Oxford World’s Classics

by Emile Zola

  39 Henri V: the Comte de Chambord, grandson of King Charles X (r. 1824–30), was the Legitimist pretender to the throne — and became known as Henri V — after the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty by the Orléans branch of the royal family in 1830. He was the last heir of the elder branch of the Bourbons.

  40 Rougon’s mother: Félicité Rougon is one of the principal characters of The Fortune of the Rougons (the novel that describes the origins of the Rougon-Macquart family) and The Conquest of Plassans, and she will reappear in Doctor Pascal, the final novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. Ruthlessly ambitious, her scheming ensures that her husband Pierre Rougon seizes power in Plassans in concert with the coup d’état in Paris.

  48 imaginable: the character of Clorinde Balbi is modelled partly on Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione (1837–99), better known as La Castiglione. Born to an aristocratic family from La Spezia, she achieved notoriety as a mistress of Napoleon III in 1856–7. She was known for her beauty and her flamboyant entrances in elaborate dress at the Imperial Court. She used her influence to agitate for the unification of Italy.

  50 political refugees: the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, commonly called the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, was a constituent land of the Austrian Empire. It was created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna in recognition of the Austrian House of Habsburg-Lorraine’s rights to Lombardy and the former Republic of Venice after the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed in 1805, had collapsed. It was finally dissolved in 1866 when its remaining territory fell to the Kingdom of Italy. Patriots fighting for the liberation of their country were forced into exile.

  56 Variétés: the Théâtre des Variétés opened in June 1807 on the Boulevard Montmartre. It was there that the most famous comic operas of Jacques Offenbach were first performed. It figures prominently in Zola’s novel Nana (1880).

  61 Officer of the Legion of Honour: see note to p. 37.

  Knight of the Legion of Honour: see note to p. 37.

  63 queen: see note to p. 28.

  65 later: in 1856, Morny was sent as special envoy to the coronation of Alexander II of Russia and brought home a wife, whom he had married in St Petersburg on 19 January 1857, Princess Sofia Trubetskaya.

  Belgrave Square: exiled in England, the Comte de Chambord (see note to p. 39) received over 300 Legitimists (including the writer and politician Chateaubriand) who had come from France to pay homage to him, in November–December 1843, at his home in Belgrave Square in London.

  67 paintings like that: in his art criticism, especially his Salon of 1866, Zola attacked establishment painters like Alexandre Cabanel (1823–89), who painted historical, classical, and religious subjects in the academic style, and was reputedly the Emperor’s favourite painter, and championed painters such as Édouard Manet (1832–83), whom he regarded as ‘naturalists’ in their vigour, their discarding of the shackles of convention, and their direct engagement with contemporary life.

  68 tu: the familiar second-person singular pronoun which, with its related words and forms, is used when addressing relatives, close friends, and children.

  72 three to four hundred thousand people: an enormous figure given that the official population of Paris at the time was a million and a half.

  73 floods: late May and early June 1856 was marked in France by a sudden and massive rise in the water levels of major French rivers. The flood of 1856 went down as one of the major floods in the history of France. The Emperor visited badly affected areas and instigated financial assistance for victims and for reconstruction.

  79 anybody: David Bell comments: ‘The goal of the early Bonapartist movement was to mime republicanism so closely that, in the eyes of the dangerous classes (the proletariat), Napoleon and the republic appeared synonymous’ (‘Political Representation: Son Excellence Eugène Rougon’, in Bell, Models of Power: Politics and Economics in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 10).

  81 Princess Mathilde … Princess Marie … King Jérôme, Prince Napoleon: Princess Mathilde was a daughter of Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharina of Württemberg. Princess Marie was the granddaughter of Napoleon’s brother Lucien. Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte was Napoleon’s youngest brother. He reigned as Jérôme I, King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1813. After 1848, when his nephew, Louis-Napoleon, became president of the Second Republic, he served in several official roles, including Marshal of France from 1850 onward, and President of the Senate in 1852. Prince Napoleon was Jérôme’s son.

  90 Joint Tribunal: in February 1852 a Joint Tribunal (consisting of representatives of the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, and War) was set up in each department to determine the fate of those who had actively opposed the coup d’état of 2 December. The Tribunal ordered a large number of deportations. See note to p. 327.

  92 Dragées du baptême: several Parisian theatres put on stage works related to the christening. These included the operetta Les Dragées du baptême, by the nineteenth century’s most popular musical-theatre composer, Jacques Offenbach (1819–80). This operetta was performed for the first time on 14 June 1856 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.

  97 taken aback: the Orléanist Duc de Broglie, a bitter enemy of the Second Empire, used his acceptance speech as a member of the Académie française, in 1856, to attack the Empire.

  98 nothing more: see the Introduction, p. xxiii.

  118 circular: it was Adolphe Billault (Minister of the Interior, 1854–8) who, before the legislative elections of 21 June and 5 July 1857, sent to all prefects a circular letter directing them to do everything in their power to ensure the victory of ‘official’ candidates. In effect, he encouraged a campaign of intimidation against opposition candidates and their supporters.

  120 larger scale: Delestang is here expressing views held by the Emperor and outlined in his L’Extinction du pauperisme (1844).

  122 effective: a second circular from Billault on 11 June 1857 enjoined prefects to make it clear to mayors that their refusal to support governmental candidates would be incompatible with their duties as functionaries.

  128 lucid lunatic: Zola read and took notes on a work by Dr Ulysse Trélat, La Folie lucide (1861), which he used for his characterization of Mouret and his wife in The Conquest of Plassans (1874). A ‘lucid lunatic’ is a person who, though mad, appears not to be so because he/she expresses him/herself lucidly.

  130 Austria: an allusion to the so-called ‘Plombières Agreement’ of 1858. This was a secret verbal agreement concluded at Plombières-les-Bains between Napoleon III and the prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, Count Cavour (1810–61). Cavour was a leading figure in the movement towards Italian unification. His agreement with Napoleon III opened the way for the Franco-Piedmontese military alliance of January 1859, and for the subsequent war against Austria that became an important step along the path to Italian unification by removing Austrian authority and influence from the Italian peninsula. In exchange for Louis-Napoleon’s help, the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice were allowed to be annexed to France.

  132 Compiègne: the chateau at Compiègne, surrounded by an immense forest, is located in the Oise department. From 1856, Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie made it their autumn residence.

  139 Grand Cross: a red sash worn diagonally across the chest denoted the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour; see note to p. 37.

  143 soup à la Crécy … financière sauce: potage Crécy is a carrot soup; sauce financière is a classic French compound sauce made from a demi-glace flavoured with chicken stock, truffle essence, and Madeira or Sauternes wine.

  146 baguenaudier: also known as Chinese Rings, this is a disentanglement puzzle featuring a loop which must be disentangled from a sequence of rings on interlinked pillars.

  147 Les Plaideurs: a comedy in three acts, written in 1668, by Jean Racine (1639–99). English title: The Litigants.

  148 bouchon: a game involving coins placed on a cork, which had to
be hit with a pallet.

  152 Strasbourg and Boulogne: Louis-Napoleon made two attempts to seize power before his successful coup in December 1851. In 1836 he planned for an uprising to begin in Strasbourg. The colonel of a regiment was brought over to his cause. On 29 October 1836, Louis-Napoleon arrived in Strasbourg, in the uniform of an officer of artillery, and rallied the colonel’s regiment to his side. The prefecture was seized, and the prefect arrested. But the general commanding the garrison escaped and called in a loyal regiment, which surrounded the mutineers. The mutineers surrendered and Louis-Napoleon fled. He made a second attempt at a coup in 1840 while living in exile in London. In the summer of 1840 he bought weapons and uniforms and had proclamations printed, gathered a contingent of about sixty armed men, hired a ship called the Edinburgh-Castle, and on 6 August 1840, sailed across the Channel to the port of Boulogne. The attempted coup turned into an even greater fiasco than the Strasbourg mutiny. The mutineers were stopped by the customs agents, the soldiers of the garrison refused to join, the mutineers were surrounded on the beach, one was killed, and the others arrested. Both the British and French press heaped ridicule on Louis-Napoleon and his plot. He was put on trial and sentenced to life in prison in the fortress of Ham in the department of the Somme.

  184 the boss: Gilquin’s description evokes the Italian nationalist Felice Orsini (who was 39 in 1857) and his young accomplice, Giovanni Pieri, who was staying at the Hôtel de France et de Champagne, 132 Rue Montmartre. In 1856 Orsini began to plot the assassination of Napoleon III, impelled by the notion that the Emperor’s death would trigger in France a revolution that would spread to Italy.

  185 Badinguet: on 25 May 1846, with the help of his doctor and other friends on the outside, Louis-Napoleon disguised himself as a labourer carrying lumber, and walked out of the prison of Ham. His enemies later derisively called him ‘Badinguet’, after the name of the labourer whose identity he had assumed. A carriage was waiting to take him to the coast and then by boat to England.

  190 a bomb splinter: on the evening of 14 January 1858, as the Emperor and Empress were on their way to the theatre in the Rue Le Peletier, the precursor of the Opéra Garnier, to see Rossini’s William Tell, Orsini and his accomplices threw three bombs at the Imperial carriage. The first bomb landed among the horsemen in front of the carriage. The second bomb wounded the animals and smashed the carriage glass. The third bomb landed under the carriage and seriously wounded a policeman who was hurrying to protect the occupants. Eight people were killed and 142 wounded, though the Emperor and Empress were unhurt, and proceeded to their box in the theatre. Orsini was wounded on the right temple and stunned. He tended his wounds and returned to his lodgings, where police found him the next day. Orsini and Pieri were guillotined; their two accomplices were sentenced to hard labour for life.

  193 2 December: the Emperor took advantage of the ‘Orsini Affair’ to clamp down on the republicans. Early in February 1858, General Charles Espinasse replaced Adolphe Billault as minister of the interior. His brief tenure of that post (he was replaced in June 1858 by Claude Delangle, just as Rougon is replaced by Delestang) was marked by brutal internal repression, with the passing of the Law of General Security, and numerous deportations of political opponents of the Emperor, mainly to Algeria.

  194 tremble: this phrase was used by the Emperor himself, in a letter to General Espinasse, on 15 February 1849.

  196 remorse: the obvious allusion is to Madame Bovary. See note to p. 98.

  216 effect: General Espinasse saw each prefect individually, having determined for them in advance, arbitrarily, the number of arrests to be made in each department.

  236 galops: the galop was a lively French country dance of the nineteenth century, a forerunner of the polka.

  248 dangerous book: ‘Jacques’ designated the French peasantry. The ‘Jacquerie’ was an insurrection of peasants against the nobility in north-eastern France in 1358 — so named because of the nobles’ habit of referring contemptuously to any peasant as Jacques or Jacques Bonhomme. The distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called colporteurs became common with the distribution of contending religious tracts and books during the religious controversies of the Reformation. In addition to controversial works, the itinerant colporteurs also spread widely cheap editions of popular works of the day (not necessarily religious literature) to an increasingly literate rural population which had little access to the bookshops of the cities. A circular dated 28 July 1852 had forbidden the distribution of any printed work not approved by the departmental prefect. Another circular, dated 11 September 1854, decreed that approval of publications should be renewed annually. A special committee maintained a register of approved works. Zola describes a reading of a dramatized history of the French peasantry, entitled The Misfortunes and Triumph of Jacques Bonhomme, in Part One, chapter 5, of Earth, his novel of peasant life.

  251 budget: Zola here transposes to Saint-Cloud a debate that took place in the legislative body on 27 April 1858.

  new system of nobility: the debate on this proposed new system took place in the legislative body on 7 May 1858. It was approved by a large majority.

  254 warning: press laws introduced in February 1852 required government authorization for the publication of a newspaper, which had to be renewed if the owner or editor changed. Every newspaper had to pay a security deposit and a tax of six centimes per issue. These measures were aimed particularly at the political press, as was a system of warnings, fines, and threats of suspension. In 1868 revised press laws abolished the requirement of government authorization for the founding of a newspaper, but the deposit and the tax were maintained and the government censors maintained their close scrutiny of newpapers’ content. Le Siècle was one of the few opposition newspapers, and the most widely read newspaper in Paris during the Second Empire. Zola published The Fortune of the Rougons in serial form in Le Siècle from 28 June to 10 August 1870 and (after a hiatus caused by the Franco-Prussian War) from 18 to 21 March 1871; The Conquest of Plassans was serialized in Le Siècle from 24 February to 25 April 1874; His Excellency Eugène Rougon was serialized in Le Siècle from 25 January to 11 March 1876.

  259 a long time yet: this tirade is an accurate reflection of the reactionary views of Eugene Rouher (1814–84), who became president of the Council of State on 23 June 1863 and, on the death of Adophe Billault on 18 October 1863, minister of state and chief spokesman for the Emperor before the legislative body.

  267 Cavour: see note to p. 130.

  317 debated: a decree dated 24 November 1860 restored to the Senate and the legislative body the right (suppressed in 1852) to debate and vote on the Emperor’s annual ‘address’, at the beginning of the parliamentary session.

  322 crime: in the legislative elections of 21 June 1857, five Republican deputies were elected: Jules Favre, Alfred Darimon, Louis Hémon, Émile Ollivier, and Ernest Picard. They became known as ‘the Group of Five’. The speech evoked here closely resembles that of Jules Favre in March 1861. It was Ernest Picard who, in the debate on the address in March 1865, shouted to Rouher, ‘What happened on 2 December was a crime!’

  323 country: Zola places here, in 1861, the ‘liberal’ evolution of the Empire, which gathered pace throughout the 1860s.

  reintroduced: the rostrum was not in fact restored until 1867.

  327 Cayenne and Lambèse: Lambessa (Algeria) and Cayenne (New Caledonia) were the two penal colonies to which political prisoners were deported. The protagonist of The Belly of Paris is an escapee from Cayenne (the notorious ‘Devil’s Island’).

  331 heights: following liberal reforms in 1860, Napoleon III appointed Jules Baroche minister without portfolio, while he was still president of the Council of State, in order to shore up his support in parliament. Rougon’s speech echoes that made by Baroche on 14 March 1861. A key figure, who rose to great heights, in the final years of the Empire was Émile Ollivier. Elected to the legislative body in 1857, Ollivier became one of
the Republican minority of ‘Five’ (see note to p. 322), but when the Emperor made liberal concessions in November 1860, Ollivier offered to support him if he would establish representative government. Ollivier broke with the Republicans and began working for a ‘liberal Empire’ that would incorporate elements of parliamentary government. On 2 January 1870, Napoleon appointed Ollivier minister of justice at the head of a government chosen from the leaders of a majority in parliament. Ollivier drew up a new constitution that was approved in a plebiscite by nearly 70 per cent of the voters, and he set up numerous commissions to prepare the complete reform of such areas as labour, education, and law. He seemed to have transformed the Second Empire from despotism to constitutional monarchy without bloodshed or violence. His work was terminated by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War little more than six months after he came to power.

  332 treaties of 1815: the Treaty of Paris of 1815 was signed on 20 November 1815 following the defeat and second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. In addition to the definitive peace treaty between France and Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, four additional conventions and the act confirming the neutrality of Switzerland were signed on the same day. The Quadruple Alliance was reinstated in a separate treaty also signed on 20 November 1815, introducing a new concept in European diplomacy, the peacetime congress ‘for the maintenance of peace in Europe’ on the pattern of the Congress of Vienna, which had been concluded on 9 June 1815.