Then the series continues. All the Rougons--excepting one, Pascal, whom the novelist keeps back till the end--have now been dealt with, the Mourets also, and the chronicle of the bastard Macquart branch begins. Antoine Macquart has three children, Lisa, Gervaise, and Jean, and it is Lisa who supplies the next volume of the series, "Le Ventre de Paris" (XI), which carries one through and around the great markets of the French metropolis, as well as into the fine pork-butcher's shop, which Lisa keeps with her husband, Quenu. This is a volume redolent of victuals certainly, marked also by the egotism of the shopkeeping and petty trading classes, with yet a glimpse of one of those conspiracies which were frequent in the time of Napoleon III, and a backward glance at the _coup d'état_ by which that sovereign had risen to power. The chief figure in the story is Quenu's brother, the unhappy Florent, who has escaped from Cayenne, and whom Lisa, that comfortable egotist, ends by betraying to the authorities. For that ultra-righteous deed,--counselled by Lisa's confessor,--and for the savagery of all the fat fishwives, one is consoled by the presence of honest Madame François and of Cadine, the little flower-girl, and Marjolin, her youthful lover, whose smile brightens many a page. Then, in "La Joie de Vivre" (XII), comes Pauline, whose nature is so different from that of her mother, Lisa. She has no egotism in her composition, she would never betray anybody; she is all human devotion and self-sacrifice. With her we are carried to the seashore, to a little fisher hamlet, where her guardian Chanteau dwells; and he, his wife, and his son prey upon her, wrecking her life, though she remains brave and smiling till the end. And how little joy there may be in life is shown not only by her case, but by that of the crippled Chanteau, his embittered, covetous, suspicious wife, his jealous servant, and his weak-minded son, who tries to be this and that, but succeeds in nothing and is consumed by a foolish, unreasoning dread of death. It is to these that Pauline has to minister, for these that she has to sacrifice herself, even as it often happens that the good have to lay down their lives for the unworthy.