2. Claude… Etienne: Claude and Etienne reappear in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the first as the painter in L’Oeuvre (1886) and the second as the miner in Germinal (1885). Another son of Gervaise and Lantier makes a belated appearance in La Bête humaine; this is Jacques, who was apparently born to the couple before their departure for Paris and left behind in the South. Zola needed a third child to show the effects of a hereditary weakness for alcohol (see Introduction).
3. quarter-day: the day when rents were due.
4. Marshal of France: no doubt, one of Napoleon’s marshals from the days of the (first) Empire.
5. Pascal… Béranger: the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was famous for his meditations on religious topics; Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) was a writer of songs, enormously popular under the Bourbon Restoration, when he represented the voice of patriotic opposition to the regime.
6. Nana: for the child’s later fate, see Chapter 11 and the novel Nana (1880), ninth in the Rougon-Macquart series.
7. Nord: the département in the far north of France, which has its capital at Lille.
8. Vincennes: a wood to the east of Paris, just outside the outer boulevard.
9. familiar tu… vous: addressing each other in the second person singular as tu, implying a degree of intimacy, instead of using the more formal vous.
10. the 2nd of December: in 1851, the day on which Louis-Bonaparte carried out his coup d’état, overthrowing the Second Republic and installing the Second Empire. There was popular resistance to the new regime.
11. February and June: in 1848: the first marks the popular uprising that overthrew the 1830 July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe and installed the Second Republic; while the second is the month in which General Cavaignac savagely repressed demonstrations against the government’s abandonment of a scheme of ‘national workshops’ (ateliers nationaux), set up as a remedy for unemployment.
CHAPTER 5
1. April: this chapter is almost entirely set in 1855, though it also covers the next three years, to 1858.
2. Concierges are such a vile breed: Zola is aware of the social role of the concierge, who served not only to collect rents but also to police blocks of flats on behalf of the more respectable residents and the middle-class owners – hence Gervaise’s dislike of living in a block where there was a concierge to spy on her.
3. zouave: a soldier from the infantry regiments recruited in Algeria for the French army.
4. royal garden: the lily, or fleur-de-lis, was the royal emblem.
CHAPTER 6
1. Bec-Salé;: Dry-Beak. Whenever this character appears, he is given both this nickname and his supplementary one, Boit Sans Soif (Drinks-Without-Thirst).
2. entrechat… Elysée-Montmartre: a step in ballet in which the dancer leaps off the floor and taps his or her feet together; a popular nightclub in Montmartre, between the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue des Martyrs.
3. ‘bill’: a promissory note that Gervaise has signed to delay payment.
4. Gros-Caillou: an area near the Ecole Militaire, just south of the Seine.
5. ‘imperial’: a tufted beard under the chin, popularized by the Emperor, Napoleon III. Poisson is a Bonapartist, so the beard has symbolic significance.
6. That year: the winter of 1858–9.
7. Epiphany: the 6th of January, known in France as the Fête des Rois because in Christian tradition it commemorates the coming of the three Kings (the Magi) to Christ’s birthplace.
8. chahut: a wild dance, popular in public dance-halls in the mid nineteenth century. The word has come to mean ‘disorder’.
9. Crimea: the Crimean War, 1853–6, in which Britain and France came to the aid of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. See also chpater 11, n.2.
10. Butte Montmartre: the hill to the north of Paris on which the district of Montmartre is built.
CHAPTER 7
1. That year: it is still 1858.
2. Cossack: the Cossack soldiers who came to Paris after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 left an indelible impression on the popular imagination.
3. Bedouin: these would have been the Arabs of Algeria, the French conquest of which began in 1830.
4. ‘Blavin… women’: all the songs quoted come from the repertoire of the music-hall or café-concert of the time. As Jacques Dubois points out in his edition of the novel (Le Livre de Poche Classique, 1996), there are examples of all the main genres: sentimental, bawdy, children’s, etc.
5. bayaderes: dancing-girls, especially oriental.
6. ‘Abd-el Kader’s Farewell’: Abd-el Kader was the Muslim leader who fought against the French colonization of North Africa.
CHAPTER 8
1. November: this chapter covers the period 1858 to 1860.
2. Badingue: it was under this name that the future Napoleon III escaped from prison in Ham in 1844, disguised as a workman, so he was facetiously referred to by this name after seizing power.
3. in London: Napoleon III was an exile in England after his escape from Ham (and again after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870).
4. Ledru-Rollin: Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807–74) was a leading figure on the French Left and Minister of the Interior under the Second Republic, in 1848.
5. Louis Blanc’s… philosophical and humanitarian works: the books by Blanc and Lamartine are republican historical studies, which would have been essential to the library of any Socialist at the time, while the two novels by Eugène Sue were enormously popular thrillers, by a left-wing writer, published in weekly parts. Zola wants to suggest the Socialist bias of Lantier’s reading, but also that it is undirected and disordered.
6. Cayenne: the penal colony in Guiana.
7. Borgia: the Italian Renaissance family that had a reputation for poisoning its enemies.
8. Chaillot: a lunatic asylum.
9. ninety-three… Revolution: the year 1793 marked the introduction of the new Republican calendar (though the years were in fact dated from 22 September 1792, with the declaration of the new Republic). However, it was 1793 that saw revolutionary fervour reach its height and thus became a shorthand for the Revolution itself.
10. ninety-two: all these are slang terms connected with the game of piquet: ‘cow’s grass’ and ‘window-panes’ are the suits of clubs and diamonds; ‘bulls’, ‘flunkeys’ and ‘one-eyes’ are kings, jacks and aces. Like much of the slang in the novel, these terms are taken from Denis Poulot’s Le Sublime (1870). See Introduction.
CHAPTER 9
1. St Anthony’s Day: 17 January.
CHAPTER 10
1. Etampes: a town near Chartres, south of Paris.
2. Poisson could no longer walk under the Porte Saint-Denis: because of his cuckold’s horns.
3. This was the year: 1863; this chapter covers the period from 1863 to 1865.
4. Bicêtre: the lunatic asylum in the Val-de-Marne.
5. Bondy: a forest celebrated for its highwaymen.
CHAPTER 11
1. caloquet: a type of cap.
2. the giant of the North: Russia, which French foreign policy had always considered a major threat to European security. Poland, divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria, but mainly incorporated into the Russian Empire, had inspired much sympathy in France in its unsuccessful bid for independence in 1830–31, and there were further insurrections throughout the nineteenth century, one of the most extensive occurring in 1863, four or five years before the events in this chapter of the novel. One of the Second Empire’s main foreign adventures was the Crimean War, in which France fought beside Turkey and Britain, mainly in an attempt to limit the power of the Russian Empire.
3. Tuileries: the royal palace, built at the end of the sixteenth century, which used to run along the present Avenue du Général Lemonnier, enclosing the Jardin du Carrousel and joining the two wings of the Louvre (the northern one of which was extended by Napoleon III). It was burned down during the Commune in 1871 and the ruins were finally demolished i
n 1884.
4. The neighbourhood… that year: this chapter covers the period from 1866 to 1868, which saw the height of Baron Haussmann’s redevelopment of Paris. (See Chapter 12, n. 2.)
5. ‘taking an English leak’: the French equivalent of ‘to take French leave’ is filer à l’anglaise, hence this name to describe this particular tactic for doing it.
6. Saint-Lazare: the women’s prison.
CHAPTER 12
1. January: in 1869.
2. so hastily put up: one of many references throughout the novel to the changes in the urban landscape of Paris brought about under the prefect for the city, Baron Georges Haussmann, between 1853 and 1869. ‘Haussmannization’ was responsible for many of the most characteristic features of modern Paris: the great boulevards, the Place de l’Etoile (Charles-de-Gaulle), the Place d’Italie, the Place de la République. It is also evoked in Zola’s novels La Curée, Le Ventre de Paris and Au Bonheur des Dames. (See Introduction.)
3. third Thursday in Lent: traditionally a holiday.
4. full of dreadful deeds: a vision of Paris by night that reflects the sinister picture given by Eugène Sue in Les Mystères de Paris. (See Chapter 1, n. 3.)
CHAPTER 13
1. La Courtille: a part of the Belleville district known for its cabarets and dance-halls.
2. Charenton: a famous asylum to the south-east of Paris.
3. Mazas: the prison to which debtors might be sent, on the Boulevard Diderot, near the Gare de Lyon.
Emile Zola, The Drinking Den
(Series: # )
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