A Love Story Page 37

  Over the city the sky was turning a spotless blue. Hélène raised her head, weary of her memories, glad of this purity. It was very pale and limpid, nothing more than a reflection of blue in the white sun, low on the horizon, which looked bright as a silver lamp. It burned without warmth, in the glare of the snow, in the icy air. Down below, vast stretches of roof, the tiles of the Military Depot, the slates of the houses on the banks, spread out their white sheets edged in black. On the other side of the river in the square of the Champ de Mars a steppe was opening up, where dark spots, cabs that had got lost, put you in mind of Russian sledges sliding along with the sound of little bells, while on the Quai d’Orsay, smaller in the distance, rows of elms blossomed in fine crystal, with bristling spines. In the stillness of that sea of ice flowed the Seine, its muddy water between its banks bordered with ermine. It had been washing along for two days and you could clearly see the blocks of ice being crushed against the pillars of the Pont des Invalides and vanishing beneath the arches. Then came the bridges, strung out like white lace, more and more delicate until they reached the spectacular rock that is the Île de la Cité, dominated by the towers of Notre-Dame with their snowy peaks. Other points to the left punctured the uniformity of the quartiers. Saint-Augustin, the Opéra, the Tour Saint-Jacques, were like mountains with everlasting snow on top. Closer, the pavilions of the Tuileries and the Louvre, connected by the new buildings, made the ridge of a chain of immaculate summits. And further to the right were the snowy crests of the Invalides, Saint-Sulpice, the Panthéon, this last in the far distance, looking like a fairy palace, faced with bluish marble, against the azure sky. No voice could be heard. You could guess where the streets were from the grey slits, the crossroads in the hollows looked as if they had been split open. Whole rows of houses had disappeared. Only the neighbouring façades were recognizable because of the myriad reflections in their windows. The snowfields became indistinct then, and vanished into the glittering distance in a lake whose blue shadows seemed like an extension of the blue sky. Paris, vast and clear in the intensity of this freeze, glowed in the silver sun.

  Then Hélène, gazing out at it one last time, took in the impassive city which, like Henri, remained a mystery. It was peaceful as ever and as if immortal under the snow, just as she had left it, just as she had seen it for three years. Paris for her was full of her past. It had been with her when she had fallen in love, and when Jeanne died. But that companion of all her days was still serene, indifferent, its gigantic face dispassionate, the silent witness of the laughter and tears which seemed to float down the Seine. At one time or another she had thought it possessed the ferocity of a monster, or the bounty of a Colossus. Today she sensed that she would never fathom its indifference, its vastness. It unfolded. It was Life.

  Meanwhile Monsieur Rambaud touched her lightly, to make her come away. His kind face was beginning to look worried. He murmured:

  ‘Don’t torment yourself.’

  He knew everything she was feeling, but that was all he could think of to say. Madame Rambaud looked at him and was calmed. Her face was rosy with the cold, her eyes clear. She had already begun to move away. Life was beginning again.

  ‘I am not sure if I’ve shut the large trunk properly,’ she said.

  Monsieur Rambaud promised to check. The train was not leaving till midday, they had plenty of time. The streets were being sanded. Their cab would take less than an hour. But suddenly he raised his voice.

  ‘I’ll wager you have forgotten the fishing rods?’

  ‘Oh yes, you are quite right!’ she cried, surprised and cross at forgetting. ‘We should have got them yesterday.’

  They were very handy rods, of a make you couldn’t buy in Marseilles. They owned a little cottage by the sea where they were to spend the summer. Monsieur Rambaud consulted his watch. They could still buy the rods on their way to the station. They would tie them on, along with the umbrellas. Then he bore her off, cutting across the graves as they went. The cemetery was empty, there was nothing except their footsteps in the snow. Jeanne lay dead and alone, facing Paris for all eternity.

  Explanatory Notes

  5 February night: February 1853, according to Zola’s manuscript notes.

  Rue Vineuse: today this street is situated between the Rue Franklin and the Avenue Paul-Doumer in the 16th arrondissement, near the Place du Trocadéro, in Passy. In 1853 Passy was still an independent commune of Paris, until its incorporation into the city in 1859. It was a quiet, well-to-do locality, not unlike a small provincial town, looking down on the Seine. It was full of town houses with gardens, and little parks.

  7 asylum: a reference to Adélaïde Fouque (Aunt Dide), who features prominently in the first novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, The Fortune of the Rougons. She is the common ancestor of both the Rougon and Macquart families, and the origin of the ‘hereditary lesion’ that afflicts them. Hélène Grandjean (née Mouret) is the daughter of Ursule Mouret (née Macquart), the illegitimate daughter of Aunt Dide; and so she is the sister of Silvère (The Fortune of the Rougons) and François Mouret (The Conquest of Plassans). Aunt Dide slides into alcoholism and eventually into insanity. Her death at the age of 105, in the asylum at Les Tulettes, near Plassans, will be described in the final novel of the cycle, Dr Pascal. Jeanne is thus placed in the lineage of mental disorder that marks the family heredity (while her mother remains unaffected).

  14 Vaudeville: the Théâtre du Vaudeville, on the Place de la Bourse, was one of the most prominent theatres in Paris during the Second Empire. In 1852, La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils was premiered there. The discussion here reflects Zola’s writings as a drama critic, in particular his championing of ‘realistic’ theatre, as opposed to the kind of theatre, prevalent at the time, that indulged in meretricious staging and artificial ‘effects’: see Zola’s Naturalism in the Theatre (Le Naturalisme au théâtre, 1881).

  15 hatmaker: Mouret appears in The Fortune of the Rougons, where his dramatic death by suicide is described (cf. here p. 46). His wife, Hélène’s mother, Ursule, dies, like her daughter-in-law Marthe (The Conquest of Plassans) and Jeanne in A Love Story, of a nervous condition that turns into consumption.

  35 Japanese pavilion: a fashion for all things Japanese took hold in Paris during the 1860s. It had a marked influence on painting (a Japanese print is clearly visible in Manet’s famous 1868 portrait of Zola), but also captured the imagination of the general public. Jeanne wears a Japanese costume for the children’s ball (see p. 85), while the view of Paris in the novel’s final chapter is compared to ‘a Japanese print’ (p. 262).

  Variétés: the Théâtre des Variétés opened on the Boulevard Montmartre in 1807. It plays a prominent role in Zola’s Nana, as the theatre in which Nana achieves celebrity in the opening chapters, in a production that clearly echoes Jacques Offenbach’s operetta, La Belle Hélène, which had its premiere at the Variétés on 17 December 1864.

  36 Bignon’s: a well-known restaurant situated on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Chaussée d’Antin.

  37 Folies-Dramatiques: a small theatre specializing in comedy and operetta. In the 1850s it was situated on the Boulevard du Temple.

  La Dame blanche: a comic opera by Adrien Boieldieu (1775–1834), first produced in 1825. It was based on episodes from the novels of Walter Scott and remained popular throughout the nineteeth century.

  40 She wore a grey dress . . . golden halo rising into paradise: this description of Hélène’s dress and of the light in the garden is clearly a transposition of Renoir’s painting The Swing, which was shown at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877, precisely when Zola was writing A Love Story.

  43 Ivanhoe: a highly sentimental historical novel by Walter Scott (1771–1832), published in 1820. It was immensely popular throughout Europe.

  48 Military Depot: this depot was situated on the Quai Debilly (today the Avenue de Tokyo).

  Opéra: a deliberate anachronism: the Opéra was not inaugurated until 1
875. Similarly, the Palais de l’Industrie was built between 1853 and 1855, the new Louvre was completed in 1857, and the church of Saint-Augustin (see p. 151) built between 1860 and 1871. Zola justified these anachronisms in terms of his desire to use these buildings as reference points in his panoramic descriptions of Paris: see Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960–7), ii. 1607–8.

  85 Yeddo: an old name for Tokyo.

  86 réveils: a painterly expression designating the use of contrasting colour.

  89 compotier: fruit bowl.

  croquignoles: small crisp cakes.

  99 glory: an expanding circle of light.

  146 Trouville: Trouville, on the Normandy coast, was the favourite seaside resort of fashionable Parisian society.

  161 rinces-bouches: small bowls containing water for rinsing the mouth or fingers after a meal.

  163 Worms collection: the 1850s saw the emergence of haute couture, which was dominated by an Englishman, Charles Frederick Worth (1826–95). Worth brought a new level of tailoring to women’s fashion, turned visits to his salons into special social events, and introduced the now celebrated live mannequin to the Paris fashion world. Dictator of style, Worth attained a social standing unheard of by any tailor before him. He became internationally famous after being taken up by the Empress Eugénie, who was considered the epitome of fashion in her day. Cf. Zola’s The Kill (Oxford World’s Classics edn.), 85.

  167 La Favorite: an opera by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), first performed in Paris in 1840.

  185 “Le Caprice”: one-act play written in 1837 by Alfred de Musset (1810–57) and first performed in France at the Comédie-Française in 1847.

  176 maisons de passe of the Regency: maisons de passe are low-class hotels, where rooms are rented out by the hour, especially to prostitutes and their clients. The Regency in France is the period between 1715 and 1723 when King Louis XV was a minor and the country was governed by a regent, Philippe d’Orléans, nephew of Louis XIV.

  195 causeuse: small sofa for two people.

  230 Eastern question: the allusion is to tensions with Russia in relation to the latter’s designs on Constantinople. In 1854, Napoleon III joined England in declaring war on Russia: France’s involvement in the Crimean War lasted from March 1854 to September 1855.

  249 tulle illusion: fabric made of very fine, transparent silk (hence the term ‘illusion’).