Although he was still a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face less heavy, his intellect more capacious and more supple.

In him the defects of his father and his mother had advantageously reacted upon each other.

If Adelaide's nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated and lessened Rougon's full-bodied ponderosity, the latter had successfully prevented the young woman's tendency to cerebral disorder from being implanted in the child.

Pierre knew neither the passions nor the sickly ravings of Macquart's young whelps.

Very badly brought up, unruly and noisy, like all children who are not restrained during their infancy, he nevertheless possessed at bottom such sense and intelligence as would always preserve him from perpetrating any unproductive folly.
His vices, his laziness, his appetite for indulgence, lacked the instinctiveness which characterised Antoine's; he meant to cultivate and gratify them honourably and openly.