There was a remarkably close resemblance between them, suggesting that of brother and sister.

Francois inherited, through Ursule, the face of his grandmother Adelaide.

Marthe's case was still more curious; she was an equally exact portrait of Adelaide, although Pierre Rougon had none of his mother's features distinctly marked; the physical resemblance had, as it were, passed over Pierre, to reappear in his daughter.

The similarity between husband and wife went, however, no further than their faces; if the worthy son of a steady matter-of-fact hatter was distinguishable in Francois, Marthe showed the nervousness and mental weakness of her grandmother.

Perhaps it was this combination of physical resemblance and moral dissimilarity which threw the young people into each other's arms.