: The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans) by Zola Mile Vizetelly Ernest Alfred Translator - France Social life and customs 19th century Fiction; Clergy France Fiction; France History Second Empire 1852-1870 Fiction; Insanity (Law) France Fiction;

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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!'

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