The battle lasted for more than thirty years.  The death of Puech proved another heavy blow.  Felicite, who had counted upon an inheritance of about forty thousand francs, found that the selfish old man, in order to indulge himself in his old age, had sunk all his money in a life annuity.  The discovery made her quite ill.  She was gradually becoming soured, she was growing more lean and harsh.  To see her, from morning till night, whirling round the jars of oil, one would have thought she believed that she could stimulate the sales by continually flitting about like a restless fly.  Her husband, on the contrary, became heavier; misfortune fattened him, making him duller and more indolent.  These thirty years of combat did not, however, bring him to ruin.  At each annual stock-taking they managed to make both ends meet fairly well; if they suffered any loss during one season, they recouped themselves the next.  However, it was precisely this living from hand to mouth which exasperated Felicite.  She would, by far, have preferred a big failure.  They would then, perhaps, have been able to commence life over again, instead of obstinately persisting in their petty business, working themselves to death to gain the bare necessaries of life.  During one third of a century they did not save fifty thousand francs.

It should be mentioned that, from the very first years of their married life, they had a numerous family, which in the long run became a heavy burden to them.  In the course of five years, from 1811 to 1815, Felicite gave birth to three boys.  Then during the four ensuing years she presented her husband with two girls.  These had but an indifferent welcome; daughters are a terrible embarrassment when one has no dowry to give them.

However, the young woman did not regard this troop of children as the cause of their ruin.  On the contrary, she based on her sons’ heads the building of the fortune which was crumbling in her own hands.  They were hardly ten years old before she discounted their future careers in her dreams.  Doubting whether she would ever succeed herself, she centred in them all her hopes of overcoming the animosity of fate.  They would provide satisfaction for her disappointed vanity, they would give her that wealthy, honourable position which she had hitherto sought in vain.  From that time forward, without abandoning the business struggle, she conceived a second plan for obtaining the gratification of her domineering instincts.  It seemed to her impossible that, amongst her three sons, there should not be a man of superior intellect, who would enrich them all.  She felt it, she said.  Accordingly, she nursed the children with a fervour in which maternal severity was blended with an usurer’s solicitude.  She amused herself by fattening them as though they constituted a capital which, later on, would return a large interest.

“Enough!” Pierre would sometimes exclaim, “all children are ungrateful.  You are spoiling them, you are ruining us.”