ROUGON (MARTHE), born 1820, daughter of Pierre Rougon; married in 1840 her cousin Francois Rougon; had three children.  La Fortune des Rougon.

She accompanied her husband to Marseilles, where by close attention to business they accumulated a fortune in fifteen years, returning to Plassans at the end of that period and settling down there.  Her life at Plassans was a happy one until the household fell under the influence of Abbe Faujas.  From the first she was in love with the priest, and as he gave her no encouragement in this, she devoted herself to church services to the entire neglect of her household and family.  As time went on, her passion for the Abbe grew more extreme, and her health became undermined to a serious extent.  She became subject to fits of an epileptic nature, and having injured herself in some of these, she allowed the injuries to be attributed to her husband, whom she had now grown to regard as an encumbrance.  Though she was aware that he was not insane, she allowed him to be removed to an asylum, where confinement soon completed the work begun by her own conduct.  The Abbe Faujas having resolutely resisted her advances, her health became still worse, and she died in her mother’s house on the same night that her husband escaped from the asylum and burned down their old home.  La Conquete de Plassans.

ROUGON (MAXIME), born 1840, son of Aristide Rougon.  La Fortune des Rougon.

When his father went to Paris in 1852, Maxime remained at school at Plassans, not going to Paris till after his father’s second marriage.  From early youth he was of vicious character, and the idleness and extravagance of the life in his father’s house only completed the training begun at Plassans.  After carrying on a disgraceful liaison with his father’s second wife, he married Louise de Mareuil, through whom he got a considerable dowry.  La Curee.

After the death of his wife, six months after their marriage, he returned to Paris, where he lived quietly upon the dowry brought to him by her.  He refused to join in any of his father’s schemes, or to assist him in any way, and was consequently not affected by the failure of the Universal Bank.  L’Argent.

After the war he re-established himself in his mansion in Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, where he lived on the fortune left by his wife.  “He had become prudent, however, with the enforced restraint of a man whose marrow is diseased, and who seeks by artifice to ward off the paralysis which threatened him.”  In the fear of this impending illness, he induced his sister Clotilde to leave Doctor Pascal, and go to live with him in Paris, but in his constant fear of being taken advantage of he soon began to be suspicious of her, as he did of every one who served him.  His father, who wished to hasten his own inheritance, encouraged him in a renewal of his vicious courses, and he died of locomotor ataxy at the age of thirty-three.  Le Docteur Pascal.