Aristide Saccard (also known as Aristide Rougon)

He is the youngest son of Pierre Rougon.
In La fortune des Rougons he is noted as always longing to make a rapid fortune. He spent two years idling at university in Paris before being brought back to Plassans and married off to Angèle Sicardot. They had one son, Maxime. He spent several years of idleness in Plassans, and spent ten years working at the sub-prefecture there. He published a rival newspaper to Vuillet but could not make up his mind which side to take during the insurrection and so faked an accident to avoid having to publish. His mother helped him come down on the right side in the end. He could have saved his young cousin Silvère from death but chose not to.

One of the main male characters in La Curée. He arrived in Paris from Plassans shortly after Napoleon III had assumed power. He brought his wife Angèle and young daughter Clotilde. His son Maxime had been left in Plassans. For two years he works in the city council living very frugally on the advice of his brother Eugène. It is at this time, also on his brothers advice, that he changes his name from Rougon to Saccard. He is driven by greed and when his wife dies in 1854 he takes the opportunity to marry for money and takes as his wife Renée. Clotilde is dispatched back to Plassans and his son Maxime joins them in Paris. Aristide immerses himself in building his fortune by a series of corrupt property deals and is not averse to defrauding his wife in order to support his goals. His relationship with his wife is driven purely by finance and she is merely another pawn in his game. He is not particularly upset when he disovers she has had an incestuous relationship with Maxime. By the end of the novel he is reconciled with his son as if nothing had happened.

Referred to in Le ventre de Paris as Lisa's cousin who she never saw stating that the “…two families are on bad terms”, and that she had seen him in a carriage and he looked “..jolly cunning”.