L'assommoir = Nana's mother

Front matter

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Preface

IT is deemed advisable by the publishers and translator of this most extraordinary work, that a few words should be said in regard to the author, who is comparatively unknown in this country, although his works and himself, have been for the last ten years the subject of endless discussion and controversy in the literary circles of Paris.

Monsieur Emile Zola is of Italian parentage, but a Frenchman by birth. His father was an engineer of considerable ability and no little reputation— a canal in the South of France still bears his name. On the death of his father, the lad and his mother finding themselves destitute, took their way to Paris with the idea that they could at least find there, bread to eat.

Even this bread, however, was by no means so

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easy to win, for they struggled long with poverty* privations and disappointments.

Finally there was a ray of hope, for the youth succeeded in obtaining employment in the publishing house of Hachette — his duties, however^, were simply to tie up brown paper parcels.

The atmosphere of this publishing house seems? nevertheless, to have fostered his literary aspirations, for we soon find him writing a poem which he lays stealthily on his master’s desk, and himself passes a wakeful night, in dread how it may have been received.

This was the entering wedge, for his employer, recognizing a certain element of cleverness in the boyish work, at once placed the youth in the advertising department of the house.

This brought Zola in contact with the journals, and then came plain sailing. He wrote — he published ; and seeing before him a fair prospect of success in the field of literature, he left Hachette and went on to the Figaro.

He of course made a host of friends among men as young as himself — he is yet under forty

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— but chiefly consorted with Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert, and the two Goncourts — disciples of the realistic school, who took Nature for the sole exponent of their creed. These men talked, while Zola listened, and endeavored to imbue every stroke of his work with the inspiration derived from what he heard. At last his novels appeared — quietly, and without any flourish of trumpets.

These novels were the result of long study and careful observation, of notes taken down on the spot, interspersed with phrases and bits of dialogue, inscribed as they fell hot from the lips of the speaker — of physiological studies — and extracts from medical reports.

Zola’s way of working is peculiar. He selects a subject — his plot being quite a secondary consideration. To work out this subject he spares no pains — he studies it all in its minutest details. If he wants a character or a class for a book, he goes out and looks for it, accepting no report at second hand.

In his “ Nana,” now in press, and to be pub-

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lished by us, he is called upon to give a glimpse of theatrical life; he, therefore, has spent much time of late behind the scenes of a theatre. In his years of trial and privation he undoubtedly accumulated a great store of observation, on which he can draw at will, during the rest of his life.

The end and aim of Monsieur Zola is to make all art — dramatic, narrative and pictorial — only another word for Nature, so that it may tend to a moral end, as all great writers invariably tend by their own proper force.

It has been rather the fashion in this country to drop the voice and shrug the shoulders when Zola’s name is heard, as if he were the prophet of all uncleanness. But this is sheer ignorance and lack of appreciation of the real meaning of Zola’s works. Never once does this author make vice attractive. He paints it in all its hideous reality, and unquestionably calls “a spade a spade.” lie says distinctly : “ Thus and thus do men and women behave under certain circumstances.” His text, on which he preaches in “ L’Assommoir,” is drunkenness, and true to his theory and manner

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of looking at a subject, Monsieur Zola does not content himself with showing its effects on the moral nature alone, hut goes still further, and gives a ghastly, appalling picture of this repulsive and disgusting vice.

We close the volume faint and sick at heart, as we realize how many women in our own land are made as wretched as Gervaise, and how many homes are blighted by this terrible evil. As a picture of the woe and degradation springing from drunkenness, “ L’Assommoir ” is without a rival in modern fiction.

That the critics have violently assailed it, and Zola, cannot surprise any one, more particularly as a violent controversy has lately grown out of his connection with a Russian review, for novel writing occupies but a small portion of his life — only three hours each day.

He had the excessive imprudence to write for this Russian review a series of articles criticizing his contemporaries with perilous frankness, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert and De Goncourt, his early associates — alone finding favor in his eyes,

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while he dismissed the others with a lofty air of superiority as mere phrasemongers who fail to see what is before them, and are unable to depict even what they see.

Neither did he content himself with this onslaught upon the novelists ; he also attacked the dramatists through the medium of the Figaro, of which paper he is the dramatic critic. He stoutly ^asserted that the modern French plays were as fantastically false to Nature as were the novels. To emphasize his theories, he rashly determined to put some realistic dramas on the stage. This he did, finding however, to his infinite disgust, that they were one and all, utter failures.

Believing and saying that this result was due to his enemies and a cabal, he finally sanctioned a dramatic adaptation of “L’Assommoir,” which was marvellously brought out in Paris, at the Ambigu, the part of Coupeau, a wonderful piece of acting, being taken by the Belgian actor, Gil Nasa, who is said to have once been a physician, and also to have studied the dreadful details of delirium tremens, at the hospital of Sainte-Anne. The

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.vous tremors, the twitching hands, the terror mown at the sight of the brandy-bottle, one draught from which the physician had warned him would prove fatal, then the slow approach as if fascinated, the greedy absorption of the coveted drink, and then the wild ravings of the end, when “Coupeau” dies, shrieking and struggling and fighting to the last with the fiends and reptiles that he sees around him — was marvellously done, and was dreadful to see.

The house on the evening of the first representation of “ L’ ^ssommoir ” was crowded, for curiosity was n.^nsely aroused to witness the representation on the stage, of a novel that had had a sale already of over One Hundred Thousand Copies. The interest and excitement of the house was very great, increasing as the play went on. Ladies rose hastily and left the theatre, others fainted, the representation, possibly, bringing too vividly before their eyes the grim tragedies and wretched mysteries of their own homes. The play, nevertheless, was a great success, owing to the terrible truthfulness of its pictures of the

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slow degradation and certain ruin brought about by drunkenness.

The play and the novel alike represent the debasing effects of alcohol on the habits and morals of those who, by Nature, are pure at heart and honest in their lives.

The Parisian workman, who resorts to the corner grog-shop for his daily stimulant, knows that the liquor he there imbibes, will as surely “ lay him out” as will a blow from a loaded bludgeon, and in his slang — for the working classes of Paris are as figurative in their language as is the red man of the West — gave to a drinking-shop where a still was displayed, the name of “ L’Assommoir,” which, translated literally, means “The Loaded Bludgeon.”

With this explanation the reader will have no difficulty in understanding why the translator has preserved Zola’s original title to this work, the full meaning of which is too subtle to be conveyed in any English word.

JOHN STIRLING.

CONTENTS niAPTEB PAGB

I. GERVAISE 21

II. GERVAISE AND COUPEAU 60

III. A MARRIAGE OF THE PEOPLE 96

IV. A IIAPPY HOME 122

V. A3IBITIOUS DREAMS 149

VI. GOUJET AT HIS FORGE 169

VII. A BIRTHDAY FETE 187

VIII. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 214

IX. CLOUDS IN THE HORIZON 252

X. DISASTERS AND CHANGES 284

XI. LITTLE NANA 315

XII. POVERTY AND DEGRADATION 342

XIII. THE HOSPITAL 366

FROM THE “LONDON WORLD.'

** If a Translator could be found, with sufficient literarj ability, combined with tact, delicacy and refinement, to place ‘ L’Assommoir ’ before the public in an English garb — it would do infinitely more good to the cause of Temperance and Total Abstinence, than all the fanatical utterances of the disciples of the Temperance cause. That ‘ L’Assommoir ’ needs a certain amount of judicious pruning is unquestionable; certain touches of hideous realism under which even Paris grew restive, must be omitted — or smoothed over ; to do this, and not weaken the book, would be an arduous undertaking — but that it can be done we believe — and that it should be done — we advise.”

The publishers of this volume believe, that in offering the present version of “ L’Assommoir ” to the American Public, as translated by John Stirling, they have fulfilled all the suggestions and requirements contained in the above editorial notice copied from the “ London World,” and their most earnest desire is that it will fulfil its mission.

L’ASSOMMOIR.

(NANA’S MOTHER.)

BY EMILE ZOLA.

AUTHOR OF “ NANA," “ GIRL IN SCARLET," “ CLAUDE'S CONFESSION,” ‘‘HELENE,” “ POT-BOUILLE,” “tHEKF.SE KAQUIN,” “ THE MYSTERIES OF MARSEILLES,” “MAGDALEN FEKA T,” “A MAD LOVE; OR, THE ABBE AND HIS COURT,”

‘‘THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON,”

“LA BELLE lisa; OR, THE PARIS MARKET GIRLS,”

“ALBINE ; OR, THE ABBE’S TEMPTATION,” BTC.

TRANSLATED BY JOHN STIRLING.

Chapter I. Gervaise

GERVAISE had waited and watched for Lantier until two in the morning. Then, chilled and shivering she turned from the window and threw herself across the bed, where she fell into a feverish doze with her cheeks wet with tears. For the last week when they came out of the Veau d deux tetes where they ate, he had sent her off to bed with the children, and had not appeared until lat.e into the night, and always with a story that he had been looking for work.

This very night, while she was watching for his return, she fancied she saw him enter the ball room of the l’assommoir.

Grand-Balcon, whose ten windows blazing with lights illum:nated as with a sheet of fire, the black lines of the outer Boulevards. She caught a glimpse of Adele, a pretty brunette who dined at their restaurant, and who was walking a few steps behind him, with her hands swinging as if she had just dropped his arm, rather than pass before the bright light of the globes over the door, in his company.

When Gervaise awoke about five o’clock, stiff and sore, she burst into wild sobs, for Lantier had not come in. For the first time he had slept out. She sat on the edge of the bed, half shrouded in the canopy of faded chintz that hung from the arrow fastened to the ceiling by a string. Slowly, with her eyes suffused with tears, she looked around this miserable c. l*e garnie , whose furniture consisted of a chestnut bureau of which one drawer was absent, three straw chairs and a greasy table, on which was a broken handled pitcher.

Another bedstead — an iron one — had been brought in for the children. This stood in front of the bureau and filled up two-thirds of the room.

A trunk belonging to Gervaise and Lantier stood in the corner wide open, showing its empty sides, while at the bottom a man’s old hat lay among soiled shirts and hose. Along the walls, and on the backs of the chairs, hung a ragged shawl, a pair of muddy pantaloons and a dress or two — all too bad for the old clothes man to buy. In the middle of the mantel between two mismated tin candlesticks was a bundle of pawn tickets l’assommoir.

from the Mont-de-Piet^. These tickets were of a delicate shade of rose.

The room was the best in the hotel — the first flooi looking out on the Boulevard.

Meanwhile side by side on the same pillow, the twc children lay calmly sleeping. Claude, who was eight years old, was breathing calmly and regularly with his little hands outside of the coverings, while Etienne, only four, smiled with one arm under his brother’s neck.

When their mother’s eyes fell on them she had a new paroxysm of sobs, and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle them. Then with bare feet, not stopping to put on her slippers which had fallen off, she ran to the window, out of which she leaned as she had done half the night, and inspected the sidewalks as far as she could see.

The hotel was on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, at the left of the Barridre Poissonnidrs. It was a two story building, painted a deep red up to the first floor, and had disjointed weather-stained blinds.

Above a lantern with glass sides, was a sign between the two windows :

HOTEL BONCCEUR,

KEPT BY

MARSOULLIER.

in large yellow letters, partially obliterated by the dampness. Gervaise, who was prevented by the lantern from seeing as she desired, leaned out still further, l’assommoir.

with her handkerchief on her lips. She looked to the right toward the Boulevard de Rochechoumart, where groups of butchers stood with their bloody frocks before their establishments, and the fresh breeze brought in whiffs, a strong animal smell — the smell of slaughtered cattle.

She looked to the left, following the ribbon-like avenue, past the Hospital de Lariboisidre, then building. Slowly, from one end to the other of the horizon, did she follow the wall, from behind which in the night time, she had heard strange groans and cries, as if some fell murder were being perpetrated. She looked at it with horror, as if in some dark corner — dark with dampness and filth — she should distinguish Lantier, — Lantier lying dead with his throat cut.

When she gazed beyond this gray and interminable wall she saw a great light, a golden mist waving and shimmering with the dawn of a new Parisian day. But it was to the Barri&re Poissonniers that her eyes persistently returned — watching dully the uninterrupted flow of men and cattle, wagons and sheep which came down from Montmartre and from la Chapelle. There were scattered flocks dashed like waves on the sidewalk by some sudden detention, and an endless succession of laborers going to their work with their tools over their shoulders and their loaves of bread under their arms.

Suddenly Gervaise thought she distinguished Lantier amid this crowd, and she leaned eagerly forward at the risk of falling from the window. With a fresh pang w l’assommoie.

of disappointment she pressed her handkerchief to her lips to restrain her sobs.

A fresh, youthful voice caused her to turn around :

“ Lantier has not come in then ? ”

“No, Monsieur Coupeau,” she answered, trying to 6mile.

The speaker was a tinsmith who occupied a tiny room at the top of the house. His bag of tools was over his shoulder ; he had seen the key in the door and entered with the familiarity of a friend.

“You know,” he continued, “that I am working now-a-days at the Hospital. What a May this is ! The air positively stings one this morning.”

As he spoke he looked closely at Gervaise ; he saw her eyes were red with tears, and then glancing at the bed, discovered that it had not been disturbed. He shook his head, and going toward the couch where the children lay with their rosy cherub faces, he said in a lower voice :

“ You think your husband ought to have been with you, Madame. But don’t be troubled, he is busy with politics. He went on like a mad man the other day when they were voting for Eugene Sue. Perhaps he passed the night with his friends abusing that reprobate, Bonaparte.”

“ No, no,” she murmured, with an effort. “ You think nothing of that kind. I know where Lantier is only too well. We have our sorrows like the rest of the world ! ”

l’assommoir.

Coupeau gave a knowing wink and departed, having offered to bring her some milk if she did not care to go out ; she was a good woman, he told her, and might count on him any time when she was in trouble.

As soon as Gervaise was alone, she returned to the window.

From the Barriere, the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep still came on the keen, fresh morning air. Among the crowd, she recognized the locksmiths by their blue frocks, the masons by their white overalls, the painters by their coats, from under which hung their blouses. This crowd was cheerless. All of neutral tints — grays and blues predominating, with never a dash of color. Occasionally a workman stopped and lighted his pipe, while his companions passed on. There was no laughing, no talking, but they strode on steadily with cadaverous faces, toward that Paris which quickly swallowed them up.

At the two corners of La Rue des Poissonnidrs were two wine shops, where the shutters had just been taken down. Here some of the workmen lingered, crowding into the shop, spitting, cougliing, and drinking glasses of brandy and water. Gervaise was watching the place on the left of the street, where she thought she had seen Lantier go in, when a stout woman, bareheaded, and wearing a large apron, called to her from the pavement,

“ You are up early ! Madame Lantier ! ”

Gervaise leaned out.

“Ah! Is it you, Madame Boche! Yes, I am up early, for I have much to do to-day.”

l’assommoir.

“Is that so? Well, things don’t get done by themselves, that’s sure ! ”

And a conversation ensued between the window and the sidewalk. Madame Boche was the Concierge oi the house wherein the restaurant du Veau d Deux Tetes occupied the rez de ehauss^e.

Many times Gervaise had waited for Lantier in the room of this woman, rather than face the men who were eating. The Concierge said she had just been round the corner to arouse a lazy fellow who had promised to do some work, and then went on to speak of one of her lodgers who had come in the night before with some woman, and had made such a noise that every one was disturbed until after three o’clock.

As she gabbled however, she examined Gervaise with considerable euriosity, and seemed, in fact, to have come out under the window for that express purpose.

“ Is Monsieur Lantier still asleep?” she asked suddenly.

“ Yes, he is asleep,” answered Gervaise, with flushing cheeks.

Madame saw the tears come to her eyres, and satisfied with her discovery was turning away, when she suddenly stopped and called out :

“ You are going to the lavatory this morning, are you not ? All right then, I have some things to wash, and I will keep a place for you next to me, and we can have a little talk ! ”

Then as if moved by sudden compassion, she added :

“ Poor child! — don’t stay at that window any longer. You are purple with cold, and will surely make yourself sick ! ”

But Gervaise did not move. She remained in the same spot for two mortal hours, until the clock struck eight. The shops were now all open. The procession in blouses had long ceased, and only an occasional one hurried along. At the wine shops however, there was the same crowd of men drinking, spitting, and coughing. The workmen in the street had given place to the workwomen. Milliner’s apprentices, florists, burnishers, who with thin shawls drawn closely around them, came in bands of three or four, talking eagerly, with gay laughs and quick glances. Occasionally one solitary figure was seen, a pale-faced, serious woman, who walked rapidly, neither looking to the right nor to the left.

Then came the clerks, blowing on their fingers to warm them, eating a roll as they walked ; young men, lean and tall, with clothing they had outgrown, and with eyes heavy with sleep ; old men, who moved along with measured steps, occasionally pulling out their watches, but able, from many years’ practice, to time their movements almost to a second.

The Boulevards at last wrere comparatively quiet. The inhabitants were sunning themselves. Women with untidy hair and soiled petticoats were nursing their babies in the open air, and an occasional dirty-faced brat fell into the gutter, or rolled over with shrieks of pain or joy.

Gervaise felt faint and ill — all hope was gone. It seemed to her that all was over, and that Lantier would come no more. She looked from the dingy slaughter houses, black with their dirt and loathsome odor, on to the new and staring Hospital, and into the rooms consecrated to Disease and Death. As yet, the windows were not in, and there was nothing to impede her views of the large, empty wards. The sun shone directly in her face and blinded her.

She was sitting on a chair, with her arms dropping drearily at her side, but not weeping, when Lantier quietly opened the door and walked in.

“ You have come ! ” she cried, ready to throw herself on his neck.

“Yes, I have come,” he answered, “and what of it? Don’t begin any of your nonsense, now ! ” — and he pushed her aside. Then, with an angry gesture, he tossed his felt hat on the bureau.

He was a small, dark fellow, handsome and well made, with a delicate moustache, which he twisted in his fingers mechanically as he spoke. He wore an old coat, buttoned tightly at the waist, and spoke with a strongly marked Proven$al accent.

Gervaise had dropped upon her chair again, and uttered disjointed phrases of lamentation.

“ I have not closed my eyes — I thought you were killed ! Where have you been all night ? I feel as if I so l’assommoir.

were going mad ! Tell me, Auguste, where have yon been ? ”

“Oh! I had business,” he answered, with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. “ At eight o’clock, I had an engagement with that friend, you know, who is thinking of starting a manufactory of hats. I was detainei, and I preferred stopping there. But you know I don’t like to be watched and catechised. J ust let me alone, will you ? ”

His wife began to sob. Their voices, and Lantier’s noisy movements, as he pushed the chairs about, woke the children. They started up, half naked, with tumbled hair, and hearing their mother cry, they followed her example, rending the air with their shrieks.

“ Well, this is lovely music ! ” cried Lantier, furiously. I warn you, if you don’t all stop, that out of this door I go, and you won’t see me again in a hurry! Will you hold your tongue? Good-bye, then ; I’ll go back where I came from.”

He snatched up his hat, but Gervaise rushed toward him, crying:

“No! no!”

And she soothed the children and stifled their cries with kisses, and laid them tenderly back in their bed, and they were soon happy, and merrily playing together. Meanwhile the father, not even taking off his boots, threw himself on the bed with a weary air. His face was white from exhaustion and a sleepless night ; he did not close his eyes, but looked around the room.

l’assommoir.

“ A nice looking place, this! ” he muttered,

Then examining Gervaise, he said, half aloud and half to himself :

“ So ! you have given up washing yourself, it seems ! ”

Gervaise was only twenty-two. She was tall and slender, with delicate features, already worn by hardships and anxieties. With her hair uncombed and shoes down at heel, shivering in her white sack, on which was much dust and many stains from the furniture and wall where it had hung, she looked at least ten years older from the hours of suspense and tears she had passed.

Lantier’s words startled her from her resignation and timidity.

“ Are you not ashamed ? ” she said with considerable animation. “ You know very well that I do all I can. It is not my fault that we came here. I should like to see you with two children, in a place where you can’t get a drop of hot water. We ought as soon as we reached Paris to have settled ourselves at once in a home, that was what you promised.”

“ Pshaw,” he muttered ; “ you had as much good as I had out of our savings. You ate the fatted calf with me — and it is not worth while to make a row about it now ! ”

She did not heed his words, but continued :

“ There is no need of giving up either. I saw Madame Fauconnier, the laundress in La Rue Neuve. She will take me Monday. If you go in with your friend we shall be afloat again ip six months. We must find some kind of a hole where we can live cheaply while we work. That is the thing to do now. Work ! work ! ”

Lantier turned his face to the wall with a shrug of disgust which enraged his wife, who resumed :

“ Yes, I know very well that you don’t like to work. You would like to wear fine clothes and walk about the streets all day. You don’t like my looks since you took all my dresses to the pawnbrokers. No, no, Auguste, I did not intend to speak to you about it, but I know very well where you spent the night. I saw you go into the Grand-Baleon with that street walker, Adele. You have made a charming choice. She wears fine clothes and is clean. Yes, and she has reason to be certainly, there is not a man in that restaurant who does not know her far better than an honest girl should be known ! ”

Lantier leaped from the bed. His eyes were a? black as night and his face deadly pale.

“ Yes,” repeated his wife, “ I mean what T say. Madame Boche will not keep her or her sister in the house any longer, because there are always a crowd of men hanging on the stair-case.”

Lantier lifted both fists, and then conquering a violent desire to beat her, he seized her in his arms, shook her violently and threw her on the bed where the children were. They at once began to cry again, while he stood for a moment, and then, with the air of a man who finally takes a resolution in regard to which he has hesitated, he said :

“ You do not know what you have done, Gervaise. You are wrong — as you will soon discover.”

For a moment the voices of the children filled the room. Their mother lying on their narrow couch held them both in her arms, and said over and over again in a monotonous voice :

“ If you were not here, my poor darlings ! if you were not here ! If you were not here ! ”

Lantier was lying flat on his back with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He was not listening ; his attention was concentrated on some fixed idea. He remained in this way for an hour and more — not sleeping in spite of his evident and intense fatigue. When he turned and leaning on his elbow looked about the room again, he found that Gervaise had arranged the chamber and made the children’s bed. They were washed and dressed. He watched her as she swept the room and dusted the furniture.

The room was very dreary still however, with its smoke-stained ceiling, and paper discolored by dampness, and three chairs and dilapidated bureau, whose greasy surface no dusting could clean. Then while she washed herself and arranged her hair before the small mirror, he seemed to examine her arms and shoulders, as if instituting a comparison between herself and some one else. And he smiled a disdainful little smile.

Gervaise was slightly, very slightly lame, but her lameness was perceptible only on such days as she was very tired. This morning, so weary was she from the watches of the night, that she could hardly walk without support.

A profound silence reigned in the room — they did not speak to each other. He seemed to be waiting for something. She, adopting an unconcerned air, seemed to be in haste.

She made up a bundle of soiled linen that had been thrown into a corner behind the trunk, and then he spoke :

“ What are you doing ? Are you going out ? ”