The Rougon Macquart Novels
by Emile Zola

His first appearance in La Curée is when the Saccard's attend a ball at the Tuilleries. Renée found him small, with legs that were too short. He had a pale face and heavy leaden eyelids that drooped over his lifeless eyes. The emperor and one of his general's described her as a carnation fit to go in the Emperor's buttonhole. We learn that he brought skating into fashion one winter in the early sixties when he went skating in the Bois de Boulogne. A more aged emperor is seen again by Renée at the end of the novel, looking older he is riding through the Bois de Boulogne in a carriage.
Appears in:
La Curée

Appears in the bois de boulogne with his fez and without his guardian at the beginning of the novel.
Appears in:
La Curée

A member of the bourgeoisie overheard by Pierre Rougon in a café in Plassans, discussing rumours surrounding the proclamation he posted at the time of the insurrection.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons

Pauline is the daughter of Lisa and Quenu and therefore part of the Macquart family line. She appears throughout the book and is the key to Mmlle Saget discovering Florent's secret.
Appears in:
Le ventre de Paris

The wife of Aristide Rougon and daughter of a retired military man called commander Sicardot. She was noted for loving gowns and ribbons. She had one son called Maxime and a daughter called Clotilde.
In La Curée we learn that Angèle arrives in Paris in 1852 with her husband Aristide Rougon and daughter Clotilde. Her son Maxime was left in Plassans with his grandparents. They lived in a small room on Rue Saint Jacques and the last week of each month they ate dry bread while Aristide waited for his next pay day from the city council. She got on well with her Sister in law-Mme Sidonie. In early 1854 she contracted pneumonia from which she never recovered. Even as she was dying her husband was plotting with his sister about obtaining a new wife and the money to go with her.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Curée

The daughter of Angèle and Aristide Rougon. She moved to Paris with her parents when she was 4 years old. She was with her mother when she died but was returned to Plassans to live with her uncle (Pascal Rougon) three days after her funeral. She was six at the time.
Appears in:
La Curée

Eldest daughter of Pierre and Félicité. Married to François Mouret and living in Marseille by 1848.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Conquête de Plassans

He is the middle son of Pierre and Félicité but nothing like his brothers Eugene and Aristide. He studied as a doctor in Paris and then returned by preference to Plassans. He looked to help the less well off and was seen by Silvère Mouret working amongst the insurgents. To keep his mother happy he sometimes attended the yellow drawing room but had no interest in the discussions and amused himself by comparing the people there to various animals.
Although nobody in Plassans knew he was well regarded in the world of science.
In La Curée he is referred to as an unmarried doctor in love with science who made his home in Plassans. He had several times offered to look after his niece (Clotilde), and she came to live with him on the death of her mother in 1854.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Curée

Main character in La Fortune des Rougons. Son of Adélaide Fouque and Rougon. Dominated his step brother and sister and pushed them and his mother out of the family home and ensured he ended up with the family inheritance.
After marrying Felicité Puech he ran the firm of Puech and Lacamp (oil dealers). He retired from the firm in 1845 but did not really achieve prominence until the time of the events described in the first novel.
His apartment in the rue de la Banne, and in particular the yellow drawing room, became the focus of the group who decried the republic, and became instumental in supporting the second empire. They were led initially by the marquis de Carnavelet. However, through the workings of his son Eugene, Pierre came out as the hero of putting down the insurrection and thereby attained an important post in the town.
He had three sons and two daughters.
He is mentioned briefly in La Curée as Aristide's father from Plassans, who had gone fishing in the troubled waters of the coup d'etat in 1851 and landed the prize of tax of tax collector.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Curée

Youngest daughter of Pierre and Félicité Rougon. By 1848 she was married and living in Paris.

Sidonie plays a large role in La Curée and is one of its most eccentric characters. She is introduced in the first chapter as “a skinny, artificial woman of uncertain age, with a soft, waxy face that her faded dress made even less memorable”. She is in fact only 35.
She is Saccard's sister and she had married a legal clerk from Plassans. She came to Paris with her husband(M. Touche) and they set up a fruit shop on the rue Saint-Honoré. What became of the husband or the shop remains a mystery. At the time of the novel she is living on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière in an apartment above a shop, which she also leases. The shop is hardly open and displays lace only. Upstairs she runs something akin to the business of Dell boy Trotter in the British comedy series “Only Fools and Horses” with items ranging from suspenders to a patented automatic coffeemaker to pianos. She also traded information and was always running errands to lawyers and judges on behalf of her “clients”. It was this side of her character which was instrumental in putting together the family of Renée with Saccard at the time of his first wife's death. To emphasize her eccentricity, we also learn that she carries around with her paperwork relating to a debt owed by England to France for what is now 3 billion francs. This debt crops up throughout the novel but has no link to the main narrative. She is a great character who at different times you want to laugh at, feel sorry for and know more about. However, there is not a soft side to Sidonie. For her everything is a deal to be done as we see when she deals with the wedding of Saccard or later when she is trying to find a lover for Renée to solve her money problems. Zola explains that the woman in her had died.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Curée

A society gentleman in his mid thirties but still kept by his mother. He was Renée's first lover. She admired his gentle manner and excellent attire but soon tired of him. In trying to make himself more interesting he was duped by Lasonneau the accomplice of Saccard, and Laure d'Aurigny the courtesan into signing bills to the value of FF150,000, an act which would lead to his mothers death. He blew the fortune he inherited on Laure and then Blanche Muller, another prostitute.
Appears in:
La Curée

A society lady and mother of the duc de Rozan. She kept him on a short financial lead and died when Larsonneau presented her with a large amount of overdue bills which her son had signed without her knowledge.
Appears in:
La Curée

One of the main male characters in La Curée, he is the son of Aristide Saccard (prev. Rougon) and his first wife Angèle. Having spent his early years with his grandmother in Plassans he moves to live with his father and step-mother in his teens. He is brought up by his step mother, Renée, in the company of the ladies of the second empire and is treated in many ways as their amusement. At the age of 17 he gets Renée's chambermaid pregnant. His central role in the plot comes about as the result of the incestuous relationship he has with Renée. To him it is just one of those things and exclaims at one point that “it was bound to happen sooner or later”. While all this is going on his father arranges for him to marry a rich young woman called Louise Mareuil. He marries her after breaking with Renée but she dies while on their honeymoon in Italy. He returns to Paris after six months and takes up quarters in the avenue de l'Impératrice and takes up horse racing. He is a shallow character who only occasionally shows any emotion and stands as an emblem of the dissolute elements of the second empire.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons
La Curée

The main female character of La Curée and one of Zola's great tragic characters in my view. Is she a victim or was she just wicked? She was the daughter of M. Béraud du Châtel, a retired magistrate. Her mother died when she was eight and she was sent to boarding school. At the end of her time there she was raped on a friends estate by an older man and became pregnant. To save a scandal she was married off to Aristide Saccard and enjoyed huge success in the society circle of the second empire where she was considered exceedingly beautiful. However, she was bored and was constantly looking for new distractions, which led to her having an incestuous affair with Maxime. Unlike Maxime, she does have some moral regrets about this and some of the mad things she gets involved in leave you questioning whether it is thrill-seeking or hiding from the guilt she feels. She was never close to her husband and when she dies from meningitis it is her father who pays her debts which, in the last sentence of the novel, we are informed included a bill from Worms the tailor for FF257,000.
Appears in:
La Curée

Does not appear in the novel but is mentioned as the relative with whom the Marquis de Carnavant now lives.
Appears in:
La fortune des Rougons