In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes,
notwithstanding their advanced age. Felicite professed to feel a
presentiment that she would die rich. However, each day of poverty
weighed them down the more. When they recapitulated their vain
attempts--when they recalled their thirty years' struggle, and the
defection of their children--when they saw their airy castles end in
this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness they could only conceal by
drawing the curtains, they were overcome with bitter rage. Then, as a
consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune,
seeking all sorts of devices. Felicite would fancy herself the winner
of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while
Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation. 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.
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