The curate was so nice, so very nice! While from up in his pulpit he was talking of bones cracking and limbs roasting, the little Baroness, half asleep as she was, saw him at her table, blissfully wiping his lips, telling her, ‘My dear madame, this is a bisque which would ensure you found grace in the sight of God the Father, if your beauty were not already sufficient for you to be certain of a place in paradise.’
5
The curate, having resorted to anger and threats, began to sob. This was his habitual tactic. Almost on his knees in the pulpit, with only his shoulders visible, then, all at once, rising to his feet and bending forward as if overcome by sorrow, he would wipe his eyes, with a great rustle of starched muslin, he would throw out his arms to right and left, adopting the pose of a wounded pelican. This was the crowning piece, the grand finale for full orchestra, the wild, climactic denouement.
‘Weep, weep,’ he whimpered, his voice failing; ‘weep for yourselves, weep for me, weep for God…’
The little Baroness was completely asleep, her eyes still open. The heat, the incense, the deepening shadows, had quite numbed her. She had curled up into a cocoon, wrapped in the voluptuous sensations she was feeling; and, in this snug secrecy, she was dreaming of the most delightful things.
Next to her, in the chapel of the Holy Angels, there was a big fresco, depicting a group of handsome, half-naked young men, with wings growing out of their backs. They were smiling the smiles of bashful lovers, while their postures, bowing or kneeling, seemed to be adoring some invisible little Baroness. What handsome boys, sweet lips, satin-smooth skin, muscular arms! The worst of it was that one of them was the absolute image of the young Duke of P***, one of the Baroness’ good friends. As she dozed, she wondered if the Duke would look good naked, with wings growing out of his back. And, at times, she imagined that the big pink cherub was wearing the Duke’s black tails. Then, the dream grew clear: it really was the Duke, in a very short frock-coat, who, from out of the darkness, was blowing her kisses.
6
When the little Baroness awoke, she heard the curate’s voice pronouncing the sacramental words: ‘And it is grace that I wish you.’
For a few moments she was overcome with surprise; she thought the curate was wishing her the young Duke’s kisses.
There was a great scraping of chairs. Everyone left; the little Baroness had guessed quite correctly, her coachman was not yet waiting at the foot of the steps. That devil of a curate had dispatched his sermon very rapidly, robbing his penitent ladies of at least twenty minutes of eloquence.
And as the little Baroness waited impatiently in a side aisle, she met the curate bustling out of the sacristy. He was looking at his watch, with the hurried air of a man anxious not to miss an appointment.
‘Ah, how late I am, dear madame!’ he said. ‘You know, I’m expected at the Countess’. There’s a concert of sacred music, followed by a light meal.’
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Emile Zola was born in April 1840 and grew up in Aix-en-Provence, where he befriended the artist, Paul Cézanne. In 1858, Zola moved to Paris with his mother. Despite her hopes that he would become a lawyer, he in fact failed his baccalaureate, and went on to work for the publisher Hachette, and to write literary columns and art reviews. He lost his job at Hachette on publication of his autobiographical novel, La Confession de Claude (1865), before his earliest venture into naturalistic fiction, Thérèse Raquin (1867). His series of over twenty volumes, Les Rougon-Macquart (1871–93) is a natural and social history of one family under the Second Empire in France, individual volumes exploring social ills and the influence of nature and nurture on human behaviour. L’Assommoir (1877) concerned drunkenness and the Parisian working-classes, Nana (1880) addressed sexual exploitation, and Germinal (1885) considered labour conditions. Other novel sequences followed, always entailing vast amounts of research.
Zola’s later life as a writer was famously punctuated by his involvement in the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish army officer was falsely accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. In a newspaper letter entitled ‘J’Accuse’ (1898), Zola challenged the establishment and invited his own trial for libel, the author later removing briefly to England to escape the subsequent prison sentence. Emile Zola died in 1902, apparently asphyxiated by carbon monoxide fumes when asleep. Naturalism declined after his death, but his depictions of ‘Nature seen through a temperament’ were an important influence on writers such as Theodore Dreiser and August Strindberg.
Andrew Brown studied at the University of Cambridge, where he taught French for many years. He now works as a freelance teacher and translator. He is the author of Roland Barthes: the Figures of Writing (OUP, 1993), and his translations include Memoirs of a Madman by Gustave Flaubert, The Jinx by Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Theseus by André Gide, Incest by Marquis de Sade, The Ghost-seer by Friedrich von Schiller, Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac, Memoirs of an Egotist by Stendhal, Butterball by Guy de Maupassant, With the Flow by Joris-Karl Huysmans, Life of Castruccio Castracani by Machiavelli, and A Fantasy of Dr Ox by Jules Verne, all published by Hesperus Press.
SELECTED TITLES FROM HESPERUS PRESS
Author Title Foreword writer
Pietro Aretino The School of Whoredom Paul Bailey
Jane Austen Love and Friendship Fay Weldon
Honoré de Balzac Colonel Chabert A.N. Wilson
Charles Baudelaire On Wine and Hashish Margaret Drabble
Giovanni Boccaccio Life of Dante A.N. Wilson
Charlotte Brontë The Green Dwarf Libby Purves
Mikhail Bulgakov The Fatal Eggs Doris Lessing
Giacomo Casanova The Duel Tim Parks
Miguel de Cervantes The Dialogue of the Dogs
Anton Chekhov The Story of a Nobody Louis de Bernières
Wilkie Collins Who Killed Zebedee? Martin Jarvis
Arthur Conan Doyle The Tragedy of the Korosko Tony Robinson
William Congreve Incognita Peter Ackroyd
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness A.N. Wilson
Gabriele D’Annunzio The Book of the Virgins Tim Parks
Dante Alighieri New Life Louis de Bernières
Daniel Defoe The King of Pirates Peter Ackroyd
Marquis de Sade Incest Janet Street-Porter
Charles Dickens The Haunted House Peter Ackroyd
Fyodor Dostoevsky Poor People Charlotte Hobson
Joseph von Eichendorff Life of a Good-for-nothing
George Eliot Amos Barton Matthew Sweet
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Rich Boy John Updike
Gustave Flaubert Memoirs of a Madman Germaine Greer
E.M. Forster Arctic Summer Anita Desai
Ugo Foscolo Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis Valerio Massimo
Manfredi
Elizabeth Gaskell Lois the Witch Jenny Uglow
Théophile Gautier The Jinx Gilbert Adair
André Gide Theseus
Nikolai Gogol The Squabble Patrick McCabe
Thomas Hardy Fellow-Townsmen Emma Tennant
Nathaniel Hawthorne Rappaccini’s Daughter Simon Schama
E.T.A. Hoffmann Mademoiselle de Scudéri Gilbert Adair
Victor Hugo The Last Day of a Libby Purves
Condemned Man
Joris-Karl Huysmans With the Flow Simon Callow
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Martin Jarvis
Heinrich von Kleist The Marquise of O– Andrew Miller
D.H. Lawrence The Fox Doris Lessing
Leonardo da Vinci Prophecies Eraldo Affinati
Giacomo Leopardi Thoughts Edoardo Albinati
Nikolai Leskov Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk GilbertAdair
Niccolò Machiavelli Life of Castruccio Richard Overy
Castracani
Katherine Mansfield In a German Pension Linda Grant
Guy de Maupassant Butterball Germaine Greer
Herman Melville The Enchanted Isles Margaret Drabble
Francis Petrarch My Secret Book Germaine Greer
Luigi Pirandello Loveless Love
Edgar Allan Poe Eureka Sir Patrick Moore
Alexander Pope Scriblerus Peter Ackroyd
Alexander Pushkin Dubrovsky Patrick Neate
François Rabelais Gargantua Paul Bailey
François Rabelais Pantagruel Paul Bailey
Friedrich von Schiller The Ghost-seer Martin Jarvis
Percy Bysshe Shelley Zastrozzi Germaine Greer
Stendhal Memoirs of an Egotist Doris Lessing
Robert Louis Stevenson Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Helen Dunmore
Theodor Storm The Lake of the Bees Alan Sillitoe
Italo Svevo A Perfect Hoax Tim Parks
Jonathan Swift Directions to Servants Colm Tóibín
W.M. Thackeray Rebecca and Rowena Matthew Sweet
Ivan Turgenev Faust Simon Callow
Mark Twain The Diary of Adamand Eve John Updike
Giovanni Verga Life in the Country Paul Bailey
Jules Verne A Fantasy of Dr Ox Gilbert Adair
Edith Wharton The Touchstone Salley Vickers
Oscar Wilde The Portrait o Mr W.H. Peter Ackroyd
Virginia Woolf Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches Doris Lessing
Virginia Woolf Monday or Tuesday Scarlett Thomas
Copyright
Published by Hesperus Press Limited
28 Mortimer Street, London W1W 7RD
www.hesperuspress.com
For a Night of Love first published in French as Pour une nuit d’amour in 1876; Nantas first published in French in 1878; Fasting first published in French as Le Jeûne in 1870
This translation first published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2002
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
Introduction and English language translation © Andrew Brown, 2002
Foreword © A.N. Wilson, 2002
Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–78094–089–2