Mouret branch
Silvère Mouret
Blacksmith's apprentice, Republican
Grandson of Adélaïde, raised by her after his mother Ursule's early death. He is apprenticed to a blacksmith and has educated himself on Republican ideals — he worships the idea of the Republic with the same fervour that a more conventional boy of his time might have given to religion. When the insurgent column forms to resist Napoleon III's coup, he joins without hesitation, and it is he who procures the red flag that Miette will carry. His love for Miette — stolen meetings at the old cemetery, an innocence that Zola describes with genuine tenderness — is one of the cycle's most affecting relationships. He is shot and killed by the gendarme Rengade (whose eye he had accidentally injured earlier) beside the tombstone at the aire Saint-Mittre, the very stone inscribed 'Ci-gît Marie' where he and Miette had met. He is seventeen. His death is the cycle's founding tragedy: the one character in La Fortune des Rougon who acts from pure conviction dies for it, while the opportunists inherit everything.
Petit-fils d'Adélaïde, apprenti forgeron et républicain convaincu. Il rejoint la colonne insurgée lors du coup d'État de 1851. Son amour pour Miette, décrit avec une tendresse rare, est l'une des relations les plus touchantes du cycle. Fusillé à dix-sept ans par le gendarme Rengade.
Young, handsome, with the open face of someone who has not yet learned to hide what he thinks or feels — and the nervous, burning energy inherited from Adélaïde.
Young, handsome, with the open face of someone who has not yet learned to hide what he thinks or feels — and the nervous, burning energy inherited from Adélaïde.
Family & Relationships
- Grandparent Adélaïde Fouque
- Child Ursule Macquart
- Sibling François Mouret
- Sibling Hélène Grandjean
- Lover Miette — Young Republican lovers who die together during the 1851 coup.
"The Courtship of Silvère and Miette" — Engraving from the Vizetelly English translation of La Fortune des Rougon (1886) — Public domain
Appears In
Details
- Branch
- Mouret
- Generation
- III