Before passing the series in review one may say a few words respecting the two names, Rougon and Macquart, which, linked together, have supplied it with a general title. Some years ago those names were noticed by the present writer in sundry old documents relating to an abbey in Champagne, but Zola declared them to be common names in Provence. As for Macquart--long familiar to Parisians in connection with the knacker's trade--it is a suggestive circumstance that in Zola's younger days there was a bookseller at Aix, named Makaire, whom he may well have known. Makaire, of course is merely a variant of Macaire; and it is not necessary to be familiar with the famous "Auberge des Adrets," and the wonderful impersonation of Frédérick Lemaître, to know that "Robert Macaire" is regarded by the French as a type of braggart rascal, as cynical, as impudent as "Tartuffe" is hypocritical and sneakish. Zola, then, in the writer's opinion, adopted that vulgar name Macquart because it resembled Macaire, and put Rougon before it in lieu of Robert. He pictured the Rougon-Macquarts as the Robert-Macaires of the Second Empire, and the idea came to him, perhaps, the more readily as Napoleon III. had been repeatedly caricatured as Robert Macaire, a brazen knave repeating _abracadabrant_ axioms amid the applause of his followers. Thus the title of the Rougon-Macquarts, if taken as synonymous with the Robert-Macaires, will suffice to explain a good deal of Zola's series.
Let us now glance at the volumes. In "La Fortune des Rougon" (I) the author describes the origin of the Rougons and the Macquarts. One Adélaïde Fouque, a woman of hysterical nature who eventually goes mad,--a variety of disorders being transmitted to most of her descendants,--marries a man named Rougon, and on his death lives with another named Macquart. By the former she has a son, Pierre Rougon; by the latter a son, Antoine, and a daughter, Ursule Macquart. This daughter marries a hatter named Mouret, and thus at the outset of the series the second generation of the family is shown divided into three branches. In the third generation it increases to eleven members; in the fourth to thirteen. In the fifth it dwindles, its vitiated energies now being largely spent; and though there are indications of its continuance in sundry children who do not appear on the scene, the hope of regeneration rests virtually in only one child, a boy three months old when the curtain finally descends. In "La Fortune des Rougon," then, we are shown old Adélaïde Fouque, her children and some of theirs, all more or less poverty-stricken and striving for wealth, which comes with the foundation of the Second Empire. The scene is laid at Plassans--Aix, as was formerly explained--and one sees the Imperial _régime_ established there by craft and bloodshed.