They lived with one sole thought--that of making a fortune immediately, in a few hours--of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year.
Their whole beings tended to this, stubbornly, without a pause.

And they still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with that peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they have sent their children to college without deriving some personal advantage from it.
Felicite did not appear to have aged; she was still the same dark little woman, ever on the move, buzzing about like a grasshopper.

Any person walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a girl of fifteen, from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her shoulders and waist.

Even her face had scarcely undergone any change; it was simply rather more sunken, rather more suggestive of the snout of a pole-cat.
As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly respectable looking citizen, who only lacked a decent income to make him a very dignified individual.

His pale, flabby face, his heaviness, his languid manner, seemed redolent of wealth.