Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 43
Palais-Bourbon: housing the National Assembly, i.e. the French parliament, immediately across the river from the Place de la Concorde.
Rue de Bourgogne: just behind the National Assembly, in the seventh arrondissement.
La Plume: see Introduction, p. xvii.
Duroy enjoys himself: the original French here is Duroy s’amuse, quite possibly a wickedly topical reference to Paul Bonnetain’s notorious novel about onanism (Chariot s’amuse), published in 1883, the year before Maupassant started writing Bel-Ami. The other title Maupassant mischievously evokes here is that of Victor Hugo’s 1832 play, Le Roi s’amuse.
Bois du Vésinet: Le Vésinet is just to the west of Paris, in the bend of the Seine.
Gastine Renette: famous gun-maker with a shooting range on the Allée d’Antin (which is now the Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt), frequented by Maupassant himself.
from Le Cannet to Golfe Juan: to the north-east of Cannes.
the Îies de Lérins: the Île Sainte-Marguerite and the smaller Île Saint-Honorat, the former barely 1 km. offshore.
the Esterel: i.e. the Massif de L’Esterel, the range of hills south-west of Cannes towards Saint-Raphael, culminating in Mont Vinaigre (618 m.). Given the latter’s distance from the sea, the ‘pyramid-shaped mountain’ in question here is probably the Pic de l’Ours.
Le Voltaire: see Introduction, p. xvii.
Comte de Paris: still, today, the title assumed by the pretender to the French throne. The very rich Orléanist descendant referred to here, born in 1838, had been allowed back into France in 1872, claiming the title of Philippe VII from 1883 until his death in 1894.
Bazaine: Marshal Achille Bazaine (1811–88) had commanded the army of the Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War. His surrender at Metz, with 170,000 officers and men, had been such a military catastrophe that in 1873 he was condemned to death before the sentence was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment. But he managed to escape from the lie Sainte-Marguerite, spending the rest of his life in Madrid.
Le Colbert’… ‘La Dévastation: a mixture of real and imaginary names. See Introduction, p. xviii.
May the 10th, which is a Saturday: it has been pointed out that this was only the case in 1879. The chronology of the novel places Duroy’s marriage in May 1882, Forestier having died the previous spring.
fortifications: built 1840–4, creating a new fortified boundary just outside the line of the present-day boulevard périphérique; beyond it was a (military) zone on which no building was officially allowed.
Chatou: another of Maupassant’s riverside haunts, 2 km. to the east of Le Vésinet (see note to p. 118).
forest of Saint-Germain: filling the curve of the Seine north of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, some 20 km. west of Paris.
Poissy: 5 km. north-west of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Mantes: i.e. Mantes-la-Jolie, approx. 60 km. north-west of Paris; from there to Rouen, the railway more or less follows the Seine.
Cheops pyramid: the Great Pyramid of Cheops (built in 2600 BC) is nearly 140 m. high. A 51m. fretted ironwork spire (described here as ‘ugly’ by the same Maupassant who would later develop a particularly ferocious loathing for the Eiffel Tower) was added to Rouen cathedral in the nineteenth century, thereby doubling its height.
La Foudre: literally ‘The Thunderbolt’. This was a powerful steam-engine supplying Rouen with water, with a 136m. high chimney. The reference to the ‘smoky horde of factories’ reminds us that Rouen was France’s fifth largest city in the nineteenth century, and a major industrial centre (notably for ship-building and metallurgy). Most of this Saint-Sever sector, on the south side (i.e. the left bank) of the Seine, was destroyed during the Second World War.
Paul and Virginie: the idealized young lovers in Bernadin de Saint-Pierre’s classic novel, Paul et Virginie (1787). Both its subject and its exotic location (Mauritius) form an ironic contrast to the setting and context of this scene.
Napoleon I on a yellow horse: yellow because of the faded image itself; as for the evocation of a heroic national past, such imperial nostalgia was often prevalent in conservative rural France.
Saint-Denis: formerly a village just outside Paris, now part of its northern suburbs.
raspail: a liqueur, popular at the time, invented by François-Vincent Raspail (1794–1878) who combined a career in chemistry and revolutionary politics.
one of the biggest in France: the forest of Roumare, in the bend of the Seine west of Rouen. The Michelin Guide proposes a 36-km. and two-hour round trip by car.
SGDG: it has been suggested that this acronym stands for ‘Sans Garantie Du Gouvernement’ (i.e. no government liability). A possibly wittier alternative is the ‘Syndicat Général de la Direction Générale’ (i.e. the management union).
Sèvres: across the river, south of the Bois de Boulogne. that word: i.e. forestier, the French for ‘forester’.
Tortoni’s: famous café at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens (no. 22) and the Rue Taitbout. Established by Velloni at the very end of the eighteenth century, it had been taken over by another Italian who gave it his name. As early as 1840 it was known for its ices (more like sorbet than ice-cream) and remained fashionable in spite of its humble decor. It was one of Flaubert’s favourite haunts. It closed down in 1894.
Watteau: the painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), whose fêtes galantes and fêtes champêtres are filled with young women of porcelain beauty.
senators … deputies: the names appear to have been invented by Maupassant who almost certainly enjoyed doing so, given the punning possibilities contained in them (‘Remontel’ has sexual connotations, ‘Rissolin’ culinary ones, etc.).
names: also probably invented (see previous note). At one point in his drafting, Maupassant called Crèvecœur ‘Percecote’, as appropriate a name for a man with a rapier as Carvin.
Holy Trinity: the Église de la Trinité, in the ninth arrondissement; and situated on what is later called the ‘vast square and all the streets that run into it’ (p. 208), i.e. the Place d’Estienne-d’Orve (so named in i860 but incorrectly called in the novel (p. 201) the ‘Place de la Trinité’, though the church does open out onto a small terrace–with the fountain to which Maupassant refers–which has always been known as the ‘Square de la Trinité’). It should be noted that, in having her choose this particular rendezvous (Maupassant had orginally planned for it to be at the church of Saint-Augustin, at the end of her street), Mme Walter goes a symbolically considerable distance away from her own conjugal home and towards Duroy’s stamping-ground. This had been precisely his strategy: ‘first at a place she would choose, then, later, somewhere he chose’.
twenty years ago, or twenty-five: it was completed, in fact, in November 1867, fifteen years before. ‘All its details’ included decorations for which a number of Maupassant’s artist friends had been responsible. In drawing attention to this church, the novel mimes the advertising mechanisms of the échos (see notes to p. 51).
Rennes: in Brittany.
Some very important things are going on: the whole of this paragraph more or less transposes events leading to the downfall of Jules Ferry’s government over the Tunisian crisis. See Introduction, pp. ix-xi.
Figuig: in the Moroccan Sahara, on the border with Algeria.
two Chambers: the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
Comte de Lambert-Sarrazin: the speech of this imagined figure bears more than a passing resemblance to the one by the Due de Broglie (1821–1901) in the same summer of 1882 as in the novel.
President of the Council: the official term for the head of the government, the equivalent of prime minister. The ‘side-whiskers’ in question belong to Jules Ferry. See Introduction, p. ix.
General Belloncle: the model for this figure is General Saussier, sent to command French troops in Tunisia on 10 October 1881.
tears of Dido, not of Juliet: the contrast here is between the way these two tragic heroines gave themselves tearfully to their lovers: Dido (in Virgil�
�s Aeneid) because she did not want to be unfaithful to the memory of her dead husband; Juliet because Romeo had killed her cousin and was about to go into exile.
Maisons: i.e. Maisons-Lafitte, another riverside hamlet (north of Saint-Germain-en-Laye).
fallen to sixty-four or sixty-five francs: the scam is based on fact: in 1879, the value of these bonds had fallen to 203 francs; by 1884 thay had shot up to 506 francs.
Rothschilds: at the time, the most powerful of all the Jewish banking families in France, collectively known as the ‘Haute Banque’. The phenomenally rapid rise of Alphonse de Rothschild (1827–1905) resulted from the enormous profits his extended family made from state loans after the battle of Waterloo.
Rue Drouot … Chaussée d’Antin: Duroy is in the ninth arrondissement. The Rue Drouot is only two blocks from the offices of La Vie française (on the Boulevard Poissonnière). By turning left up it, he can get back up the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette to his marital address in the Rue Fontaine. To reach the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin, he has to retrace his steps along the Boulevard Montmartre.
rue des Vosges: now part of the Rue des Amiraux, in the heart of the working-class eighteenth arrondissement, and a somewhat unlikely address for the Comte de Vaudrec’s lawyer.
consent: French law at the time held women to be ‘legally incapable’, thus requiring the agreement of their closest male relative in order to inherit.
Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré: the premier Parisian address, instantly recognizable as a marker of wealth and power.
a vast canvas by the Hungarian painter Karl Marcowitch: identifiable as Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900), living in France since 1870 and best known for his religious and history paintings. The picture in question evokes his gigantic Christ devant Pilate, rejected by the Salon but put on show in June 1881 at the Hôtel Sedelmeyer, 6 rue La Rochefoucauld. It was sold to an American collector in 1887 for a price rumoured to be between 150,000 and 600,000 francs.
Jacques Lenoble: revealingly, Maupassant first wrote here ‘Jacques Legrand’, too easily identifiable as (an inversion of) Georges Petit who owned a gallery at 8 rue de Sèze where he promoted modern painting. Petit is himself referred to on p. 243.
electric light: invented as recently as 1880 and thus a sign of luxury.
Jockey Club: the most élitist of the Parisian gambling-clubs, founded in 1833 (cf. note to p. 54), and situated during this period at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Rue Scribe.
famous people: more authorial inventions.
L’Officiel: i.e. the Journal Officiel, the government newspaper in which honours and awards were gazetted.
Rue des Martyrs: also in the ninth arrondissement, not very far from the Duroys’ own address.
immune from the law: a privilege enjoyed by deputies since 1875, except in cases of in flagrante delicto.
divorce: not in fact restored until the 1884 Loi Naquet. This scene in the novel takes place in 1883, at a time when the whole question of divorce was a matter of vigorous public debate.
Trouville: popular summer resort on the Normandy coast. Saint-Germain: i.e. Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Mont-Valérien: fortress on the western outskirts of the capital, just across the river from the Bois de Boulogne.
Le Pecq: at that time still a village, on the river itself, just outside Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Marly: i.e. Marly-le-Roi, due south from where they stand.
Sartrouville: across the Seine (i.e. on the right bank) towards Argenteuil.
La Roche-Guyon, east of Vernon which is some 80 km. from Paris.
20th of October: of 1883. The novel thus lasts just over three years (cf. note to 28th of June, p. 3).
bishop of Tangiers: the final transposition of the Moroccan affair (see Introduction, p. ix-xi). The establishment of the Tunisian protectorate had resulted in the creation of an archdiocese of Carthage under the aegis of Algiers under Cardinal Lavigerie (1825–92). There were also bishops of Oran and Constantine, such spiritual direction being inseparable from colonial domination. Lavigerie himself moved to Tunisia and built a cathedral on the site of the citadel of Carthage. His order of White Fathers effectively extended French influence throughout central Africa.
A SELECTION OF OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
APOLLINAIRE, Three Pre-Surrealist Plays
ALFRED JARRY, and
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
HONORÉ DE BALZAC Cousin Bette
Eugénie Grandet
Père Goriot
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE The Flowers of Evil
The Prose Poems and Fanfarlo
DENIS DIDEROT This is Not a Story and Other Stories
ALEXANDRE DUMAS (PÈRE) The Black Tulip
The Count of Monte Cristo
Louise de la Vallière
The Man in the Iron Mask
La Reine Margot
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years After
ALEXANDRE DUMAS (FILS) La Dame aux Camélias
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Madame Bovary
A Sentimental Education
Three Tales
VICTOR HUGO The Last Day of a Condemned Man and Other Prison Writings
Notre-Dame de Paris
J.-K. HUYSMANS Against Nature
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE Selected Fables
PIERRE CHODERLOS Les Liaisons dangereuses
DE LACLOS
MME DE LAFAYETTE The Princesse de Cléves
GUY DE MAUPASSANT A Day in the Country and Other Stories Mademoiselle Fifi
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE Carmen and Other Stories
BLAISE PASCAL Pensées and Other Writings
JEAN RACINE Britannicus, Phaedra, and Athaliah
EDMOND ROSTAND Cyrano de Bergerac
MARQUIS DE SADE The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales
GEORGE SAND Indiana
The Master Pipers
Mauprat
The Miller of Angibault
STENDHAL The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
JULES VERNE Around the World in Eighty Days
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas
VOLTAIRE Candide and Other Stories
Letters concerning the English Nation
ÉMILE ZOLA L’Assommoir
The Attack on the Mill
La Bête humaine
Germinal
The Ladies’ Paradise
The Masterpiece
Nana
Thérèse Raquin
Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures
Eight German Novellas
GEORG BÜCHNER Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck
J. W. VON GOETHE Elective Affinities
Erotic Poems
Faust: Part One and Part Two
E. T. A. HOFFMANN The Golden Pot and Other Tales
J. C. F. SCHILLER Don Carlos and Mary Stuart
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Orlando Furioso
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO The Decameron
MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO Orlando Innamorato
LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES The Lusíads
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quixote de la Mancha
Exemplary Stories
DANTE ALIGHIERI The Divine Comedy
Vita Nuova
BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS Nazarín
LEONARDO DA VINCI Selections from the Notebooks
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI Discourses on Livy
The Prince
MICHELANGELO Life, Letters, and Poetry
PETRARCH Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works
GIORGIO VASARI The Lives of the Artists
SERGEI AKSAKOV A Russian Gentleman
ANTON CHEKHOV Early Stories
Five Plays
The Princess and Other Stories
The Russian Master and Other Stories
The Steppe and Other Stories
Twelve Plays
Ward Number Six and Other Stories
A Woman’s Kingdom
and Other Stories
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY An Accidental Family
Crime and Punishment
Devils
A Gentle Creature and Other Stories
The Idiot
The Karamazov Brothers
Memoirs from the House of the Dead
Notes from the Underground and The Gambler