Pot Luck Read online

Perrot, Michelle (ed.), A History of Private Life, iv: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

  ‘Sexuality and the Social Body in the Nineteenth Century’, Special Issue, Representations, 14 (1986).

  Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1975).

  — A History of Women’s Bodies (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

  Smith, Bonnie, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

  Zeldin, Theodore, France 1848–1945, i: Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).

  Further reading in Oxford World’s Classics

  Zola, Émile, L’Assommoir, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Robert Lethbridge.

  — The Belly of Paris, trans. Brian Nelson.

  — La Bête humaine, trans. Roger Pearson.

  — The Fortune of the Rougons, trans. Brian Nelson.

  — Germinal, trans. Peter Collier, ed. Robert Lethbridge.

  — The Kill, trans. Brian Nelson.

  — The Ladies Paradise, trans. Brian Nelson.

  — The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton, revised by Roger Pearson.

  — Nana, trans. Douglas Parmee.

  — Thérèse Raqiun, trans. Andrew Rothwell.

  A Chronology of Émile Zola

  1840 (2 April) Born in Paris, the only child of Francesco Zola (b. 1795), an Italian engineer, and Emilie, née Aubert (b. 1819), the daughter of a glazier. The Naturalist novelist was later proud that ‘zolla’ in Italian means ‘clod of earth’

  1843 Family moves to Aix-en-Provence

  1844 (27 March) Death of father from pneumonia following a chill caught while supervising work on his scheme to supply Aix-en-Provence with drinking water

  1852– Becomes a boarder at the Collège Bourbon at Aix. Friendship with Baptistin Baille and Paul Cézanne. Zola, not Cézanne, wins the school prize for drawing.

  1858 (February) Leaves Aix to settle in Paris with his mother (who had preceded him in December). Offered a place and bursary at the Lycée Saint-Louis. (November) Falls ill with ‘brain fever’ (typhoid) and convalescence is slow

  1859 Fails his baccalauréat twice

  1860 (Spring) Is found employment as a copy-clerk but abandons it after two months, preferring to eke out an existence as an impecunious writer in the Latin Quarter of Paris

  1861 Cézanne follows Zola to Paris, where he meets Camille Pissarro, fails the entrance examination to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and returns to Aix in September

  1862 (February) Taken on by Hachette, the well-known publishing house, at first in the dispatch office and subsequently as head of the publicity department. (31 October) Naturalized as a French citizen. Cézanne returns to Paris and stays with Zola

  1863 (31 January) First literary article published. (1 May) Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, which Zola visits with Cézanne

  1864 (October) Tales for Ninon

  1865 Claude’s Confession. A succès de scandale thanks to its bedroom scenes. Meets future wife Alexandrine-Gabrielle Meley (b. 1839), the illegitimate daughter of teenage parents who soon separated, and whose mother died in September 1849

  1866 Forced to resign his position at Hachette (salary: 200 francs a month) and becomes a literary critic on the recently launched daily L’Événement (salary: 500 francs a month). Self-styled ‘humble disciple’ of Hippolyte Taine. Writes a series of provocative articles condemning the official Salon Selection Committee, expressing reservations about Courbet, and praising Manet and Monet. Begins to frequent the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles quarter of Paris, the meeting-place of the future Impressionists. Antoine Guillemet takes Zola to meet Manet. Summer months spent with Cézanne at Bennecourt on the Seine. (15 November) L’Événement suppressed by the authorities

  1867 (November) Thérèse Raquin

  1868 (April) Preface to second edition of Thérèse Raquin. (May) Manet’s portrait of Zola exhibited at the Salon. (December) Madeleine Férat. Begins to plan for the Rougon-Macquart series of novels

  1868–70 Working as journalist for a number of different newspapers

  1870 (31 May) Marries Alexandrine in a registry office. (September) Moves temporarily to Marseilles because of the Franco–Prussian War

  1871 Political reporter for La Cloche (in Paris) and Le Sémaphore de Marseille. (March) Returns to Paris. (October) Publishes The Fortune of the Rougons, the first of the twenty novels making up the Rougon-Macquart series

  1872 The Kill

  1873 (April) The Belly of Paris

  1874 (May) The Conquest of Plassans. First independent Impressionist exhibition. (November) Further Tales for Ninon

  1875 Begins to contribute articles to the Russian newspaper Vestnik Evropy (European Herald). (April) The Sin of Father Mouret

  1876 (February) His Excellency Eugène Rougon. Second Impressionist exhibition

  1877 (February) L’Assommoir

  1878 Buys a house at Médan on the Seine, 40 kilometres west of Paris. (June) A Page of Love

  1880 (March) Nana. (May) Les Soirées de Médan (an anthology of short stories by Zola and some of his Naturalist ‘disciples’, including Maupassant). (8 May) Death of Flaubert. (September) First of a series of articles for Le Figaro. (17 October) Death of his mother. (December) The Experimental Novel

  1882 (April) Pot Luck (Pot-Bouille). (3 September) Death of Turgenev

  1883 (13 February) Death of Wagner. (March) The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames). (30 April) Death of Manet

  1884 (March) La Joie de vivre. Preface to catalogue of Manet exhibition

  1885 (March) Germinal. (12 May) Begins writing The Masterpiece (L’Œuvre). (22 May) Death of Victor Hugo. (23 December) First instalment of The Masterpiece appears in Le Gil Blas

  1886 (27 March) Final instalment of The Masterpiece, which is published in book form in April

  1887 (18 August) Denounced as an onanistic pornographer in the Manifesto of the Five in Le Figaro. (November) Earth

  1888 (October) The Dream. Jeanne Rozerot becomes his mistress

  1889 (20 September) Birth of Denise, daughter of Zola and Jeanne

  1890 (March) the Beast in Man.

  1891 (March) Money. (April) Elected President of the Société des Gens de Lettres. (25 September) Birth of Jacques, son of Zola and Jeanne

  1892 (June) The Débâcle

  1893 (July) Doctor Pascal, the last of the Rougon–Macquart novels. Fêted on a visit to London

  1894 (August) Lourdes, the first novel of the trilogy Three Cities. (22 December) Dreyfus found guilty by a court martial

  1896 (May) Rome

  1898 (13 January) ‘J’accuse’, his article in defence of Dreyfus, published in L’Aurore. (21 February) Found guilty of libelling the Minister of War and given the maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. Appeal for retrial granted on a technicality. (March) Paris. (23 May) Retrial delayed. (18 July) Leaves for England instead of attending court.

  1899 (4 June) Returns to France. (October) Fecundity, the first of his Four Gospels

  1901 (May) Toil, the second ‘Gospel’

  1902 (29 September) Dies of fumes from his bedroom fire, the chimney having been capped either by accident or anti-Dreyfusard design. Wife survives. (5 October) Public funeral.

  1903 (March) Truth, the third ‘Gospel’, published posthumously. Justice was to be the fourth

  1908 (4 June) Remains transferred to the Panthéon

  Pot Luck

  I

  In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, a hold-up in the traffic stopped the cab which was bringing Octave and his three trunks from the Gare de Lyon. The young man lowered one of the windows, although it was already bitterly cold on that dull November afternoon.* He was surprised at how quickly dusk had fallen in this neighbourhood of narrow streets, swarming with people. The drivers’ curses as they
lashed their snorting horses, the endless jostling along the pavements, the serried row of shops full of assistants and customers bewildered him; for, though he had imagined Paris to be cleaner than this, he had never hoped to find business so brisk, and he felt that it was publicly offering itself to the appetites of any energetic young man.

  The driver leaned back towards him. ‘It was the Passage Choiseul you wanted, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, the Rue de Choiseul. It’s a new house, I think.’

  The cab had only to turn the corner, for the house in question, a big, four-storeyed one, was the second in the street. Its stonework was hardly discoloured, in the middle of the dirty stucco façades of the adjoining buildings. Octave, who had got out and was now standing on the pavement, measured it and studied it with a mechanical glance, from the silk shop on the ground floor to the recessed windows on the fourth floor, which opened on to a narrow terrace. On the first floor, carved female heads supported a cast-iron balcony of intricate design. The surroundings of the windows, roughly chiselled in soft stone, were very elaborate; and lower down, over the ornamental doorway, were two Cupids holding a scroll bearing the number, which was lit up at night by a gas-jet from within.

  A stout, fair gentleman, who was coming out of the hall, stopped short when he saw Octave.

  ‘What! You’re here already!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.’

  ‘Well,’ replied the young man, ‘I left Plassans* a day earlier than I’d planned. Is the room not ready?’

  ‘Oh, yes! It fell vacant two weeks ago, and I had it furnished straight away just as you said. If you can wait a moment, I’ll take you up.’

  Despite Octave’s entreaties, he went back into the house. The driver had brought in the three trunks. In the concierge’s room a dignified-looking man, with a long, clean-shaven face like a diplomat, stood gravely reading the Moniteur.* He deigned, however, to show some concern about the luggage that was being deposited at his door, and stepping forward he asked his tenant, the architect from the third floor as he called him:

  ‘Is this the person, Monsieur Campardon?’

  ‘Yes Monsieur Gourd, this is Monsieur Octave Mouret, for whom I took the room on the fourth floor. He’ll sleep there and take his meals with us. Monsieur Mouret is a friend of my wife’s relations, and I would ask you to show him every attention.’

  Octave was examining the entrance with its imitation marble panelling and its vaulted ceiling decorated with roses. The paved and cemented courtyard at the back had a grand air of chilly cleanliness; at the stable-door a solitary groom stood polishing a bit with a wash-leather. No doubt the sun never shone there.

  In the meantime, Monsieur Gourd inspected the luggage. He pushed the trunks with his foot and, impressed by their weight, talked of fetching a porter to carry them up the servants’ staircase.

  Putting his head round the door of the lodge, he called out to his wife: ‘Madame Gourd, I’m going out.’

  The lodge was like a little drawing-room, with shining mirrors, a red-flowered carpet, and rosewood furniture; and, through a half-open door, one caught a glimpse of the bedroom and the bed hung with garnet rep. Madame Gourd, a very fat woman with yellow ribbons in her hair, was stretched out in an armchair with her hands clasped, doing nothing.

  ‘Well, let’s go up,’ said the architect. And seeing the impression made on the young man by Monsieur Gourd’s black velvet cap and sky-blue slippers, he added, as he pushed open the mahogany door of the hall:

  ‘You know, he used to be valet to the Duc de Vaugelade.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Octave, simply.

  ‘Yes, indeed he was; and married the widow of a little bailiff from Mort-la-Ville. They even own a house there. But they’re waiting until they get three thousand francs a year before they go there to live. Oh, they’re most respectable people!’

  There was a certain gaudy splendour about the hall and staircase. At the foot of the stairs was the gilt figure of a Neapolitan woman with a jar on her head, from which issued three gas-jets in ground-glass globes. The imitation marble panelling, white with pink edges, went right up the staircase at regular intervals, while the cast-iron balustrade, with its mahogany handrail, was in imitation of old silver, with thick clusters of gold leaves. A red carpet with brass rods covered the stairs. But what struck Octave most on entering was the hothouse temperature, a warm breath which seemed puffed by some mouth into his face.

  ‘So the staircase is heated?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Campardon. ‘All self-respecting landlords go to that expense nowadays. The house is a very fine one, very fine.’

  He looked about him as though testing the solidity of the walls with his architect’s eyes.

  ‘My dear fellow, the house, as you will see, is very comfortable, and only lived in by thoroughly respectable people.’

  Then, as they slowly climbed the stairs, he mentioned the names of the various tenants. On each floor there were two sets of apartments, one overlooking the street and the other the courtyard, their polished mahogany doors facing each other. He began by saying a word or two about Monsieur Auguste Vabre. He was the landlord’s eldest son, and that spring he had taken the silk shop on the ground floor, and also occupied the whole of the entresol. Then, on the first floor, the landlord’s other son, Théophile Vabre, and his wife lived in the apartment at the back, and in the one overlooking the street lived the landlord himself, formerly a Versailles notary, but now living with his son-in-law, a judge at the Court of Appeal.

  ‘He isn’t yet forty-five,’ said Campardon, stopping short. ‘That’s not bad, is it?’

  He climbed two more steps and then suddenly turned round and added:

  ‘Water and gas on every floor.’

  On each landing, under a high window whose panes, bordered with fretwork, lit up the staircase with a white light, there was a narrow, velvet-covered bench. Here, as the architect pointed out, elderly people could sit and rest. Then, as he went past the second floor without mentioning the occupants, Octave asked:

  ‘And who lives there?’ pointing to the door of the main suite.

  ‘Oh, there!’ he said. ‘People we never see, whom no one knows. The house could well do without them. But nowhere’s perfect, I suppose.’

  He sniffed disdainfully.

  ‘The gentleman writes books, I believe.’

  But on the third floor his complacent smile returned. The apartment facing the courtyard was divided into two. It was occupied by Madame Juzeur, a little woman who had known great misfortune, and a very distinguished gentleman who had taken a room to which he came on business once a week. While explaining this to Octave, Campardon opened the door of the apartment opposite.

  ‘This is where I live,’ he went on. ‘Wait a minute, I must get your key. We’ll go up to your room first, and then I’ll introduce you to my wife.’

  In the two minutes he was left alone, Octave felt penetrated by the grave silence of the staircase. He leaned over the banisters in the warm air which came up from the hall below; then he looked up, listening for any noise coming from above. There was a deadly calm, the peace of a bourgeois drawing-room, carefully shut in, admitting no whisper from without. Behind those fine doors of shining mahogany there seemed to lie infinite depths of respectability.

  ‘You’ll have excellent neighbours,’ said Campardon, reappearing with the key. ‘On the street side are the Josserands—quite a family; the father is cashier at the Saint-Joseph glassworks, and he’s got two marriageable daughters. Next door to you are the Pichons—he’s a clerk; they’re not exactly rolling in money, but they’re very well-bred. Everything has to be let, hasn’t it? Even in a house like this.’

  After the third floor the red carpet came to an end, and was replaced by a simple grey covering. Octave’s vanity was slightly hurt. Little by little the staircase had filled him with awe; he felt quite flattered at the thought of living in such a fine house, as Campardon had termed it. As he followed the
architect along the corridor to his room, through a half-open door he caught sight of a young woman standing beside a cradle. Hearing them pass, she looked up. She was fair, with light, expressionless eyes; and all that Octave retained was this look, for the young woman, blushing, suddenly pushed the door to with the embarrassment of someone taken by surprise.

  Campardon, turning round, repeated:

  ‘Water and gas on every floor, my dear fellow.’

  Then he pointed out a door opening on to the servants’ staircase—their rooms were overhead. Then, coming to a halt at the end of the corridor, he said:

  ‘Here we are at last.’

  The room was quite large, square-shaped, and hung with wallpaper with blue flowers on a grey ground. It was simply furnished. Near the alcove there was a washstand, leaving just enough room to wash one’s hands. Octave went straight to the window, through which a greenish light entered. Down below was the courtyard, depressingly clean, with its even paving-stones, and its cistern with a shining copper tap. And still not a soul, not a sound; nothing but rows of windows, all the same, without even a birdcage or a flower-pot, displaying the monotony of identical white curtains. To hide the great, bare wall of the house on the left, which shut in the square courtyard, imitation windows had been painted on it, with shutters eternally closed, behind which the walled-in life of the adjoining apartments seemed to continue.

  ‘It will suit me perfectly,’ cried Octave, delighted.

  ‘I thought it would,’ said Campardon. ‘You know, I took as much trouble as if it were for myself, and I carried out all your instructions. So you like the furniture? It’s all a young man wants. You can see about getting more things later on.’

  As Octave shook him by the hand and thanked him, while apologizing for having given him so much trouble, he added in a more serious tone:

  ‘The only thing, my boy, is that there must be no noise, and above all no women. My word! If you brought a woman here there would be a revolution in the house.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ muttered the young man, a little uneasily.