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THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS

By Emile Zola


Edited With Introduction By Ernest Alfred Vizetelly




INTRODUCTION

"The Fortune of the Rougons" is the initial volume of the
Rougon-Macquart series. Though it was by no means M. Zola's first essay
in fiction, it was undoubtedly his first great bid for genuine literary
fame, and the foundation of what must necessarily be regarded as his
life-work. The idea of writing the "natural and social history of a
family under the Second Empire," extending to a score of volumes, was
doubtless suggested to M. Zola by Balzac's immortal "Comedie Humaine."
He was twenty-eight years of age when this idea first occurred to him;
he was fifty-three when he at last sent the manuscript of his concluding
volume, "Dr. Pascal," to the press. He had spent five-and-twenty years
in working out his scheme, persevering with it doggedly and stubbornly,
whatever rebuffs he might encounter, whatever jeers and whatever insults
might be directed against him by the ignorant, the prejudiced, and the
hypocritical. Truth was on the march and nothing could stay it; even as,
at the present hour, its march, if slow, none the less continues athwart
another and a different crisis of the illustrious novelist's career.

It was in the early summer of 1869 that M. Zola first began the actual
writing of "The Fortune of the Rougons." It was only in the following
year, however, that the serial publication of the work commenced in
the columns of "Le Siecle," the Republican journal of most influence
in Paris in those days of the Second Empire. The Franco-German war
interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did
not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war
and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no
interest in anything. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an
ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three
years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of
literature and of public interest in literature took place. Thus, M.
Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made
many another man recoil. "The Fortune of the Rougons," and two or three
subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree
of attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of
"L'Assommoir" that he awoke, like Byron, to find himself famous.

As previously mentioned, the Rougon-Macquart series forms twenty
volumes. The last of these, "Dr. Pascal," appeared in 1893. Since
then M. Zola has written "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." Critics have
repeated _ad nauseam_ that these last works constitute a new departure
on M. Zola's part, and, so far as they formed a new series, this
is true. But the suggestion that he has in any way repented of the
Rougon-Macquart novels is ridiculous. As he has often told me of recent
years, it is, as far as possible, his plan to subordinate his style and
methods to his subject. To have written a book like "Rome," so largely
devoted to the ambitions of the Papal See, in the same way as he had
written books dealing with the drunkenness or other vices of Paris,
would have been the climax of absurdity.

Yet the publication of "Rome," was the signal for a general outcry on
the part of English and American reviewers that Zolaism, as typified by
the Rougon-Macquart series, was altogether a thing of the past. To my
thinking this is a profound error. M. Zola has always remained faithful
to himself. The only difference that I perceive between his latest
work, "Paris," and certain Rougon-Macquart volumes, is that with time,
experience and assiduity, his genius has expanded and ripened, and that
the hesitation, the groping for truth, so to say, which may be found in
some of his earlier writings, has disappeared.

At the time when "The Fortune of the Rougons" was first published, none
but the author himself can have imagined that the foundation-stone of
one of the great literary monuments of the century had just been laid.
From the "story" point of view the book is one of M. Zola's very best,
although its construction--particularly as regards the long interlude of
the idyll of Miette and Silvere--is far from being perfect. Such a work
when first issued might well bring its author a measure of popularity,
but it could hardly confer fame. Nowadays, however, looking backward,
and bearing in mind that one here has the genius of M. Zola's lifework,
"The Fortune of the Rougons" becomes a book of exceptional interest
and importance. This has been so well understood by French readers that
during the last six or seven years the annual sales of the work have
increased threefold. Where, over a course of twenty years, 1,000 copies
were sold, 2,500 and 3,000 are sold to-day. How many living English
novelists can say the same of their early essays in fiction, issued more
than a quarter of a century ago?

I may here mention that at the last date to which I have authentic
figures, that is, Midsummer 1897 (prior, of course, to what is called
"L'Affaire Dreyfus"), there had been sold of the entire Rougon-Macquart
series (which had begun in 1871) 1,421,000 copies. These were of the
ordinary Charpentier editions of the French originals. By adding thereto
several _editions de luxe_ and the widely-circulated popular illustrated
editions of certain volumes, the total amounts roundly to 2,100,000.
"Rome," "Lourdes," "Paris," and all M. Zola's other works, apart from
the "Rougon-Macquart" series, together with the translations into a
dozen different languages--English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch,
Danish, Portuguese, Bohemian, Hungarian, and others--are not included
in the above figures. Otherwise the latter might well be doubled. Nor
is account taken of the many serial issues which have brought M. Zola's
views to the knowledge of the masses of all Europe.

It is, of course, the celebrity attaching to certain of M. Zola's
literary efforts that has stimulated the demand for his other writings.
Among those which are well worthy of being read for their own sakes, I
would assign a prominent place to the present volume. Much of the story
element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M. Zola as a
genuine satirist and humorist. The Rougons' yellow drawing-room and
its habitues, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife
Felicite, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold. The whole account,
indeed, of the town of Plassans, its customs and its notabilities, is
satire of the most effective kind, because it is satire true to life,
and never degenerates into mere caricature.

It is a rather curious coincidence that, at the time when M. Zola was
thus portraying the life of Provence, his great contemporary, bosom
friend, and rival for literary fame, the late Alphonse Daudet, should
have been producing, under the title of "The Provencal Don Quixote,"
that unrivalled presentment of the foibles of the French Southerner,
with everyone nowadays knows as "Tartarin of Tarascon." It is possible
that M. Zola, while writing his book, may have read the instalments of
"Le Don Quichotte Provencal" published in the Paris "Figaro," and it may
be that this perusal imparted that fillip to his pen to which we owe
the many amusing particulars that he gives us of the town of Plassans.
Plassans, I may mention, is really the Provencal Aix, which M. Zola's
father provided with water by means of a canal still bearing his name.
M. Zola himself, though born in Paris, spent the greater part of his
childhood there. Tarascon, as is well known, never forgave Alphonse
Daudet for his "Tartarin"; and in a like way M. Zola, who doubtless
counts more enemies than any other literary man of the period, has none
bitterer than the worthy citizens of Aix. They cannot forget or forgive
the rascally Rougon-Macquarts.

The name Rougon-Macquart has to me always suggested that splendid and
amusing type of the cynical rogue, Robert Macaire. But, of course, both
Rougon and Macquart are genuine French names and not inventions. Indeed,
several years ago I came by chance upon them both, in an old French deed
which I was examining at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. I
there found mention of a Rougon family and a Macquart family dwelling
virtually side by side in the same village. This, however, was in
Champagne, not in Provence. Both families farmed vineyards for a once
famous abbey in the vicinity of Epernay, early in the seventeenth
century. To me, personally, this trivial discovery meant a great deal.
It somehow aroused my interest in M. Zola and his works. Of the latter I
had then only glanced through two or three volumes. With M. Zola himself
I was absolutely unacquainted. However, I took the liberty to inform him
of my little discovery; and afterwards I read all the books that he had
published. Now, as it is fairly well known, I have given the greater
part of my time, for several years past, to the task of familiarising
English readers with his writings. An old deed, a chance glance,
followed by the great friendship of my life and years of patient labour.
If I mention this matter, it is solely with the object of endorsing the
truth of the saying that the most insignificant incidents frequently
influence and even shape our careers.

But I must come back to "The Fortune of the Rougons." It has, as I have
said, its satirical and humorous side; but it also contains a strong
element of pathos. The idyll of Miette and Silvere is a very touching
one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in
Provence at the period M. Zola selects for his narrative. Miette is
a frank child of nature; Silvere, her lover, in certain respects
foreshadows, a quarter of a century in advance, the Abbe Pierre Fromont
of "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." The environment differs, of course,
but germs of the same nature may readily be detected in both characters.
As for the other personages of M. Zola's book--on the one hand, Aunt
Dide, Pierre Rougon, his wife, Felicite, and their sons Eugene, Aristide
and Pascal, and, on the other, Macquart, his daughter Gervaise of
"L'Assommoir," and his son Jean of "La Terre" and "La Debacle," together
with the members of the Mouret branch of the ravenous, neurotic, duplex
family--these are analysed or sketched in a way which renders their
subsequent careers, as related in other volumes of the series,
thoroughly consistent with their origin and their up-bringing. I venture
to asset that, although it is possible to read individual volumes of
the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting others, nobody can really
understand any one of these books unless he makes himself acquainted
with the alpha and the omega of the edifice, that is, "The Fortune of
the Rougons" and "Dr. Pascal."

With regard to the present English translation, it is based on one made
for my father several years ago. But to convey M. Zola's meaning more
accurately I have found it necessary to alter, on an average, at least
one sentence out of every three. Thus, though I only claim to edit the
volume, it is, to all intents and purposes, quite a new English version
of M. Zola's work.

E. A. V. MERTON, SURREY: August, 1898.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I wish to explain how a family, a small group of human beings, conducts
itself in a given social system after blossoming forth and giving birth
to ten or twenty members, who, though they may appear, at the first
glance, profoundly dissimilar one from the other, are, as analysis
demonstrates, most closely linked together from the point of view of
affinity. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.

By resolving the duplex question of temperament and environment, I shall
endeavour to discover and follow the thread of connection which leads
mathematically from one man to another. And when I have possession of
every thread, and hold a complete social group in my hands, I shall
show this group at work, participating in an historical period; I shall
depict it in action, with all its varied energies, and I shall analyse
both the will power of each member, and the general tendency of the
whole.

The great characteristic of the Rougon-Macquarts, the group or family
which I propose to study, is their ravenous appetite, the great
outburst of our age which rushes upon enjoyment. Physiologically the
Rougon-Macquarts represent the slow succession of accidents pertaining
to the nerves or the blood, which befall a race after the first organic
lesion, and, according to environment, determine in each individual
member of the race those feelings, desires and passions--briefly, all
the natural and instinctive manifestations peculiar to humanity--whose
outcome assumes the conventional name of virtue or vice. Historically
the Rougon-Macquarts proceed from the masses, radiate throughout the
whole of contemporary society, and ascend to all sorts of positions by
the force of that impulsion of essentially modern origin, which sets the
lower classes marching through the social system. And thus the dramas of
their individual lives recount the story of the Second Empire, from the
ambuscade of the Coup d'Etat to the treachery of Sedan.

For three years I had been collecting the necessary documents for this
long work, and the present volume was even written, when the fall of the
Bonapartes, which I needed artistically, and with, as if by fate, I
ever found at the end of the drama, without daring to hope that it
would prove so near at hand, suddenly occurred and furnished me with
the terrible but necessary denouement for my work. My scheme is, at
this date, completed; the circle in which my characters will revolve
is perfected; and my work becomes a picture of a departed reign, of a
strange period of human madness and shame.

This work, which will comprise several episodes, is therefore, in
my mind, the natural and social history of a family under the Second
Empire. And the first episode, here called "The Fortune of the Rougons,"
should scientifically be entitled "The Origin."

EMILE ZOLA PARIS, July 1, 1871.





THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS



CHAPTER I

On quitting Plassans by the Rome Gate, on the southern side of the town,
you will find, on the right side of the road to Nice, and a little way
past the first suburban houses, a plot of land locally known as the Aire
Saint-Mittre.

This Aire Saint-Mittre is of oblong shape and on a level with the
footpath of the adjacent road, from which it is separated by a strip of
trodden grass. A narrow blind alley fringed with a row of hovels borders
it on the right; while on the left, and at the further end, it is closed
in by bits of wall overgrown with moss, above which can be seen the
top branches of the mulberry-trees of the Jas-Meiffren--an extensive
property with an entrance lower down the road. Enclosed upon three
sides, the Aire Saint-Mittre leads nowhere, and is only crossed by
people out for a stroll.

In former times it was a cemetery under the patronage of Saint-Mittre, a
greatly honoured Provencal saint; and in 1851 the old people of Plassans
could still remember having seen the wall of the cemetery standing,
although the place itself had been closed for years. The soil had been
so glutted with corpses that it had been found necessary to open a new
burial-ground at the other end of town. Then the old abandoned cemetery
had been gradually purified by the dark thick-set vegetation which had
sprouted over it every spring. The rich soil, in which the gravediggers
could no longer delve without turning up some human remains, was
possessed of wondrous fertility. The tall weeds overtopped the walls
after the May rains and the June sunshine so as to be visible from the
high road; while inside, the place presented the appearance of a deep,
dark green sea studded with large blossoms of singular brilliancy.
Beneath one's feet amidst the close-set stalks one could feel that the
damp soil reeked and bubbled with sap.

Among the curiosities of the place at that time were some large
pear-trees, with twisted and knotty boughs; but none of the housewives
of Plassans cared to pluck the large fruit which grew upon them. Indeed,
the townspeople spoke of this fruit with grimaces of disgust. No such
delicacy, however, restrained the suburban urchins, who assembled in
bands at twilight and climbed the walls to steal the pears, even before
they were ripe.

The trees and the weeds with their vigorous growth had rapidly
assimilated all the decomposing matter in the old cemetery of
Saint-Mittre; the malaria rising from the human remains interred
there had been greedily absorbed by the flowers and the fruit; so that
eventually the only odour one could detect in passing by was the strong
perfume of wild gillyflowers. This had merely been a question of a few
summers.

At last the townspeople determined to utilise this common property,
which had long served no purpose. The walls bordering the roadway and
the blind alley were pulled down; the weeds and the pear-trees uprooted;
the sepulchral remains were removed; the ground was dug deep, and such
bones as the earth was willing to surrender were heaped up in a
corner. For nearly a month the youngsters, who lamented the loss of
the pear-trees, played at bowls with the skulls; and one night
some practical jokers even suspended femurs and tibias to all the
bell-handles of the town. This scandal, which is still remembered at
Plassans, did not cease until the authorities decided to have the bones
shot into a hole which had been dug for the purpose in the new cemetery.
All work, however, is usually carried out with discreet dilatoriness
in country towns, and so during an entire week the inhabitants saw a
solitary cart removing these human remains as if they had been mere
rubbish. The vehicle had to cross Plassans from end to end, and owing to
the bad condition of the roads fragments of bones and handfuls of rich
mould were scattered at every jolt. There was not the briefest religious
ceremony, nothing but slow and brutish cartage. Never before had a town
felt so disgusted.

For several years the old cemetery remained an object of terror.
Although it adjoined the main thoroughfare and was open to all comers,
it was left quite deserted, a prey to fresh vegetable growth. The local
authorities, who had doubtless counted on selling it and seeing
houses built upon it, were evidently unable to find a purchaser. The
recollection of the heaps of bones and the cart persistently jolting
through the streets may have made people recoil from the spot; or
perhaps the indifference that was shown was due to the indolence, the
repugnance to pulling down and setting up again, which is characteristic
of country people. At all events the authorities still retained
possession of the ground, and at last forgot their desire to dispose of
it. They did not even erect a fence round it, but left it open to all
comers. Then, as time rolled on, people gradually grew accustomed to
this barren spot; they would sit on the grass at the edges, walk about,
or gather in groups. When the grass had been worn away and the
trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery resembled a
badly-levelled public square. As if the more effectually to efface the
memory of all objectionable associations, the inhabitants slowly changed
the very appellation of the place, retaining but the name of the saint,
which was likewise applied to the blind alley dipping down at one corner
of the field. Thus there was the Aire Saint-Mittre and the Impasse
Saint-Mittre.

All this dates, however, from some considerable time back. For more
than thirty years now the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a different
appearance. One day the townspeople, far too inert and indifferent to
derive any advantage from it, let it, for a trifling consideration,
to some suburban wheelwrights, who turned it into a wood-yard. At the
present day it is still littered with huge pieces of timber thirty or
forty feet long, lying here and there in piles, and looking like lofty
overturned columns. These piles of timber, disposed at intervals from
one end of the yard to the other, are a continual source of delight
to the local urchins. In some places the ground is covered with fallen
wood, forming a kind of uneven flooring over which it is impossible to
walk, unless one balance one's self with marvellous dexterity. Troops of
children amuse themselves with this exercise all day long. You will see
them jumping over the big beams, walking in Indian file along the narrow
ends, or else crawling astride them; various games which generally
terminate in blows and bellowings. Sometimes, too, a dozen of them will
sit, closely packed one against the other, on the thin end of a pole
raised a few feet from the ground, and will see-saw there for hours
together. The Aire Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation ground,
where for more than a quarter of a century all the little suburban
ragamuffins have been in the habit of wearing out the seats of their
breeches.

The strangeness of the place is increased by the circumstance that
wandering gipsies, by a sort of traditional custom always select the
vacant portions of it for their encampments. Whenever any caravan
arrives at Plassans it takes up its quarters on the Aire Saint-Mittre.
The place is consequently never empty. There is always some strange band
there, some troop of wild men and withered women, among whom groups of
healthy-looking children roll about on the grass. These people live
in the open air, regardless of everybody, setting their pots boiling,
eating nameless things, freely displaying their tattered garments, and
sleeping, fighting, kissing, and reeking with mingled filth and misery.

The field, formerly so still and deserted, save for the buzzing of
hornets around the rich blossoms in the heavy sunshine, has thus become
a very rowdy spot, resounding with the noisy quarrels of the gipsies and
the shrill cries of the urchins of the suburb. In one corner there is a
primitive saw-mill for cutting the timber, the noise from which serves
as a dull, continuous bass accompaniment to the sharp voices. The wood
is placed on two high tressels, and a couple of sawyers, one of whom
stands aloft on the timber itself, while the other underneath is half
blinded by the falling sawdust, work a large saw to and fro for
hours together, with rigid machine-like regularity, as if they were
wire-pulled puppets. The wood they saw is stacked, plank by plank, along
the wall at the end, in carefully arranged piles six or eight feet high,
which often remain there several seasons, and constitute one of the
charms of the Aire Saint-Mittre. Between these stacks are mysterious,
retired little alleys leading to a broader path between the timber and
the wall, a deserted strip of verdure whence only small patches of
sky can be seen. The vigorous vegetation and the quivering, deathlike
stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path. In all the
country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with languor,
solitude, and love. It is a most delightful place for love-making. When
the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have been heaped up in
this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens that one's foot comes
across some fragment of a skull lying concealed in the damp turf.

Nobody, however, now thinks of the bodies that once slept under that
turf. In the daytime only the children go behind the piles of wood when
playing at hide and seek. The green path remains virginal, unknown to
others who see nought but the wood-yard crowded with timber and grey
with dust. In the morning and afternoon, when the sun is warm, the whole
place swarms with life. Above all the turmoil, above the ragamuffins
playing among the timber, and the gipsies kindling fires under their
cauldrons, the sharp silhouette of the sawyer mounted on his beam stands
out against the sky, moving to and fro with the precision of clockwork,
as if to regulate the busy activity that has sprung up in this spot
once set apart for eternal slumber. Only the old people who sit on the
planks, basking in the setting sun, speak occasionally among themselves
of the bones which they once saw carted through the streets of Plassans
by the legendary tumbrel.

When night falls the Aire Saint-Mittre loses its animation, and looks
like some great black hole. At the far end one may just espy the dying
embers of the gipsies' fires, and at times shadows slink noiselessly
into the dense darkness. The place becomes quite sinister, particularly
in winter time.

One Sunday evening, at about seven o'clock, a young man stepped lightly
from the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and, closely skirting the walls, took
his way among the timber in the wood-yard. It was in the early part of
December, 1851. The weather was dry and cold. The full moon shone with
that sharp brilliancy peculiar to winter moons. The wood-yard did not
have the forbidding appearance which it wears on rainy nights; illumined
by stretches of white light, and wrapped in deep and chilly silence, it
spread around with a soft, melancholy aspect.

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