Other branch
Clorinde Balbi
Italian adventuress, diplomat's wife
The most formidable figure in Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, and arguably the cycle's most purely political female character. An Italian of uncertain means, she arrives in Paris with her mother and attaches herself to Rougon's circle of followers — though 'follower' is far too weak a word for someone who is his equal in intelligence and will. She is as ambitious as Rougon himself, and she operates where he cannot: through charm, physical magnetism, and the social skills of someone who has learned to work through men in a world that offers women no direct path to power. She and Rougon are fascinated by each other — a mutual recognition of exceptional temperaments that is as close as either of them can come to respect. He might have loved her, in another life; instead she marries the Italian diplomat Cav. Luigi Rusconi, securing a position that gives her real leverage, and uses it to outmanoeuvre Rougon at the moments that count. Zola renders her as magnificently, almost dangerously alive: one of his great portraits of a woman who has taken the limited instruments available to her and made herself, against the odds, genuinely powerful.
Figure centrale de Son Excellence Eugène Rougon et l'une des personnages féminins les plus politiquement formidables du cycle. Aventurière italienne qui s'attache à l'entourage de Rougon tout en étant son égale en ambition et en intelligence. Elle épouse le diplomate Cav. Rusconi pour obtenir un vrai levier d'action, et s'en sert pour contrecarrer Rougon aux moments décisifs.
Tall, dark, magnificent, with the absolute ease of movement of someone who has never been afraid of anything — a quality Zola renders as almost feline. She takes up space in a room the way Rougon does: as a matter of right.
Tall, dark, magnificent, with the absolute ease of movement of someone who has never been afraid of anything — a quality Zola renders as almost feline. She takes up space in a room the way Rougon does: as a matter of right.