Page "La Curée" Paragraph 6

Saccard is at first unable to get the money to make his initial investments but then his wife falls victim to a terminal illness.

Even while she lies dying in the next room, Saccard ( in a brilliant scene of breathtaking callousness ) is already making arrangements to marry rich country girl Renée, who is pregnant with the child of a local labourer and whose family wishes to avoid scandal by offering a huge dowry to any man who will marry her and claim the baby as his own.

Saccard accepts and his career in speculation is born.

He sends his youngest daughter back home to Plassans and packs his older son Maxime off to a Parisian boarding school ; we meet Maxime again when he leaves school several years later and meets his new stepmother Renée, who is only a couple of years older.