eyes turned towards Paris, watching his opportunities.  On his return home he had entered his name on the rolls, in order to be independent of his parents.  After that he pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing to rise above average mediocrity.  At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy.  He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it.  On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile.  His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the least regret for his irrelevant digression.  He appeared to regard his speeches as mere exercises which would be of use to him later on.  It was this that puzzled and disheartened Felicite.  She would have liked to see her son dictating the law to the Civil Court of Plassans.  At last she came to entertain a very unfavourable opinion of her first-born.  To her mind this lazy fellow would never be the one to shed any lustre on the family.  Pierre, on the contrary, felt absolute confidence in him, not that he had more intuition than his wife, but because external appearances sufficed him, and he flattered himself by believing in the genius of a son who was his living image.  A month prior to the Revolution of February, 1848, Eugene became restless; some special inspiration made him anticipate the crisis.  From that time forward he seemed to feel out of his element at Plassans.  He would wander about the streets like a distressed soul.  At last he formed a sudden resolution, and left for Paris, with scarcely five hundred francs in his pocket.

Aristide, the youngest son, was, so to speak, diametrically opposed to Eugene.  He had his mother’s face, and a covetousness and slyness of character prone to trivial intrigues, in which his father’s instincts predominated.  Nature has need of symmetry.  Short, with a pitiful countenance suggesting the knob of a stick carved into a Punch’s head, Aristide ferretted and fumbled everywhere, without any scruples, eager only to gratify himself.  He loved money as his eldest brother loved power.  While Eugene dreamed of bending a people to his will, and intoxicated himself with visions of future omnipotence, the other fancied himself ten times a millionaire, installed in a princely mansion, eating and drinking to his heart’s content, and enjoying life to the fullest possible extent.  Above all things, he longed to make a rapid fortune.  When he was building his castles in the air, they would rise in his mind as if by magic; he would become possessed of tons of gold in one night.  These visions agreed with his indolence, as he never troubled himself about the means, considering those the best which were the most expeditious.  In his case the race of the Rougons,