Therese Raquin
a Novel by
Emile Zola
with his Preface
with an Introduction by
Stephen R. Pastore
The Emile Zola Society, 2010
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Therese Raquin by Emile Zola. Introduction and Book Discussion Group Guide Copyright 2010 by Stephen R. Pastore. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address The Emile Zola Society.
Published by:
The Emile Zola Society
New York, NY
www.emilzolasociety.org
ISBN 13 digit: 978-0-9829579-0-5
ISBN 10 digit: 092957905
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pastore, Stephen R.
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola/ Stephen R. Pastore, ed.
p. cm.
First Edition
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION by STEPHEN R. PASTORE
by
Stephen R. Pastore
It is one of the several failings of the American educational system that novels, poetry and plays not originally written in the English language are all but ignored by the designers of curricula. There is certainly something to be said for the failure of many translators to adequately transform a piece written in another language into English; most translators are not poets or novelists or dramatists. They tend simply to “transliterate,” a term which implies the mere translation of each word as it appears in the original text without much regard for idiom, syntax or even common sense. I’ve seen translations of Emile Zola where the English text will read, “Stubborn, she puts on her cloak red with an abandonment of cause.” This is a “literal” translation of the original French, but Zola would have been appalled as would any reader. Likely, he would have intended, “In a headstrong mood, she casually put on her red cloak.” It is no wonder, then, that decision makers putting together a reading list for their students, might shun Zola (and a host of other Continental writers) despite the knowledge that he is, with little doubt, the greatest writer of the Nineteenth Century. And whether or not this is true to everyone, his significance cannot be underestimated.
There is hardly a novel written in America after Zola’s work appeared that not only imitates his prose and style, but his plots as well. The term “naturalism” which came to signify an entire generation of authors from William Dean Howells through Crane and London to Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Faulkner and Hemingway. Even a cursory reading of biographical material on any American author writing after 1875 reveals an abiding interest in the works of Zola. Virtually everything he wrote found its way to these shores either as a pirated edition or one licensed through legal channels. Thomas Hardy, for example, easily one of the most highly admired authors, sold a few thousand copies of each of his novels on both sides of the Atlantic. His Tess of the d’Urbervilles sold about four thousand copies between its date of publication in 1886 and 1900. Zola’s Nana, during that same period, sold over 200,000. Greatness, of course, is not to be measured in sales. It might even be foolish to suggest that as a criterion. But it does measure influence. Few people could seriously argue with the theory that authors tend to “run in packs.” We are all familiar with the Lost Generation of writers that moved to Paris between the wars, with the Bloomsbury Group, with the Algonquin Round Table. There is a healthy symbiotic relationship that develops when creative people cavort together. They share ideas, proposals, even style. There can be no doubt whatsoever that Zola was read, re-read and discussed wherever literary minds met.
It was not just Zola’s popularity that brought him to the attention of the literati. The French novel was always considered avant-garde, in the forefront of literary style and substance. While the British considered the novel as a literary form suitable only for women (men were considered the proper purveyors of “important” literature such as poetry, essays and drama), the French made no such distinction. Fanny Burney was writing her tepid novels of manners—a theme developed to its nth degree by Jane Austen—while Pierre de Laclos was penning Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) and Balzac was writing Pere Goriot and his Comedie Humaine, a monumental multi-novel series encompassing all aspects of human social behavior. Most Americans have had the good fortune to be vaguely familiar with Laclos’s work through the auspices of Hollywood; the film version of the novel was a critical and popular success. Compare the novel on its most simplistic level, its plot, with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice written fifteen years later in 1797. When I’ve surveyed university students about when they thought Pride and Prejudice was written, the answers always hovered around the year 1800; the same question asked about when Les Liaisons Dangereuses was written, the answer was universally “sometime after 1985.” It would be facile and perhaps pointless to draw conclusions from this. But the fact remains that French literature, despite its obvious influence on American literature, remains mostly un-studied and ignored. At the best, it can be blamed on faulty translations; at the worst, on a chauvinistic impulse.
Therese Raquin was published in 1867 when Zola was just 27 years old. It pre-dates his Rougon-Maquart cycle of twenty novels which was to consume most of his literary output over the next three decades of his life. It is a short novel by nineteenth century standards being only about 77,000 words, but it is truly an exercise in literary virtuosity. By anyone’s standards at any time, it is a horror novel long before that term was to be used in the same sentence with greatness. The plot is simple, the number of characters quite small. A woman, Therese, is married to the son (Camille) of a headstrong woman (Madame Raquin). They reside in an apartment over a haberdashery in a dark passageway in Paris. Camille is sickly; his mother dotes over him. Therese had been a childhood friend and eventually, due to financial circumstances, finds herself marrying Camille and moving in with him and his mother; she also works at the dreary shop and her life has settled into a humdrum monotony: work, a loveless, lifeless marriage and life with a mother-in-law. The only recreation is the weekly evening visit of a group of geezers who play board games and make idle conversation. Occasionally, a young man joins the crowd, Laurent. It is inevitable that this robust, lusty man will be attracted to the submissive and wilting, yet sexually attractive, Therese.
Eventually, they have an affair, made all the more difficult by Therese’s inability to get away from the shop or the watchful eye of Mama Raquin. Their sex is hurried, clandestine but animalistically passionate. Eventually, it is opined that life would be a great deal simpler if Camille were dead. In one of the great murder scenes in all literature, Camille is strangled and dumped overboard from a rowboat the three “friends” have rented for the day. (Note the similarity of this plot device to Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, written in 1925.)
Eventually Laurent and Therese marry and live with Madame Raquin. The old lady has a stroke and is rendered unable to speak or move. She eventually overhears the truth about the murder of her beloved son; unable to communicate with either the murderers or the outside world she learns to watch with satisfaction the deterioration of their marriage as the “ghost” of Camille wreaks his revenge upon the doomed lovers who eventually commit a double suicide in her presence. Not content with this vision of an inner hell which is the retribution of all sinners, Zola depicts the outer hell of life in his day in Paris, a theme he continually visits in his Rougon-Macquart cycle. There is plenty of grand guignol horror as the bite which Camille inflicted on Laurent’s neck in their struggle in the boat, grows, throbs and almost speaks; in the search for Camille’s body in the city morgue where unclaimed bodies are put on exhibition so that loved ones may claim them, but more often, for the grisly entertainment of the public who seem to enjoy nothing better than a stroll among the gurneys where bodies in various states of undress and decay are on display.
Perhaps the greatest horror of all is reserved for Madame Raquin, who, unable to move or speak, must be nurtured and cared for by the two people who not only betrayed her trust but actively participated in her son’s death. This plot line emerges in subsequent works of fiction all over the western world where people are buried alive or are physically paralyzed by drugs or restraints and made to endure atrocities (a weekly event in the television series, Dexter); in a contemporary mode, it has been recently discovered that some people under anesthesia are, in fact, wide awake to pain, but rendered inert by the drugs—a true nightmare vision which Zola has so artfully crafted in his novel. This plot device became analyzed as a mental disorder or perhaps more accurately a reaction to extreme physical disability. The term, “Locked-In Syndrome” coined by neurologist, Fred Plum in 1966:
The first description of the locked in syndrome may not have been by a doctor but by a writer-Emile Zola in Therese Raquin in 1868. Camille is murdered by Therese and her passionate, adulterous lover, Laurent. Saddened by her son's death the pitiful mother, Madame Raquin, has a stroke: “Her tongue turned to stone. Her hands and feet stiffened. She was struck dumb and motionless.” After a partial respite “she had only the language of her eyes, and her niece had to guess what she wanted.” Later “she could communicate quite easily with that imprisoned mind buried alive in a dead body. She had learnt to use her eyes like a hand or a mouth, to ask and give thanks, and in a strange way made up for the organs she had lost.” She later discovered the lovers' treachery in murdering her son and then “made frantic efforts to . . . put all her hatred into her eyes.” The wicked coupleare eventually driven to take their own lives by poison. "Madame Raquin, stiff and silent, contemplated them at her feet, unable to feast her eyes enough, eyes that crushed them with brooding hate."
The triumvirate of the two doomed lovers and the hovering, wronged mother appears in Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1925). In both Therese Raquin and Ethan Frome, the true horror lies less in the acts which have led the characters to their confinement together than to the confinement itself, a sort of living hell where death seems the only escape. This is a recurrent theme in the novels of the Bronte sisters, in the novels of Somerset Maugham and later in so disparate a collection of novelists as Jerzy Kosinski, William Faulkner and Jim Crace.
Unquestionably, Zola felt attacked by most critics who savagely denounced the novel as a “mind-rotting interplay of inhuman beasts.” In all likelihood, Zola would probably have agreed. But the attacks were also directed at Zola personally calling him a “pervert” and a “terrible influence on the youth of France and, indeed, all the world.” The novel was a best-seller and Zola took the opportunity to defend himself in his “Preface,” without in any way apologizing for the novel itself. Zola writes that he intended to "study temperaments and not characters." To his main characters, he assigns various humors according to Galen's Four Temperaments: Therese is choleric, Laurent is sanguine, and Camille is phlegmatic. For Zola, the interactions of these types of personalities could only have the result that plays out in his plot. “In a word, I wanted only one thing: given a powerful man and a dissatisfied woman, to search out the beast in them, and nothing but the beast, plunge them into a violent drama and meticulously note the feelings and actions of those two beings. I have merely performed on two living bodies the analytical work that surgeons carry out on dead ones.”
Unquestionably Emile Zola created one of the most controversial novels of the Nineteenth Century when he wrote Therese Raquin. But this was only the beginning of a career that would extend throughout the entire century, a career that would forever alter the course of the literature of the Western world..
Therese Raquin: The Motion Picture
Zola adapted Therese Raquin into a play which was first staged in 1873. The play did not receive its London première until 1891, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society—as the Lord Chamberlain's Office refused to licence the play.
Recent stage productions include:
2006 for the Royal National Theatre, London, adaptation written by Nicholas Wright.
2007 production of the Nicholas Wright adaptation by Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA. Staged in the empty swimming pool of the Carnegie Library in Braddock, PA.
2008 production at Riverside Studios, London, adaptation by Pauline McLynn.
2009 production at Edinburgh Fringe Festival performed by pupils of The Cheltenham Ladies' College (adapted by Fiona Ross)
The novel was made into several films, including:
A 1915 silent film adaptation, which was made in Italy. It was directed by Nino Martoglio.
A 1928 German silent film
A 1953 French adaptation with Simone Signoret.
A 1956 German made-for-TV movie adaptation.
A 1965 Swedish made-for-TV movie adaptation.
A 1966 German made-for-TV movie adaptation.
A 1977 Mexican TV series adaptation.
A 1979 Belgian made-for-TV movie adaptation.
A 1980 BBC serial adaptation starring Kate Nelligan as Thérèse and Alan Rickman.
A 1985 Italian mini-series adaptation.
A 1998 BBC Radio 4 radio adaptation starring Anna Massey as Thérèse.
A 2009 BBC Radio 4 A "Classic Serial" adaptation in two parts starring Charlotte Riley as Thérèse and Andrew Buchan as Laurent.
The 2009 Korean horror film Thirst borrowed a number of plot elements from Thérèse Raquin.
A new film version directed by Charlie Stratton is slated for release in 2010. Actress Glenn Close is believed to also be attached to the project.
An opera based on the novel has been written by the composer Michael Finnissy. Another opera Thérèse Raquin by Tobias Picker opened in 2000.
The novel was also made into a Broadway musical entitled Thou Shalt Not, with music composition by Harry Connick, Jr..
The novel (rewritten in the style of James M. Cain) was the basis of the play "The Artificial Jungle" by Charles Ludlam.
Therese Raquin: 2010
Company Information
LumarFilm
- Production Company
Liddell Entertainment - Production Company
Locations
Czech Republic
Production Credits
Director
- Charlie
Stratton
Screenplay - Charlie
Stratton
Source Material - Emile
Zola
Producer - Stefan
Vorzacek
Producer
- Ludvik
Nemec
Producer - Mickey
Liddell
Producer - Greg
Berlanti
Actor - Glenn
Close
Actor - Eva
Green
Actor - Gerard
Butler
Actor - Giovanni
Ribisi
Source Material - Neal
Bell
Director Of Photography - Andrew
Dunn
Editor - Nigel
Galt
Original Music - Michael
Nyman
Casting Director - Sarah
Trevis
Costume Designer - Thomas
Oláh
Therese Raquin: Suggested questions for a book discussion group:
Is Therese a victim or a perpetrator?
Zola said he created temperaments not characters. Today’s novels are often said to be “character driven.” What is the difference between a character and a temperament?
A critic at the time the novel was written criticized Zola because he said he visited the street where the Raquin shop was located and it was sunny, bright and quite pleasant. Is this disparity relevant?
How sympathetic a character is Mrs. Raquin?
What function does the group meeting on Thursday evenings have?
Is this story realistic? Could it happen today?
There is no discussion of religion in this novel. Assuming that religion does not play a part in Zola’s vision of the world, what drives Therese and Laurent to commit suicide?
For further information on Therese Raquin and for answers to these questions, please visit the Emile Zola Society website at www.emilezolasociety.org
ZOLA’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND FRENCH EDITION.
I had imagined in my simplicity that this novel might do without a preface. Being in the habit of saying aloud exactly what I think, of laying stress even upon the slightest details of what I write, I had hoped to have been understood and judged without any preliminary explanation. It appears that I was mistaken.
Criticism has received this book with a brutal and indignant outcry. Certain virtuous individuals, in newspapers equally virtuous, have made a grimace of disgust as they took it up with the tongs to pitch it into the fire. The little literary sheets themselves, those little sheets which chronicle every evening the news of alcoves and private supper-rooms at restaurants, have put their handkerchiefs to their noses and talked of filth and foul smells. I in nowise complain of this reception; on the contrary, I am charmed to observe that my brother journalists possess the sensitive nerves of young girls. It is quite evident that my work belongs to my judges, and that they may consider it a nauseating production without my having a right to protest. What I do complain of is that not one of the chaste journalists, who blushed on reading Therese Raquin, appears to me to have understood this novel. If they had understood it, perhaps they would have blushed still more, but I should at least at this moment have had the inmost satisfaction of seeing them disgusted with good cause. Nothing is more irritating than to hear worthy writers complaining of depravity, when one is intimately persuaded that they cry out without knowing their reason for doing so.
It becomes necessary, therefore, that I should myself introduce my work to my judges. I will do so in a few lines, solely with a view of avoiding all misunderstanding in the future.
In Therese Raquin, I have sought to study temperaments and not characters. In that lies the entire book. I have selected personages entirely dominated by their nerves and their blood, destitute of free will, led at each act of their life by the fatalities of their flesh. Therese and Laurent are human brutes, nothing more. I have sought to follow, step by step, throughout the career of these brutes, the secret working of their passions, the promptings of their instinct, the cerebral disorders following a nervous crisis. The amours of my hero and heroine are the satisfying of a necessity; the murder they commit is a consequence of their adultery, a consequence which they accept like wolves accept the slaughtering of sheep ; finally, that which I have been obliged to term their remorse, consists in a simple organic disorder, in the rebellion of a nervous system strung to the point of breaking. The soul is entirely wanting ; I admit this the more readily as I wished it to be so.
The reader begins, I hope, to understand that my aim has been, before all other, a scientific one. When my two personages, Therese and Laurent, were created, I took pleasure in stating certain problems to myself and in solving them; thus, I tried to explain the strange union which may be produced between two different temperaments; I showed the profound agitation of a sanguineous nature coming into contact with a nervous one. When one reads the novel carefully, one will observe that each chapter is the study of a curious case of physiology. In a word, I had but one desire: given a powerful man and an unsated woman, seek the animal within them, even see nothing but the animal, cast them into a violent drama, and scrupulously note the acts and sensations of these beings. I have simply undertaken on two living bodies the analytical work which surgeons perform on corpses.
Admit that it is hard, when one emerges from such a task, still enwrapt in the grave enjoyments of the search for truth, to hear people accuse you of having had for your sole object the painting of obscene pictures. I find myself in the same position as those painters who copy the nude, without the least desire being kindled within them, and who are profoundly surprised when a critic declares himself scandalized by the life-like flesh of their work. While engaged in writing Therese Raquin, I forgot the world, I became lost in the minute and exact copy of life, giving myself up entirely to the analysis of the human mechanism ; and I can assure you that the cruel amours of Therese and Laurent had in them nothing immoral to my mind, nothing which could dispose one to evil passions. The humanity of the models disappeared the same as it vanishes in the eyes of the artist who has a naked woman sprawling before him, and who is solely thinking of representing this woman on his canvas in all the truthfulness of form and color. Therefore my surprise was great when I heard my work compared to a pool of blood and mire, to a sewer, to a mass of filth, and I know not what else. I know, the pretty game of criticizing; I. have played at it myself; but I admit that the uniformity of the attack rather disconcerted me. What! There was not one of my brother writers who would explain the book, if not defend it! Among the concert of voices exclaiming, "The author of Therese Raquin is a wretched, hysterical being who delights in displaying obscenities," I have vainly awaited a voice that replied," Not at all! This writer is a mere analyst, who may have forgotten himself amidst human putrefaction, but who has forgotten himself there like the doctor forgets himself in the dissecting-room.''
Observe that I in no way ask for the sympathy of the press for a work which, as it says, is repugnant to its delicate senses. I am not so ambitious. I am merely astonished that my brother writers should have made me out a kind of literary scavenger — they, whose experienced eyes should discover in ten pages a novelist's intentions ; and I am content to humbly implore them to be good enough in future to see me as I am and to discuss me for what I am.
It was easy, though, to understand Therese Raquin, to place one's self on the field of observation and analysis, to show me my real faults, without going and picking up a handful of mud and throwing it in my face in the name of morality. This required only a little intelligence and a few methodical ideas in real criticism. The reproach of immorality, in scientific matters, proves absolutely nothing. I do not know whether my novel is immoral ; I admit that I never troubled myself to make it more or less chaste. What I do know is that I never for a moment thought of introducing into it the filth that these moral persons have discovered; that I wrote each scene, even the most passionate, with the sole curiosity of the man of science; that I defy my judges to find in it a single page really licentious, written for the readers of those little pink books, of those indiscreet chronicles of the boudoir and the stage, which are printed ten thousand copies at a time, and warmly recommended by the very newspapers which are so disgusted by the truths in
Therese Raquin.
A few insults, a large amount of stupidity, is therefore all I have read up to the present respecting my work. I say so here quietly, the same as I would say it to a friend who should ask me privately what I think of the attitude which criticism has taken up towards me. A writer of great talent, to whom I complained of the little sympathy I have met with, made me this profound answer: " You have an immense fault which will close all doors against you: you cannot converse for two minutes with a fool without showing him that' he is one." It must be so; I can feel the harm I do myself as regards criticism by accusing it of a want of intelligence, and yet I cannot help showing the contempt I feel for its limited horizon and the judgments it delivers with its eyes shut, without the least attempt at method. I speak, be it understood, of current criticism, of that which judges with all the literary prejudices of fools, unable to place itself on the broad, human standpoint required to understand a human work. Never before have I met with such blundering. The few blows that the minor critics have dealt me with respect to Therese Raquin have landed, as usual, into space. They hit, essentially, in the wrong place, applauding the capers of a powdered actress, and then complaining of immorality with reference to a physiological study, understanding nothing, unwilling to understand anything, striking always straight before them, if their panic-stricken foolishness bids them strike. It is exasperating to be beaten for a fault one has not committed. At times, I regret not having written something obscene; it seems to me that I should delight in receiving a merited castigation, in the midst of this shower of blows falling so stupidly on my head, like a cartload of bricks, without my knowing why.
In our time there are scarcely more than two or three men capable of reading, understanding, and judging a book. From these I will consent to receive lessons, persuaded as I am that they will not speak without having penetrated my intentions and appreciated the result of my efforts. They would think twice before uttering those grand empty words, morality and literary modesty; they would allow me the right, in these days of liberty in art, of choosing my subjects wherever I thought best, requiring of me no more than conscientious work, aware that folly alone is prejudicial to the dignity of letters. One thing is certain, the scientific analysis which I have attempted to perform in Therese Raquin would not surprise them; they would see in it the modern method, the instrument of universal inquiry of which the century makes such feverish use to penetrate the future. Whatever their conclusion might be, they would admit my point of departure, the study of temperament and of the profound modifications of organism under the pressure of circumstances and situations. I should find myself in the presence of real judges, of men honestly seeking for truth, without puerility or false shame, and not thinking it necessary to show disgust at the sight of bare and living anatomical forms. Sincere study, like fire, purifies everything. No doubt to the tribunal I am pleased to picture at this moment my work would appear very humble; I would that it met with full severity from its critics, I would like to see it emerge black with corrections. But I should at least have the great joy of seeing myself criticized for that which I have attempted to do, and not for that which I have not done.
I can fancy I hear, even now, the sentence of high criticism, of that methodical and naturalistic criticism which has imbued science, history, and literature with new life:
Therese Raquin is the study of too exceptional a case; the drama of modern life is more supple, less wrapped up in horror and madness. Such cases should only occupy a secondary position in a work. The desire to lose no portion of his observations has led the author to give prominence to every detail, and this has added still more tension and harshness to the whole. On the other hand, the "style does not possess the simplicity requisite in an analytical novel. It would be necessary, in short, that the writer, to enable him to construct a good novel, should see society with a wider glance, should paint it under its numerous and varied aspects, and should above all employ a plain and natural language."
I had wished to reply in twenty lines to attacks rendered irritating by their ingenuous bad faith, and I perceive that I am chatting with myself, as always happens whenever I keep a pen too long in my hand. I therefore stop, knowing that readers do not care for that kind of thing. Had I had the will and the leisure to write a manifesto, perhaps I might have attempted to defend what a journalist, speaking of Therese Raquin, has termed, "putrid literature." But where's the use! The group of naturalistic writers to which I have the honor to belong possesses sufficient courage and activity to produce strong works, carrying their own defense within them. It requires all the blind obstinacy of a certain class of critics to force a novelist to write a preface. As, for the sake of light, I have committed the fault of writing one, I crave the pardon of those intelligent persons who have no need to have a lamp lighted at mid-day to enable them to see clearly.
EMILE ZOLA
THERESE RAQUIN
CHAPTER I
At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, coming from the quays, you find the Arcade of the Pont Neuf, a sort of narrow, dark corridor running from the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine. This arcade, at the most, is thirty paces long by two in breadth. It is paved with worn, loose, yellowish tiles which are never free from acrid damp. The square panes of glass forming the roof, are black with filth.
On fine days in the summer, when the streets are burning with heavy sun, whitish light falls from the dirty glazing overhead to drag miserably through the arcade. On nasty days in winter, on foggy mornings, the glass throws nothing but darkness on the sticky tiles—unclean and abominable gloom.
To the left are obscure, low, dumpy shops whence issue puffs of air as cold as if coming from a cellar. Here are dealers in toys, cardboard boxes, second-hand books. The articles displayed in their windows are covered with dust, and owing to the prevailing darkness, can only be perceived indistinctly. The shop fronts, formed of small panes of glass, streak the goods with a peculiar greenish reflex. Beyond, behind the display in the windows, the dim interiors resemble a number of lugubrious cavities animated by fantastic forms.
To the right, along the whole length of the arcade, extends a wall against which the shopkeepers opposite have stuck some small cupboards. Objects without a name, goods forgotten for twenty years, are spread out there on thin shelves painted a horrible brown colour. A dealer in imitation jewelry, has set up shop in one of these cupboards, and there sells fifteen sous rings, delicately set out on a cushion of blue velvet at the bottom of a mahogany box.
Above the glazed cupboards, ascends the roughly plastered black wall, looking as if covered with leprosy, and all seamed with defacements.
The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll. You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them. You see apprentices there in their working-aprons, work-girls taking home their work, persons of both sexes with parcels under their arms. There are also old men who drag themselves forward in the sad gloaming that falls from the glazed roof, and bands of small children who come to the arcade on leaving school, to make a noise by stamping their feet on the tiles as they run along. Throughout the day a sharp hurried ring of footsteps, resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks, nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads, stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle stop before their windows.
The arcade is lit at night by three gas burners, enclosed in heavy square lanterns. These jets of gas, hanging from the glazed roof whereon they cast spots of fawn-coloured light, shed around them circles of pale glimmer that seem at moments to disappear. The arcade now assumes the aspect of a regular cut-throat alley. Great shadows stretch along the tiles, damp puffs of air enter from the street. Anyone might take the place for a subterranean gallery indistinctly lit-up by three funeral lamps. The tradespeople for all light are contented with the faint rays which the gas burners throw upon their windows. Inside their shops, they merely have a lamp with a shade, which they place at the corner of their counter, and the passer-by can then distinguish what the depths of these holes sheltering night in the daytime, contain. On this blackish line of shop fronts, the windows of a cardboard-box maker are flaming: two schist-lamps pierce the shadow with a couple of yellow flames. And, on the other side of the arcade a candle, stuck in the middle of an argand lamp glass, casts glistening stars into the box of imitation jewelry. The dealer is dozing in her cupboard, with her hands hidden under her shawl.
A few years back, opposite this dealer, stood a shop whose bottle-green woodwork excreted damp by all its cracks. On the signboard, made of a long narrow plank, figured, in black letters the word: HABERDASHER. And on one of the panes of glass in the door was written, in red, the name of a woman: Therese Raquin. To right and left were deep show cases, lined with blue paper.
During the daytime the eye could only distinguish the display of goods, in a soft, obscured light.
On one side were a few linen articles: crimped tulle caps at two and three francs apiece, muslin sleeves and collars: then undervests, stockings, socks, braces. Each article had grown yellow and crumpled, and hung lamentably suspended from a wire hook. The window, from top to bottom, was filled in this manner with whitish bits of clothing, which took a lugubrious aspect in the transparent obscurity. The new caps, of brighter whiteness, formed hollow spots on the blue paper covering the shelves. And the coloured socks hanging on an iron rod, contributed sombre notes to the livid and vague effacement of the muslin.
On the other side, in a narrower show case, were piled up large balls of green wool, white cards of black buttons, boxes of all colours and sizes, hair nets ornamented with steel beads, spread over rounds of bluish paper, fasces of knitting needles, tapestry patterns, bobbins of ribbon, along with a heap of soiled and faded articles, which doubtless had been lying in the same place for five or six years. All the tints had turned dirty grey in this cupboard, rotting with dust and damp.
In summer, towards noon, when the sun scorched the squares and streets with its tawny rays, you could distinguish, behind the caps in the other window, the pale, grave profile of a young woman. This profile issued vaguely from the darkness reigning in the shop. To a low parched forehead was attached a long, narrow, pointed nose; the pale pink lips resembled two thin threads, and the short, nervy chin was attached to the neck by a line that was supple and fat. The body, lost in the shadow, could not be seen. The profile alone appeared in its olive whiteness, perforated by a large, wide-open, black eye, and as though crushed beneath thick dark hair. This profile remained there for hours, motionless and peaceful, between a couple of caps for women, whereon the damp iron rods had imprinted bands of rust.
At night, when the lamp had been lit, you could see inside the shop which was greater in length than depth. At one end stood a small counter; at the other, a corkscrew staircase afforded communication with the rooms on the first floor. Against the walls were show cases, cupboards, rows of green cardboard boxes. Four chairs and a table completed the furniture. The shop looked bare and frigid; the goods were done up in parcels and put away in corners instead of lying hither and thither in a joyous display of colour.
As a rule two women were seated behind the counter: the young woman with the grave profile, and an old lady who sat dozing with a smile on her countenance. The latter was about sixty; and her fat, placid face looked white in the brightness of the lamp. A great tabby cat, crouching at a corner of the counter, watched her as she slept.
Lower down, on a chair, a man of thirty sat reading or chatting in a subdued voice with the young woman. He was short, delicate, and in manner languid. With his fair hair devoid of lustre, his sparse beard, his face covered with red blotches, he resembled a sickly, spoilt child arrived at manhood.
Shortly before ten o'clock, the old lady awoke. The shop was then closed, and all the family went upstairs to bed. The tabby cat followed the party purring, and rubbing its head against each bar of the banisters.
The lodging above comprised three apartments. The staircase led to a dining-room which also did duty as drawing-room. In a niche on the left stood a porcelain stove; opposite, a sideboard; then chairs were arranged along the walls, and a round table occupied the centre. At the further end a glazed partition concealed a dark kitchen. On each side of the dining-room was a sleeping apartment.
The old lady after kissing her son and daughter-in-law withdrew. The cat went to sleep on a chair in the kitchen. The married couple entered their room, which had a second door opening on a staircase that communicated with the arcade by an obscure narrow passage.
The husband who was always trembling with fever went to bed, while the young woman opened the window to close the shutter blinds. She remained there a few minutes facing the great black wall, which ascends and stretches above the arcade. She cast a vague wandering look upon this wall, and, without a word she, in her turn, went to bed in disdainful indifference.
CHAPTER II
Madame Raquin had formerly been a mercer at Vernon. For close upon five-and-twenty years, she had kept a small shop in that town. A few years after the death of her husband, becoming subject to fits of faintness, she sold her business. Her savings added to the price of this sale placed a capital of 40,000 francs in her hand which she invested so that it brought her in an income of 2,000 francs a year. This sum amply sufficed for her requirements. She led the life of a recluse. Ignoring the poignant joys and cares of this world, she arranged for herself a tranquil existence of peace and happiness.
At an annual rental of 400 francs she took a small house with a garden descending to the edge of the Seine. This enclosed, quiet residence vaguely recalled the cloister. It stood in the centre of large fields, and was approached by a narrow path. The windows of the dwelling opened to the river and to the solitary hillocks on the opposite bank. The good lady, who had passed the half century, shut herself up in this solitary retreat, where along with her son Camille and her niece Therese, she partook of serene joy.
Although Camille was then twenty, his mother continued to spoil him like a little child. She adored him because she had shielded him from death, throughout a tedious childhood of constant suffering. The boy contracted every fever, every imaginable malady, one after the other. Madame Raquin struggled for fifteen years against these terrible evils, which arrived in rapid succession to tear her son away from her. She vanquished them all by patience, care, and adoration. Camille having grown up, rescued from death, had contracted a shiver from the torture of the repeated shocks he had undergone. Arrested in his growth, he remained short and delicate. His long, thin limbs moved slowly and wearily. But his mother loved him all the more on account of this weakness that arched his back. She observed his thin, pale face with triumphant tenderness when she thought of how she had brought him back to life more than ten times over.
During the brief spaces of repose that his sufferings allowed him, the child attended a commercial school at Vernon. There he learned orthography and arithmetic. His science was limited to the four rules, and a very superficial knowledge of grammar. Later on, he took lessons in writing and bookkeeping. Madame Raquin began to tremble when advised to send her son to college. She knew he would die if separated from her, and she said the books would kill him. So Camille remained ignorant, and this ignorance seemed to increase his weakness.
At eighteen, having nothing to do, bored to death at the delicate attention of his mother, he took a situation as clerk with a linen merchant, where he earned 60 francs a month. Being of a restless nature idleness proved unbearable. He found greater calm and better health in this labour of a brute which kept him bent all day long over invoices, over enormous additions, each figure of which he patiently added up. At night, broken down with fatigue, without an idea in his head, he enjoyed infinite delight in the doltishness that settled on him. He had to quarrel with his mother to go with the dealer in linen. She wanted to keep him always with her, between a couple of blankets, far from the accidents of life.
But the young man spoke as master. He claimed work as children claim toys, not from a feeling of duty, but by instinct, by a necessity of nature. The tenderness, the devotedness of his mother had instilled into him an egotism that was ferocious. He fancied he loved those who pitied and caressed him; but, in reality, he lived apart, within himself, loving naught but his comfort, seeking by all possible means to increase his enjoyment. When the tender affection of Madame Raquin disgusted him, he plunged with delight into a stupid occupation that saved him from infusions and potions.
In the evening, on his return from the office, he ran to the bank of the Seine with his cousin Therese who was then close upon eighteen. One day, sixteen years previously, while Madame Raquin was still a mercer, her brother Captain Degans brought her a little girl in his arms. He had just arrived from Algeria.
“Here is a child,” said he with a smile, “and you are her aunt. The mother is dead and I don't know what to do with her. I'll give her to you.”
The mercer took the child, smiled at her and kissed her rosy cheeks. Although Degans remained a week at Vernon, his sister barely put a question to him concerning the little girl he had brought her. She understood vaguely that the dear little creature was born at Oran, and that her mother was a woman of the country of great beauty. The Captain, an hour before his departure, handed his sister a certificate of birth in which Therese, acknowledged by him to be his child, bore his name. He rejoined his regiment, and was never seen again at Vernon, being killed a few years later in Africa.
Therese grew up under the fostering care of her aunt, sleeping in the same bed as Camille. She who had an iron constitution, received the treatment of a delicate child, partaking of the same medicine as her cousin, and kept in the warm air of the room occupied by the invalid. For hours she remained crouching over the fire, in thought, watching the flames before her, without lowering her eyelids.
This obligatory life of a convalescent caused her to retire within herself. She got into the habit of talking in a low voice, of moving about noiselessly, of remaining mute and motionless on a chair with expressionless, open eyes. But, when she raised an arm, when she advanced a foot, it was easy to perceive that she possessed feline suppleness, short, potent muscles, and that unmistakable energy and passion slumbered in her soporous frame. Her cousin having fallen down one day in a fainting fit, she abruptly picked him up and carried him—an effort of strength that turned her cheeks scarlet. The cloistered life she led, the debilitating regimen to which she found herself subjected, failed to weaken her thin, robust form. Only her face took a pale, and even a slightly yellowish tint, making her look almost ugly in the shade. Ever and anon she went to the window, and contemplated the opposite houses on which the sun threw sheets of gold.
When Madame Raquin sold her business, and withdrew to the little place beside the river, Therese experienced secret thrills of joy. Her aunt had so frequently repeated to her: “Don't make a noise; be quiet,” that she kept all the impetuosity of her nature carefully concealed within her. She possessed supreme composure, and an apparent tranquillity that masked terrible transports. She still fancied herself in the room of her cousin, beside a dying child, and had the softened movements, the periods of silence, the placidity, the faltering speech of an old woman.
When she saw the garden, the clear river, the vast green hillocks ascending on the horizon, she felt a savage desire to run and shout. She felt her heart thumping fit to burst in her bosom; but not a muscle of her face moved, and she merely smiled when her aunt inquired whether she was pleased with her new home.
Life now became more pleasant for her. She maintained her supple gait, her calm, indifferent countenance, she remained the child brought up in the bed of an invalid; but inwardly she lived a burning, passionate existence. When alone on the grass beside the water, she would lie down flat on her stomach like an animal, her black eyes wide open, her body writhing, ready to spring. And she stayed there for hours, without a thought, scorched by the sun, delighted at being able to thrust her fingers in the earth. She had the most ridiculous dreams; she looked at the roaring river in defiance, imagining that the water was about to leap on her and attack her. Then she became rigid, preparing for the defence, and angrily inquiring of herself how she could vanquish the torrent.
At night, Therese, appeased and silent, stitched beside her aunt, with a countenance that seemed to be dozing in the gleam that softly glided from beneath the lamp shade. Camille buried in an armchair thought of his additions. A word uttered in a low voice, alone disturbed, at moments, the peacefulness of this drowsy home.
Madame Raquin observed her children with serene benevolence. She had resolved to make them husband and wife. She continued to treat her son as if he were at death's door; and she trembled when she happened to reflect that she would one day die herself, and would leave him alone and suffering. In that contingency, she relied on Therese, saying to herself that the young girl would be a vigilant guardian beside Camille. Her niece with her tranquil manner, and mute devotedness, inspired her with unlimited confidence. She had seen Therese at work, and wished to give her to her son as a guardian angel. This marriage was a solution to the matter, foreseen and settled in her mind.
The children knew for a long time that they were one day to marry. They had grown up with this idea, which had thus become familiar and natural to them. The union was spoken of in the family as a necessary and positive thing. Madame Raquin had said:
“We will wait until Therese is one-and-twenty.”
And they waited patiently, without excitement, and without a blush.
Camille, whose blood had become impoverished by illness, had remained a little boy in the eyes of his cousin. He kissed her as he kissed his mother, by habit, without losing any of his egotistic tranquillity. He looked upon her as an obliging comrade who helped him to amuse himself, and who, if occasion offered, prepared him an infusion. When playing with her, when he held her in his arms, it was as if he had a boy to deal with. He experienced no thrill, and at these moments the idea had never occurred to him of planting a warm kiss on her lips as she struggled with a nervous laugh to free herself.
The girl also seemed to have remained cold and indifferent. At times her great eyes rested on Camille and fixedly gazed at him with sovereign calm. On such occasions her lips alone made almost imperceptible little motions. Nothing could be read on her expressionless countenance, which an inexorable will always maintained gentle and attentive. Therese became grave when the conversation turned to her marriage, contenting herself with approving all that Madame Raquin said by a sign of the head. Camille went to sleep.
On summer evenings, the two young people ran to the edge of the water. Camille, irritated at the incessant attentions of his mother, at times broke out in open revolt. He wished to run about and make himself ill, to escape the fondling that disgusted him. He would then drag Therese along with him, provoking her to wrestle, to roll in the grass. One day, having pushed his cousin down, the young girl bounded to her feet with all the savageness of a wild beast, and, with flaming face and bloodshot eyes, fell upon him with clenched fists. Camille in fear sank to the ground.
Months and years passed by, and at length the day fixed for the marriage arrived. Madame Raquin took Therese apart, spoke to her of her father and mother, and related to her the story of her birth. The young girl listened to her aunt, and when she had finished speaking, kissed her, without answering a word.
At night, Therese, instead of going into her own room, which was on the left of the staircase, entered that of her cousin which was on the right. This was all the change that occurred in her mode of life. The following day, when the young couple came downstairs, Camille had still his sickly languidness, his righteous tranquillity of an egotist. Therese still maintained her gentle indifference, and her restrained expression of frightful calmness.
CHAPTER III
A week after the marriage, Camille distinctly told his mother that he intended quitting Vernon to reside in Paris. Madame Raquin protested: she had arranged her mode of life, and would not modify it in any way. Thereupon her son had a nervous attack, and threatened to fall ill, if she did not give way to his whim.
“Never have I opposed you in your plans,” said he; “I married my cousin, I took all the drugs you gave me. It is only natural, now, when I have a desire of my own, that you should be of the same mind. We will move at the end of the month.”
Madame Raquin was unable to sleep all night. The decision Camille had come to, upset her way of living, and, in despair, she sought to arrange another existence for herself and the married couple. Little by little, she recovered calm. She reflected that the young people might have children, and that her small fortune would not then suffice. It was necessary to earn money, to go into business again, to find lucrative occupation for Therese. The next day she had become accustomed to the idea of moving, and had arranged a plan for a new life.
At luncheon she was quite gay.
“This is what we will do,” said she to her children. “I will go to Paris to-morrow. There I will look out for a small mercery business for sale, and Therese and myself will resume selling needles and cotton, which will give us something to do. You, Camille, will act as you like. You can either stroll about in the sun, or you can find some employment.”
“I shall find employment,” answered the young man.
The truth was that an idiotic ambition had alone impelled Camille to leave Vernon. He wished to find a post in some important administration. He blushed with delight when he fancied he saw himself in the middle of a large office, with lustring elbow sleeves, and a pen behind his ear.
Therese was not consulted: she had always displayed such passive obedience that her aunt and husband no longer took the trouble to ask her opinion. She went where they went, she did what they did, without a complaint, without a reproach, without appearing even to be aware that she changed her place of residence.
Madame Raquin came to Paris, and went straight to the Arcade of the Pont Neuf. An old maid at Vernon had sent her to one of her relatives who in this arcade kept a mercery shop which she desired to get rid of. The former mercer found the shop rather small, and rather dark; but, in passing through Paris, she had been taken aback by the noise in the streets, by the luxuriously dressed windows, and this narrow gallery, this modest shop front, recalled her former place of business which was so peaceful. She could fancy herself again in the provinces, and she drew a long breath thinking that her dear children would be happy in this out-of-the-way corner. The low price asked for the business, caused her to make up her mind. The owner sold it her for 2,000 francs, and the rent of the shop and first floor was only 1,200 francs a year. Madame Raquin, who had close upon 4,000 francs saved up, calculated that she could pay for the business and settle the rent for the first year, without encroaching on her fortune. The salary Camille would be receiving, and the profit on the mercery business would suffice, she thought, to meet the daily expenses; so that she need not touch the income of her funded money, which would capitalise, and go towards providing marriage portions for her grandchildren.
She returned to Vernon beaming with pleasure, relating that she had found a gem, a delightful little place right in the centre of Paris. Little by little, at the end of a few days, in her conversations of an evening, the damp, obscure shop in the arcade became a palace; she pictured it to herself, so far as her memory served her, as convenient, spacious, tranquil, and replete with a thousand inestimable advantages.
“Ah! my dear Therese,” said she, “you will see how happy we shall be in that nook! There are three beautiful rooms upstairs. The arcade is full of people. We will make charming displays. There is no fear of our feeling dull.”
But she did not stop there. All her instinct of a former shopkeeper was awakened. She gave advice to Therese, beforehand, as to buying and selling, and posted her up in all the tricks of small tradespeople. At length, the family quitted the house beside the Seine, and on the evening of the same day, were installed in the Arcade of the Pont Neuf.
When Therese entered the shop, where in future she was to live, it seemed to her that she was descending into the clammy soil of a grave. She felt quite disheartened, and shivered with fear. She looked at the dirty, damp gallery, visited the shop, and ascending to the first floor, walked round each room. These bare apartments, without furniture, looked frightful in their solitude and dilapidation. The young woman could not make a gesture, or utter a word. She was as if frozen. Her aunt and husband having come downstairs, she seated herself on a trunk, her hands rigid, her throat full of sobs, and yet she could not cry.
Madame Raquin, face to face with reality, felt embarrassed, and ashamed of her dreams. She sought to defend her acquisition. She found a remedy for every fresh inconvenience that was discovered, explaining the obscurity by saying the weather was overcast, and concluded by affirming that a sweep-up would suffice to set everything right.
“Bah!” answered Camille, “all this is quite suitable. Besides, we shall only come up here at night. I shall not be home before five or six o'clock. As to you two, you will be together, so you will not be dull.”
The young man would never have consented to inhabit such a den, had he not relied on the comfort of his office. He said to himself that he would be warm all day at his administration, and that, at night, he would go to bed early.
For a whole week, the shop and lodging remained in disorder. Therese had seated herself behind the counter from the first day, and she did not move from that place. Madame Raquin was astonished at this depressed attitude. She had thought that the young woman would try to adorn her habitation. That she would place flowers at the windows, and ask for new papers, curtains and carpets. When she suggested some repairs, some kind of embellishment, her niece quietly replied: