Read Ebook: The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans) by Zola Mile Vizetelly Ernest Alfred Translator

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Ebook has 2562 lines and 137398 words, and 52 pages

INTRODUCTION

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

With the end of the century there has come in France a great revival of the struggle between religion and free thought which has so long been waged there; and the stupendous effort put forth by the Roman Catholic Church to annihilate the Third Republic has placed the country in a condition of unrest such as it has only known on the eve of its chief Revolutions. Behind the notorious Dreyfus case, behind the shouts of 'Long live the army!' and 'Death to the Jews!' behind all the so-called Nationalism and Militarism, the Church has been steadily, incessantly working, ever fanning the flames of discord, ever promoting and fostering coalitions of malcontents, by whose help it hopes to recover its old-time paramountcy. Time alone can reveal the outcome of this great effort, this 'forlorn hope' assault upon institutions which have hitherto kept Catholicism in check and tended so largely to the diffusion of free thought; but personally I am inclined to think, with all due allowance for partial successes achieved here and there, that this Clerical movement, however skilfully engineered under the cloak of patriotism, and however lavishly financed by the bulk of the money derived from the Lourdes 'miracles,' over which the Assumptionist Fathers preside, and the offerings of zealots throughout the country, will ultimately result in failure, for France is not at heart a religious country, and when faith has departed from a nation can it be restored?

It is on the state of affairs to which I have alluded, the hostility of a part of the French clergy to the Empire in its earlier years, that M. Zola has based his novel, 'The Conquest of Plassans.' The priests, subservient to the Vatican, lead the town into a course of opposition against imperial institutions, and the Government then despatches thither an impecunious and unscrupulous priest, one Abb? Faujas, for the purpose of winning it back again. Such tactics were not infrequently employed at that time. Whilst a part of the clergy simply followed its own inclinations, others venally took pay from the Empire to do its dirty work. As often as not they subsequently betrayed their paymaster, using the positions into which they were thrust for the satisfaction of their personal ambition. Still, for a while these needy hangers-on at the Ministry of Public Worship proved useful allies, and the Empire was only too ready to employ them. It will be seen, then, that the theme chosen by M. Zola rests upon historical fact, and it may be taken that his story embodies incidents which actually occurred under such conditions as those that I have described.

The 'Conquest of Plassans' may well be read in conjunction with 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' M. Zola's earlier work, as the scene in both instances is the same, and certain personages, such as F?licit? Rougon and Antoine Macquart, figure largely in both books. In the earlier volume we see the effect of the Coup d'?tat in the provinces, almost every incident being based upon historical fact. For instance, Miette, the heroine of 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' had a counterpart in Madame Ferrier, that being the real name of the young woman who, carrying the insurgents' blood-red banner, was hailed by them as the 'Goddess of Liberty' on their dramatic march. And in like way the tragic death of Silv?re, linked to another hapless prisoner, was founded by M. Zola on an incident that followed the rising, as recorded by an eyewitness. Amidst all the bloodshed, the Rougons, in M. Zola's narrative, rise to fortune and power, and Plassans bows down before them. But time passes, the revolt of the clergy supervenes, by their influence the town chooses a Royalist Marquis as deputy, and it becomes necessary to conquer it once again.

Abb? Faujas, by whom this conquest is achieved on behalf of the Empire, is, I think, a strongly conceived character, perhaps the most real of all the priests that are scattered through M. Zola's books. I do not say this because he happens to be anything but a good man. M. Zola has sketched more than one good priest in his novels, as, for instance, Abb? Rose in 'Paris;' but in this one, Faujas, there is more genuine flesh and blood than in all the others. True, his colleagues, Bourrette and Fenil, are admirably suggested; the Bishop, too, an indolent prelate who surrenders the government of his diocese to his vicar-general, and spends his time in translating Horace , leaves on one an impression of reality; yet no other priestly creation of M. Zola's pen can to my thinking vie with the stern, chaste, authoritative, ambitious Faujas, the man who subdues Plassans, and who wrecks the home of the Mouret family, with whom he lives.

Leading parts in the story are assigned to Mouret and his wife Marthe, both of whom are extremely interesting figures. The genesis of the former's career and fate is contained in one of M. Zola's short stories, 'Histoire d'un Fou,' which he contributed to the Paris '?v?nement' before he took to book writing. The idea, so skilfully worked out, is that of a man who, although perfectly sane, is generally believed to be mad, and who by force of being thus regarded does ultimately lose his wits. In Marthe his wife, the grand-daughter of a mad woman, we find the hereditary flaw turning to hysteria, in a measure of a religious character, such as subsequently becomes manifest in her son Serge, the chief character of 'Abb? Mouret's Transgression,' which work proceeds directly from 'The Conquest of Plassans.'

It is not my purpose here to analyse in detail the plot of 'The Conquest of Plassans,' but, having dealt at some length with the historical incidents on which the work is based, it is as well that I should point out that politics are not obtruded upon the reader in M. Zola's pages. Indeed, the book largely deals with quite another matter, that of 'the priest in the house,' showing as it does how the Mourets' home was wrecked by the combined action of the Faujases and the Trouches. In this connection the dolorous career of the unhappy Marthe is very vividly pictured. A fairly contented wife and mother at the outset of the story, she is won over to religion by Faujas, whose purpose is to utilise her as an instrument for the furtherance of his political and social schemes. But religion for her becomes a mysticism full of unrealisable yearnings, for she expects to taste the joys of Heaven even upon earth. Carried away by her religious fervour, she soon neglects her home; and her husband, it must be admitted, takes anything but the right course to win her back. She begins to loathe him and to indulge in an insane passion for the priest by whom she is spurned. Then hysteria masters her and consumption sets in; and between them those fell diseases bring her to an early grave. There are some finely conceived scenes between Marthe and Faujas; but the climax only comes towards the end of the volume, when Mouret, the husband who has been driven mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum, returns home and wreaks the most terrible vengeance upon those who have wronged him. The pages which deal with the madman's escape and his horrible revenge are certainly among the most powerful that M. Zola has ever written, and have been commended for their effectiveness by several of his leading critics.

THE CONQUEST OF PLASSANS

D?sir?e clapped her hands. She was fourteen years old and big and strong for her age, but she laughed like a little girl of five.

'Mother! mother!' she cried, 'look at my doll!'

She showed her mother a strip of rag out of which she had been trying for the last quarter of an hour to manufacture a doll by rolling it and tying it at one end with a piece of string. Marthe raised her eyes from the stockings that she was darning with as much delicacy of work as though she were embroidering, and smiled at D?sir?e.

'Oh! but that's only a baby,' she said; 'you must make a grown-up doll and it must have a dress, you know, like a lady.'

She gave the child some clippings of print stuff which she found in her work-table, and then again devoted all her attention to her stockings. They were both sitting at one end of the narrow terrace, the girl on a stool at her mother's feet. The setting sun of a still warm September evening cast its calm peaceful rays around them; and the garden below, which was already growing grey and shadowy, was wrapped in perfect silence. Outside, not a sound could be heard in that quiet corner of the town.

They both worked on for ten long minutes without speaking. D?sir?e was taking immense pains to make a dress for her doll. Every few moments Marthe raised her head and glanced at the child with an expression in which sadness was mingled with affection. Seeing that the girl's task seemed too much for her, she at last said:

'Give it to me. I will put in the sleeves for you.'

As she took up the doll, two big lads of seventeen and eighteen came down the steps. They ran to Marthe and kissed her.

'Don't scold us, mother!' cried Octave gaily. 'I took Serge to listen to the band. There was such a crowd on the Cours Sauvaire!'

'I thought you had been kept in at college,' his mother said, 'or I should have felt very uneasy.'

D?sir?e, now altogether indifferent to her doll, had thrown her arms round Serge's neck, saying to him:

'One of my birds has flown away! The blue one, the one you gave me!'

She was on the point of crying. Her mother, who had imagined this trouble to be forgotten, vainly tried to divert her thoughts by showing her the doll. The girl still clung to her brother's arm and dragged him away with her, while repeating:

'Come and let us look for it.'

Serge followed her with kindly complaisance and tried to console her. She led him to a little conservatory, in front of which there was a cage placed on a stand; and here she told him how the bird had escaped just as she was opening the door to prevent it from fighting with a companion.

'Well, there's nothing very surprising in that!' cried Octave, who had seated himself on the balustrade of the terrace. 'She is always interfering with them, trying to find out how they are made and what it is they have in their throats that makes them sing. The other day she was carrying them about in her pockets the whole afternoon to keep them warm.'

'Octave!' said Marthe, in a tone of reproach; 'don't tease the poor child.'

But D?sir?e had not heard him; she was explaining to Serge with much detail how the bird had flown away.

'It just slipped out, you see, like that, and then it flew over yonder and lighted on Monsieur Rastoil's big pear-tree. Next it flew off to the plum-tree at the bottom, came back again and went right over my head into the big trees belonging to the Sub-Prefecture, and I've never seen it since; no, never since.'

Her eyes filled with tears.

'Perhaps it will come back again,' Serge ventured to say.

'Oh! do you think so? I think I will put the others into a box, and leave the door of the cage open all night.'

Octave could not restrain his laughter, but Marthe called to D?sir?e:

'Come and look here! come and look here!'

Then she gave her the doll. It was a magnificent one now. It had a stiff dress, a head made of a pad of calico, and arms of list sewn on at the shoulders. D?sir?e's eyes lighted up with sudden joy. She sat down again upon the stool, and, forgetting all about the bird, began to kiss the doll and dandle it in her arms with childish delight.

Serge had gone to lean upon the balustrade near his brother, and Marthe had resumed her darning.

'And so the band has been playing, has it?' she asked.

'It plays every Thursday,' Octave replied. 'You ought to have come to hear it, mother. All the town was there; the Rastoil girls, Madame de Condamin, Monsieur Paloque, the mayor's wife and daughter--why didn't you come too?'

Marthe did not raise her eyes, but softly replied as she finished darning a hole:

'You know very well, my dears, that I don't care about going out. I am quite contented here; and then it is necessary that someone should stay with D?sir?e.'

Octave opened his lips to reply, but he glanced at his sister and kept silent. He remained where he was, whistling softly and raising his eyes now towards the trees of the Sub-Prefecture, noisy with the twittering of the sparrows which were preparing to retire for the night--and now towards Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees behind which the sun was setting. Serge had taken a book out of his pocket and was reading it attentively. Soft silence brooded over the terrace as it lay there in the yellow light that was gradually growing fainter. Marthe continued darning, ever and anon glancing at her three children in the peaceful quiet of the evening.

'Everyone seems to be late to-day,' she said after a time. 'It is nearly six o'clock, and your father hasn't come home yet. I think he must have gone to Les Tulettes.'

'Oh! then, no wonder he's late!' exclaimed Octave. 'The peasants at Les Tulettes are never in a hurry to let him go when once they get hold of him. Has he gone there to buy some wine?'

'I don't know,' Marthe replied. 'He isn't fond, you know, of talking to me about his business.'

Then there was another interval of silence. In the dining-room, the window of which opened on to the terrace, old Rose had just begun to lay the table with much angry clattering of crockery and plate. She seemed to be in a very bad temper, and banged the chairs about while breaking into snatches of grumbling and growling. At last she went to the street door, and, craning out her head, reconnoitred the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. After some minutes' waiting, she came to the terrace-steps and cried:

'Monsieur Mouret isn't coming home to dinner, then?'

'Yes, Rose, wait a little longer,' Marthe replied quietly.

'Everything is getting burned to cinders! There's no sense in it all. When master goes off on those rounds he ought to give us notice! Well, it's all the same to me; but your dinner will be quite uneatable.'

'Ah! do you really think so, Rose?' asked a quiet voice just behind her. 'We will eat it, notwithstanding.'

It was Mouret who had just arrived. Rose turned round, looked her master in the face, and seemed on the point of breaking into some angry exclamation; but at the sight of his unruffled countenance, in which twinkled an expression of merry banter, she could not find a word to say, and so she retired. Mouret made his way to the terrace, where he paced about without sitting down. He just tapped D?sir?e lightly on the cheek with the tips of his fingers, and the girl greeted him with a responsive smile. Marthe raised her eyes, and when she had glanced at her husband she began to fold up her work.

'Aren't you tired?' asked Octave, looking at his father's boots, which were white with dust.

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