Serge was now nineteen years of age. He occupied a small room on the second floor, opposite the priest's, and there led an almost cloistered¹ life, spending much time in reading.

[Pg 146]

'I shall have to throw those old books of yours into the fire,' Mouret said to him angrily. 'You'll end by making yourself ill and having to take to your bed.'

The young man was, indeed, of such a nervous temperament², that the slightest imprudence made him poorly, as though he were a young girl, and thus he was frequently confined to his room for two or three days together. At these times Rose inundated³ him with herb tea, and whenever Mouret went upstairs to shake him up a little, as he called it, the cook, if she happened to be there, would turn her master out of the room, crying out at him:

'Leave the poor dear alone! Can't you see that you are killing⁴ him with your rough ways? It isn't after you that he takes: he is the very image of his mother; and you'll never be able to understand either the one or the other of them.'

Serge smiled. After he had left college his father, seeing him so delicate, had hesitated to send him to Paris to read for the bar there. He would not hear, however, of a provincial⁵ faculty⁶; Paris, he felt sure, was necessary for a young man who wanted to climb to a high position. He tried, indeed, to instil⁷ ambitious ideas into the lad, telling him that many with much weaker wits than his own, his cousins, the Rougons, for instance, had attained⁸ to great distinction. Every time that the young man seemed to grow more robust⁹, his father settled that he should leave home early the following month; but his trunk was never packed, for Serge was always

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