ROUGON (MADAME MAXIME).  See Louise de Mareuil.

ROUGON (PASCAL), born 1813, second son of Pierre Rougon, “had an uprightness of spirit, a love of study, a retiring modesty which contrasted strangely with the feverish ambitions and unscrupulous intrigues of his family.”  Having acquitted himself admirably in his medical studies at Paris, he returned to Plassans, where he lived a life of quiet study and work.  He had few patients, but devoted himself to research, particularly on the subject of heredity, with special reference to its results on his own family.  In the hope of alleviating suffering, he followed the Republican insurgents in their march from Plassans in December, 1851.  La Fortune des Rougon.

In 1854 his niece Clotilde, daughter of his brother Aristide, went to live with him.  He had frequently offered to take her, but nothing was arranged till after the death of her mother, at which time she was about seven years old.  La Curee.

His practice as a medical man extended to Les Artaud, and he attended his nephew Abbe Serge Mouret during an attack of brain fever.  On the priest’s partial recovery, he removed him to the Paradou, and left him in the care of Albine, niece of old Jeanbernat, the caretaker of that neglected demesne.  Dr. Pascal was much attached to Albine, and deeply regretted the sad love affair which resulted from Mouret’s forgetfulness of his past.  He had no religious beliefs himself, and he urged Mouret to return to Albine, but the voice of the Church proved too strong in the end.  La Faute de l’Abbe Mouret.

At sixty years of age Pascal was so fresh and vigorous that, though his hair and beard were white, he might have been mistaken for a young man with powdered locks.  He had lived for seventeen years at La Souleiade, near Plassans, with his niece Clotilde and his old servant Martine, having amassed a little fortune, which was sufficient for his needs.  He had devoted his life to the study of heredity, finding typical examples in his own family.  He brought up Clotilde without imposing on her his own philosophic creed, even allowing Martine to take her to church regularly.  But this tolerance brought about a serious misunderstanding between them, for the girl fell under the influence of religious mysticism, and came to look with horror on the savant’s scientific pursuits.  Discovered by him in an attempt to destroy his documents, he explained to Clotilde fully and frankly the bearing of their terrible family history on his theory of heredity, with the result that her outlook on life was entirely changed; he had opposed the force of human truth against the shadows of mysticism.  The struggle between Pascal and Clotilde brought them to a knowledge of mutual love, and an illicit relationship was established between them.  He would have married her (this being legal in France), but having lost most of his money he was unwilling to sacrifice what he believed to be her interests, and persuaded her to go to Paris to live with her brother Maxime.  Soon after her departure he was seized with an affection of the heart, and, after some weeks of suffering, died only an hour before her return.  Immediately after his death his mother, Madame Felicite Rougon, took possession of his papers, and in an immense auto-da-fe destroyed in an hour the records of a lifetime of work.  Le Docteur Pascal.