The young couple bravely sought to conquer fortune.  The firm of Puech & Lacamp was not, after all, so embarrassed as Pierre had thought.  Its liabilities were small, it was merely in want of ready-money.  In the provinces, traders adopt prudent courses to save them from serious disasters.  Puech & Lacamp were prudent to an excessive degree; they never risked a thousand crowns without the greatest fear, and thus their house, a veritable hole, was an unimportant one.  The fifty thousand francs that Pierre brought into it sufficed to pay the debts and extend the business.  The beginnings were good.  During three successive years the olive harvest was an abundant one.  Felicite, by a bold stroke which absolutely frightened both Pierre and old Puech, made them purchase a considerable quantity of oil, which they stored in their warehouse.  During the following years, as the young woman had foreseen, the crops failed, and a considerable rise in prices having set in, they realised large profits by selling out their stock.

A short time after this haul, Puech & Lacamp retired from the firm, content with the few sous they had just secured, and ambitious of living on their incomes.

The young couple now had sole control of the business, and thought that they had at last laid the foundation of their fortune.  “You have vanquished my ill-luck,” Felicite would sometimes say to her husband.

One of the rare weaknesses of her energetic nature was to believe herself stricken by misfortune.  Hitherto, so she asserted, nothing had been successful with either herself or her father, in spite of all their efforts.  Goaded by her southern superstition, she prepared to struggle with fate as one struggles with somebody who is endeavouring to strangle one.  Circumstances soon justified her apprehensions in a singular manner.  Ill-luck returned inexorably.  Every year some fresh disaster shook Rougon’s business.  A bankruptcy resulted in the loss of a few thousand francs; his estimates of crops proved incorrect, through the most incredible circumstances; the safest speculations collapsed miserably.  It was a truceless, merciless combat.

“You see I was born under an unlucky star!” Felicite would bitterly exclaim.

And yet she still struggled furiously, not understanding how it was that she, who had shown such keen scent in a first speculation, could now only give her husband the most deplorable advice.

Pierre, dejected and less tenacious than herself, would have gone into liquidation a score of times had it not been for his wife’s firm obstinacy.  She longed to be rich.  She perceived that her ambition could only be attained by fortune.  As soon as they possessed a few hundred thousand francs they would be masters of the town.  She would get her husband appointed to an important post, and she would govern.  It was not the attainment of honours which troubled her; she felt herself marvellously well armed for such a combat.  But she could do nothing to get together the first few bags of money which were needed.  Though the ruling of men caused her no apprehensions, she felt a sort of impotent rage at the thought of those inert, white, cold, five-franc pieces over which her intriguing spirit had no power, and which obstinately resisted her.