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ART. VI.-ZOLA'S PARISIAN MIDDLE CLASSES.

WH

THEN Emile Zola, in the course of his Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire, had pourtrayed the labouring classes of Paris in a description which may or may not have been a calumny, he is said to have promised them their revenge, and his representation of commercial society has certainly been envenomed enough to gratify the most vindictive prolétaire. It may be questioned whether the author lays the greater stress upon the representation of foul animalism, or upon that of an almost utter absence of any sentiment of honour, honesty, or self-respect. By the inculpated class itself the work was greeted with screams of horror at its impropriety. It is certainly coarse almost beyond expression, and contains one description in particular which ought never to have been written by any man born of woman. But when one calls to remembrance the complacency with which the same people perused the sickening account of degradation among working men, in one volume of the series, and the equally revolting picture of aristocratic debaucheries in another, their qualms of delicacy are apt to remind one of the conscientious objections to Ritualism which suddenly developed themselves in some persons doing business in London when Brother Ignatius had delivered in a city church one or two of his course of sermons on the text Thou shalt not steal.'

Zola is certainly no instance of the Divine truth that Fools make a mock at sin.' The vice so nakedly described is painted in the blackest and most repulsive colours, and the vicious types who form nearly all his dramatis persona are held up only to contempt and dislike. Of the few upright or moral characters, the old man Vabre, the secret gambler, is drawn chiefly for amusement; but the poor struggling and wellmeaning father, M. Josserand, is evidently meant to excite pity and sympathy, if not actual respect; and the highest place is kept for the ecclesiastic, torn between the fear of condoning wickedness on the one hand and of rendering his ministry useless through too harsh a zeal, on the other. It is

not, however, with these features that we are here concerned, but merely with the curious and interesting pictures of modern Parisian middle-class life which the book contains, and of which we have culled a few for the entertainment of the reader, omitting the passages relating to other portions of the story.

The

The book can hardly be said to have a plot. It consists of the history of a large house let out in flats, during the residence in it of a certain Octave Mouret, a draper's assistant, who ends by marrying the proprietress of the shop where he is employed. The pretentious dignity of this mansion, and especially the solemnity of the common stair, with all its gilding and sham marble, and the whited-sepulchre respectability of the doors opening upon it, is made a subject of unceasing sarcasm. proprietor of this house, who has built it as a speculation, is a small retired solicitor from Versailles, a M. Vabre; whose younger son Auguste keeps a large silk-mercery (where Octave is for some time foreman) on the ground-floor, and occupies the entresol. The first floor is divided into two dwellings, one of which is occupied by M. Vabre's married son Théophile and his wife Valérie; and the other by his daughter Clotilde, married to M. Duveyrier, a Counsellor to the Court of Appeal, whose extreme severity of public principle and debased profligacy in private are held up as a type of social hypocrisy; with these latter M. Vabre himself resides. The second floor is inhabited by a literary man and his family, who have no dealings with anybody in the house. On the third are a lady, Mdme. Juzeur, 'who has seen great misfortunes'; and the architect by whom the house had been built, M. Campardon, with his wife and daughter and a cousin. On the fourth floor there live, along with several other lodgers, a family named Josserand. The father is money-taker at a large glass shop. The eldest son lives away from home, and the younger, Saturnin, is halfwitted. There are two daughters, Hortense and Berthe. The history of the Vabre and Josserand families takes up most part of the book. Mdme. Josserand has long been endeavouring to get her daughters off her hands, and especially urging on her brother, M. Bachelard, a wealthy but dissolute old

tradesman, a childless widower, the propriety of giving them marriage portions. Uncle Bachelard has a nephew by marriage named Gueulin, who, with a fast young man called Trublot, constitute Octave's principal male acquaintance.

The following description of a musical evening party has attained some renown:

'A perfect play was being acted at the Josserands'. The musical party at the Duveyriers', to which they were just going, should settle, Mdme. Josserand was determined, the question of Berthe's marrying Auguste Vabre. Auguste himself, who had been the object of a violent siege for the last fortnight, was still hesitating, in evident doubts upon the subject of the dowry. Mdme. Josserand, determined to make a decisive stroke, had written to her brother, to announce to him the project of the marriage, and to remind him of his promises, in the hope that he would commit himself, in his answer, to something of which she could make use. The whole family were waiting for nine o'clock, before the fire-place in the diningroom, dressed, and ready to go down, when M. Gourd, the porter, brought up the letter from uncle Bachelard, which had lain forgotten under Mdme. Gourd's snuff-box ever since the last post.

""At last," said Mdme Josserand, tearing it open.

'The father and two daughters watched her anxiously as she read it. The maid-of-all-work, who had had to dress the ladies, was moving clumsily about, clearing the table, on which the dinner dishes still remained. Mdme. Josserand turned pale.

666 'Nothing," she burst out, "not a single word worth anything. He'll see later on, when the marriage takes place and he adds how well he loves us.

Wretched scoundrel!"

'M. Josserand, in his evening clothes, dropt into a chair. Hortense and Berthe sat down too, in a sort of exhaustion, one in pink and the other in blue, their old frocks done up once more.

""I always said it," murmured the father. us-he'll never give us a sou.

"Bachelard is simply doing

'Mdme. Josserand, in her flame-coloured gown, stood reading the letter over again, and then broke out afresh.

""Men are always the same! Him, for instance, you'd think he was mad, the way he spends his life. Not a bit of it! He might be anything you like, but he wakes up quick enough when once you begin to talk to him about money, and " (turning to her daughters for their instruction), "I'll tell you what. I ask myself what on earth can make you want to marry. If you'd only had enough of it and to spare, like me! There's not one of them would ever care for you for your own sakes, or settle anything on you without a row. Uncles rolling in their millions, who've been fed for the last twenty years, and then won't give their nieces anything!

Husbands who are of no use whatsoever-no, sir-of no use whatsoever!" 'M. Josserand's head sank. The maid went on clearing the table, when Mdme. Josserand's wrath suddenly fell upon her.

666

““What are you doing there, listening for? Be off to the kitchen, and stay there. And then, those brutes are to have everything! They're only fit to be treated as they treat us, keep that in mind!"

'Hortense and Berthe shook their heads gravely, as though thoroughly penetrated by these counsels. Their mother had long ago convinced them of the entire inferiority of men, whose only parts in life were to marry and to pay. Silence took possession of the smoky dining-room, which the remains of the dinner, left upon the table, filled with a close smell of eating. The Josserands themselves, in their evening clothes, sitting apart here and there, forgot for a while the Duveyriers' concert, in a mournful contemplation of the constant disenchantments of life. From a room hard by they could hear the snores of Saturnin, whom they had put to bed early.' "It's all up then-shall we undress?" said Berthe, at last. 'But Madame Josserand recovered her energy at once. "What? Undress? And why, if you please? Were they not respectable? Was not a marriage with them as good as a marriage with any one else?" Take place the marriage should, or she would die in the attempt. And then she distributed their parts to each. The two girls were to make themselves as agreeable as possible to Auguste, and not to let go of him until he had done it; the father was to make friends of old M. Vabre and Duveyrier by always saying whatever they said, if he had sense enough; as for herself, she would undertake the women, and knew well enough how to manage them. Then, after a moment's consideration, and a last glance round the dining room, as though to make sure of having left no weapon forgotten behind, she assumed the air of a commander leading his troops to the forlorn hope, and said

""Let us go down."

'They went down. M. Josserand, amid the solemnity of the staircase, feeling some very disagreeable anticipations as to his conscience.

'When they arrived, the crowd at the Duveyriers' was already dense. The enormous grand piano took up one whole side of the drawing-room. The women were seated in front of it upon rows of chairs, as at a public concert; and two black waves of evening-coats overflowed into the background from the open doors of the dining-room and of the back drawingA chandelier from the ceiling and sconces on the walls, assisted by six lamps upon side-tables, shed a blinding light upon the whole room, which was painted entirely in white and gold, and furnished with violently red silk curtains and furniture covered to match. It was very hot, and the fans beat monotonously upon the richly-perfumed air.

room.

'Mdme. Duveyrier had just seated herself at the piano. Mdme. Josserand, smiling, made her a gesture of entreaty not to move, left her daughters in the middle of the men, and accepted a chair for

herself between Valérie and Mdme. Juzeur. M. Josserand had got away comfortably into the back drawing room, where the landlord, old M. Vabre, was slumbering in his usual place in the corner of a sofa. A group was already assembled in the same room, comprising Campardon the architect, Théophile and Auguste Vabre, Dr. Juillerat, and the Abbé Mauduit. Trublot and Octave had found one another, and gone to the end of the dining-room, out of the way of the music. Not far from them, but behind the sea of black coats, was Duveyrier, a tall, thin man, with his eyes fixed upon his wife at the piano, awaiting the making of silence. At his button-hole was the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, arranged in an unexceptionable little bow.

""Hush-sh, hush-sh," whispered friendly voices.

'Then Clotilde Duveyrier began to play a Nocturn by Chopin, excessively difficult in execution. She was a tall, handsome woman, with very fine reddish hair, and a long face, as white and as cold as snow. Music was the only thing which had power to light up her grey eyes, and then it was with an exaggerated passion in which she lived, without any other craving, either of mind or body. Duveyrier continued to look at her; but, after the first few bars, he was seized by a nervous irritation, his lips worked and contracted, and he went off to the far end of the dining-room: the great red spots on his shaven face, with its pointed chin and slanting eyes, showed unhealthy blood, a kind of bitterness coming up on the skin. "Trublot, who had been staring at him, said tranquilly

"He's not fond of music."

"Neither am I," answered Octave.

"Oh, you-it does'nt matter. He's a man, my dear boy, who's always been in luck. He's no better than anybody else, but everybody's always pushed him on. He comes of an old middle class family, and his father's a retired president. He's belonged to the Bar ever since he left school; then a judge substitute at Reims; from that, a judge at Paris, at the tribunal de première instance; decorated with the Legion of Honour; and now Counsellor of the Court-and all before he's forty-five. It's rather strong. But he don't like music. The piano is the bane of his life. One can't have absolutely everything."

'Clotilde, meanwhile, was dispersing the difficulties with an amazing calmness. She was at her piano like a circus-rider on her horse. Octave's only interest was in watching her hands.

"Just look at her fingers,' he said, "it's enough to knock you down.* That sort of thing must hurt her after about a quarter of an hour."

'On the termination of the Nocturn, everyone offered Clotilde their congratulations; Mdme. Josserand, who ran to her with excitement, squeezed both her hands. The men began to talk again, with a sense of relief, and the women fanned themselves more freely. Duveyrier felt himself able to

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