The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans). Emile Zola
thought, be allowed among young men of proved morality!
With the educational controversy many political matters soon became blended. The Italian revolutionaries were at that time doing their utmost to frighten Napoleon III. into fulfilment of his early promises respecting the liberation of Italy; and the Vatican, anxious for the maintenance of the old order of things, since any change must help on its own fall, made desperate efforts to prevent the interference of France in Italian affairs, unless indeed it were for the consolidation of the Papal power. Even as in recent times the Assumptionist Fathers have intrigued for the overthrow of the Third Republic, so did the Société de St. Vincent de Paul—which nominally was a mere charitable organisation—seek to turn the Empire into a priestly régime, or in default thereof to overthrow it. The position of Napoleon III. was the more difficult since his own wife, the Empress Eugénie, acted as the Vatican's spy and agent. Matters at last reached such a pass that the Emperor's Minister, Billault, had on the one hand to prohibit political allusions in sermons, under pain of fine and imprisonment, and on the other to break up and scatter the intriguing religious societies. Nevertheless the Empire's position remained a difficult one to the very last, and Napoleon III. was often sorely puzzled how to steer a safe course between the claims of the Pope and the clergy and the aspirations of Italy and its well-wishers; to say nothing of the views of all those who, thinking of France alone, by no means approved of priestly power in politics.
It is on the state of affairs to which I have alluded, the hostility of a part of the French clergy to the Empire in its earlier years, that M. Zola has based his novel, 'The Conquest of Plassans.' The priests, subservient to the Vatican, lead the town into a course of opposition against imperial institutions, and the Government then despatches thither an impecunious and unscrupulous priest, one Abbé Faujas, for the purpose of winning it back again. Such tactics were not infrequently employed at that time. Whilst a part of the clergy simply followed its own inclinations, others venally took pay from the Empire to do its dirty work. As often as not they subsequently betrayed their paymaster, using the positions into which they were thrust for the satisfaction of their personal ambition. Still, for a while these needy hangers-on at the Ministry of Public Worship proved useful allies, and the Empire was only too ready to employ them. It will be seen, then, that the theme chosen by M. Zola rests upon historical fact, and it may be taken that his story embodies incidents which actually occurred under such conditions as those that I have described.
The 'Conquest of Plassans' may well be read in conjunction with 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' M. Zola's earlier work, as the scene in both instances is the same, and certain personages, such as Félicité Rougon and Antoine Macquart, figure largely in both books. In the earlier volume we see the effect of the Coup d'État in the provinces, almost every incident being based upon historical fact. For instance, Miette, the heroine of 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' had a counterpart in Madame Ferrier, that being the real name of the young woman who, carrying the insurgents' blood-red banner, was hailed by them as the 'Goddess of Liberty' on their dramatic march. And in like way the tragic death of Silvère, linked to another hapless prisoner, was founded by M. Zola on an incident that followed the rising, as recorded by an eyewitness.[1] Amidst all the bloodshed, the Rougons, in M. Zola's narrative, rise to fortune and power, and Plassans (really Aix-en-Provence) bows down before them. But time passes, the revolt of the clergy supervenes, by their influence the town chooses a Royalist Marquis as deputy, and it becomes necessary to conquer it once again.
Abbé Faujas, by whom this conquest is achieved on behalf of the Empire, is, I think, a strongly conceived character, perhaps the most real of all the priests that are scattered through M. Zola's books. I do not say this because he happens to be anything but a good man. M. Zola has sketched more than one good priest in his novels, as, for instance, Abbé Rose in 'Paris;' but in this one, Faujas, there is more genuine flesh and blood than in all the others. True, his colleagues, Bourrette and Fenil, are admirably suggested; the Bishop, too, an indolent prelate who surrenders the government of his diocese to his vicar-general, and spends his time in translating Horace (for he is one of the few who favour the classics), leaves on one an impression of reality; yet no other priestly creation of M. Zola's pen can to my thinking vie with the stern, chaste, authoritative, ambitious Faujas, the man who subdues Plassans, and who wrecks the home of the Mouret family, with whom he lives.
Leading parts in the story are assigned to Mouret and his wife Marthe, both of whom are extremely interesting figures. The genesis of the former's career and fate is contained in one of M. Zola's short stories, 'Histoire d'un Fou,' which he contributed to the Paris 'Événement' before he took to book writing. The idea, so skilfully worked out, is that of a man who, although perfectly sane, is generally believed to be mad, and who by force of being thus regarded does ultimately lose his wits. In Marthe his wife, the grand-daughter of a mad woman, we find the hereditary flaw turning to hysteria, in a measure of a religious character, such as subsequently becomes manifest in her son Serge, the chief character of 'Abbé Mouret's Transgression,' which work proceeds directly from 'The Conquest of Plassans.'
In the latter book, as in 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' M. Zola skilfully depicts all the life of a French provincial town such as it was half a century or so ago, and in this respect he has simply drawn upon his own recollections of Aix, where he spent so many years of his boyhood. Much that he records might be applied to such towns even nowadays, for electric lighting, and tramcars, and motor-cars, and increased railway facilities, have made little change in provincial society. There are still rival salons and coteries and petty jealousies and vanities all at work; and if new parties have succeeded old ones, their intrigues have remained of much the same description as formerly. The many provincials who in M. Zola's narrative gravitate around the chief characters are pleasantly and skilfully diversified, and seem very life-like with their foibles and 'fads' and rivalries and ambitions. Possibly the most interesting are the Paloques, husband and wife, whom envy, hatred and all uncharitableness incessantly consume. Again, Madame Faujas, the priest's mother, is a finely-drawn character, but perhaps the failings of her daughter Olympe, and of Trouche, Olympe's husband, verge slightly upon caricature. As for old Rose, the Mourets' servant, though her ways are very amusing, and the part she plays in the persecution of her master renders her an indispensable personage in the narrative, it may be pointed out that she is virtually the same woman who has done duty half a dozen times in M. Zola's books—for instance, as Martine in 'Dr. Pascal,' as Véronique in 'The Joy of Life,' and so forth. It is rather curious, indeed, that M. Zola, so skilful in portraying diversity of character and disposition among his other personages, should have clung so pertinaciously to one sole type of an old servant-woman.
It is not my purpose here to analyse in detail the plot of 'The Conquest of Plassans,' but, having dealt at some length with the historical incidents on which the work is based, it is as well that I should point out that politics are not obtruded upon the reader in M. Zola's pages. Indeed, the book largely deals with quite another matter, that of 'the priest in the house,' showing as it does how the Mourets' home was wrecked by the combined action of the Faujases and the Trouches. In this connection the dolorous career of the unhappy Marthe is very vividly pictured. A fairly contented wife and mother at the outset of the story, she is won over to religion by Faujas, whose purpose is to utilise her as an instrument for the furtherance of his political and social schemes. But religion for her becomes a mysticism full of unrealisable yearnings, for she expects to taste the joys of Heaven even upon earth. Carried away by her religious fervour, she soon neglects her home; and her husband, it must be admitted, takes anything but the right course to win her back. She begins to loathe him and to indulge in an insane passion for the priest by whom she is spurned. Then hysteria masters her and consumption sets in; and between them those fell diseases bring her to an early grave. There are some finely conceived scenes between Marthe and Faujas; but the climax only comes towards the end of the volume, when Mouret, the husband who has been driven mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum, returns home and wreaks the most terrible vengeance upon those who have wronged him. The pages which deal with the madman's escape and his horrible revenge are certainly among the most powerful that M. Zola has ever written, and have been commended for their effectiveness by several of his leading critics.
E. A. V.
MERTON, SURREY: Sept. 1900.