Mouret branch
François Mouret
Landowner, Plassans bourgeois
Son of Ursule Macquart and Mouret the hatter. A quiet, orderly man — the kind who keeps meticulous accounts, takes the same walk at the same time each day, and whose deepest happiness is domestic tranquillity. He is not unintelligent; he sees, eventually, what Faujas is doing. But by the time he sees it clearly, his wife has been taken, his children have drifted away, his house is occupied by people he cannot remove, and his own protests make him look like the unstable one. He is committed to the asylum at Les Tulettes — where his grandmother Adélaïde lives — in a cruel irony of hereditary appearance. He escapes from the asylum and returns to the house at night, setting fire to it with Faujas and Faujas's sister inside, and dying in the flames himself. His destruction is the cycle's most detailed portrait of how a fundamentally decent, unexceptional man is erased by someone who is willing to use every tool he is not.
Fils d'Ursule Macquart, homme tranquille et méthodique dont toute la vie repose sur l'ordre domestique. Il voit progressivement Faujas dépossèder sa maison, éloigner sa femme, et s'établir en maître. Quand il comprend pleinement ce qui s'est passé, c'est trop tard : ses protestations le font passer pour déséquilibré. Interné aux Tulettes — où vit aussi Adélaïde — il s'échappe et met le feu à la maison avec Faujas à l'intérieur.
Neat, careful in dress, with the methodical bearing of a man who values order above all things — and the progressive look, as the novel advances, of someone watching his world dissolve and finding no words for it.
Neat, careful in dress, with the methodical bearing of a man who values order above all things — and the progressive look, as the novel advances, of someone watching his world dissolve and finding no words for it.
Family & Relationships
- Child Ursule Macquart
- Spouse Marthe Rougon
- Sibling Hélène Grandjean
- Sibling Silvère Mouret
- Parent Octave Mouret
- Parent Abbé Serge Mouret
- Parent Désirée Mouret