and an empty bookcase, venerable ruins which the old woman could not make up her mind to part with.  All her cares, however, were bestowed upon the drawing-room, and she almost succeeded in making it comfortable and decent.  The furniture was covered with yellowish velvet with satin flowers; in the middle stood a round table with a marble top, while a couple of pier tables, surmounted by mirrors, leant against the walls at either end of the room.  There was even a carpet, which just covered the middle of the floor, and a chandelier in a white muslin cover which the flies had spotted with black specks.  On the walls hung six lithographs representing the great battles of Napoleon I. Moreover, the furniture dated from the first years of the Empire.  The only embellishment that Felicite could obtain was to have the walls hung with orange-hued paper covered with large flowers.  Thus the drawing room had a strange yellow glow, which filled it with an artificial dazzling light.  The furniture, the paper, and the window curtains were yellow; the carpet and even the marble table-tops showed touches of yellow.  However, when the curtains were drawn the colours harmonised fairly well and the drawing-room looked almost decent.

But Felicite had dreamed of quite a different kind of luxury.  She regarded with mute despair this ill-concealed misery.  She usually occupied the drawing-room, the best apartment in the house, and the sweetest and bitterest of her pastimes was to sit at one of the windows which overlooked the Rue de la Banne and gave her a side view of the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture.  That was the paradise of her dreams.  That little, neat, tidy square, with its bright houses, seemed to her a Garden of Eden.  She would have given ten years of her life to possess one of those habitations.  The house at the left-hand corner, in which the receiver of taxes resided, particularly tempted her.  She contemplated it with eager longing.  Sometimes, when the windows of this abode were open, she could catch a glimpse of rich furniture and tasteful elegance which made her burn with envy.

At this period the Rougons passed through a curious crisis of vanity and unsatiated appetite.  The few proper feelings which they had once entertained had become embittered.  They posed as victims of evil fortune, not with resignation, however, for they seemed still more keenly determined that they would not die before they had satisfied their ambitions.  In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes, notwithstanding their advanced age.  Felicite professed to feel a presentiment that she would die rich.  However, each day of poverty weighed them down the more.  When they recapitulated their vain attempts—­when they recalled their thirty years’ struggle, and the defection of their children—­when they saw their airy castles end in this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness they could only conceal by drawing the curtains, they were overcome with bitter rage.