thus built would bear with ease and sprightliness the mass of intrigues which she dreamt of placing on his shoulders.  However, while she appreciated her husband’s strength and vigour, she also perceived that he was far from being a fool; under his coarse flesh she had divined the cunning suppleness of his mind.  Still she was a long way from really knowing her Rougon; she thought him far stupider than he was.  A few days after her marriage, as she was by chance fumbling in the drawer of a secretaire, she came across the receipt for fifty thousand francs which Adelaide had signed.  At sight of it she understood things, and felt rather frightened; her own natural average honesty rendered her hostile to such expedients.  Her terror, however, was not unmixed with admiration; Rougon became in her eyes a very smart fellow.