Like the people of the Faubourg, he thought that his mother was a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and feared she would end by squandering all her money, if he did not take steps to prevent it.

What gave him the finishing stroke was the dishonesty of the gardener who cultivated the land.
At this, in one day, the unruly child was transformed into a thrifty, selfish lad, hurriedly matured, as regards his instincts, by the strange improvident life which he could no longer bear to see around him without a feeling of anguish.

Those vegetables, from the sale of which the market-gardener derived the largest profits, really belonged to him; the wine which his mother's offspring drank, the bread they ate, also belonged to him.

The whole house, the entire fortune, was his by right; according to his boorish logic, he alone, the legitimate son, was the heir.

And as his riches were in danger, as everybody was greedily gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means of turning them all out--mother, brother, sister, servants--and of succeeding immediately to his inheritance.
The conflict was a cruel one; the lad knew that he must first strike his mother.