Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life & Work. Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
bands discoursing music, the white-gowned girls carrying banners, and the boys scattering roses and golden broom.
Although Émile Zola eventually lost all faith in the dogmas of the Roman Church, the pomp of its cult impressed him throughout his life, as is shown by many passages in his works. And in his boyhood the processions of Aix delighted him. He himself sometimes took part in them—acting on at least one occasion, in 1856, as a clarionet player of the college fanfare, for his friend Marguery had imparted to him some taste for music.
Then as now Aix had its theatre, which Zola and his young friends patronised whenever they could afford a franc for a pit seat, but they eschewed café life and the gambling which usually attends it in the provinces, for whenever they had time at their disposal they infinitely preferred to roam the country. The environs of Aix are strangely picturesque. There is the famous Mont Ste. Victoire, ascended through thickets of evergreen oaks and holly, pines, wild roses, and junipers, till at last only some box plants dot the precipitous slopes, veined like marble; while in a cavern near the summit is the weird bottomless pit of Le Garagay, whose demon-spirits Margaret of Anjou vainly interrogated in "Anne of Geierstein." Again, there is the historic castle of Vauvenargues, the ruined castle of Puyricard, the hermitage of St. Honorat, and there are other mountainous hills with goat paths, gorges, and ravines, and also stretches of plain, watered now by the Arc or the Torse, now by the canal which François Zola planned. In his son's youth that canal had not yet transformed the thirsty expanse; when Émile roamed the region with his friends "the red and yellow ochreous fields, spreading under the oppressive sun, were for the most part planted merely with stunted almond and olive trees, with branches twisted in positions which seemed to suggest suffering and revolt. Afar off, like dots on the bare stripped hills, one saw only the white-walled bastides, each flanked by dark, bar-like cypresses. The vast expanse was devoid of greenery; but on the other hand, with the broad folds and sharply defined tints of its desolate fields, it possessed some fine outlines of a severe, classic grandeur."[13]
Dam and Reservoir of the Zola Canal.—Photo by Martinet & Jouven.
Apart from the plain, but very characteristic of the region, were the Infernet gorges, near which François Zola planned one of his huge reservoirs. There one found "a narrow defile between giant walls of rock which the blazing sun had baked and gilded. Pines had sprung up in the clefts. Plumes of trees, appearing from below no larger than tufts of herbage, fringed the crests and waved above the chasm. This was a perfect chaos. With its many sudden twists, its streams of blood-red soil, pouring from each gash in its sides, its desolation and its solitude, disturbed only by the eagles hovering on high, it looked like some spot riven by the bolts of heaven, some gallery of hell."[14]
There were also the villages, whose houses, at times, were mere hovels of rubble and boards, some squatting amid muck-heaps, and dingy with woeful want; others more roomy and cheerful, with roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden, victoriously planted amid stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables enclosed by quickset hedges. Much of the aridity of the region had arisen from the ruthless deforesting of the hills; formerly the falling leaves had spread rich vegetable soil over the mountain flanks, there had been good pasture for sheep where barren crags alone were left, and the climate, equalised by the moisture of the woods, had been less abrupt and violent in its changes.[15] Yet, in Zola's youth, as now, "wherever there was the smallest spring, the smallest brook, the glowing land still burst into powerful vegetation, and a dense shade prevailed, with paths lying deep and delightfully cool between plane trees, horse-chestnuts, and elms, all growing vigorously."[16]
Those various scenes were a delight to Zola and his friends. "They craved for the open air, the broad sunlight, the sequestered paths in the ravines. They roamed the hills, rested in green nooks, returned home at night through the thick dusk of the highways. In winter they relished the cold, the frosty, gaily echoing ground, the pure sky, and the sharp atmosphere. In summer they always assembled beside the river—the willow-fringed Arc—for the water then became their supreme passion, and they spent whole afternoons bathing, swimming, paddling, and stretching themselves to dry on the fine sun-warmed sand. In the autumn they became sportsmen—inoffensive ones, for there is virtually no game, scarcely even a rabbit, in the district, and at the most one might bring down an occasional petty-chap, fig-pecker, or some other small bird. But if, now and again, they fired a shot, it was chiefly for the pleasure of making a noise, and their expeditions always ended in the shade of a tree, where they lay on their backs, chatting freely of their preferences."[17]
A little later, when Zola's young muse essayed her flight, he recalled those days of Provence, singing:
"O Provence, des pleurs s'échappent de mes yeux
Quand vibre sur mon luth ton nom mélodieux. …
O région d'amour, de parfum, de lumière,
Il me serait bien doux de t'appeler ma mère. …
Autour d'Aix, la romaine, il n'est pas de ravines,
Pas de rochers perdus au penchant des collines,
Dans la vallée en fleur pas de lointains sentiers,
Où, l'on ne puisse voir l'empreinte de mes pieds. …
Écolier échappé de la docte prison,
Et jetant aux échos son rire et sa chanson,
Adolescent rêveur poursuivant sous tes saules
La nymphe dont il croit voir blanchir les épaules,
Jusqu'aux derniers taillis j'ai couru tes forêts,
O Provence, et foulé tes lieux les plus secrets.
Mes lèvres nommeraient chacune de tes pierres,
Chacun de tes buissons perdus dans tes clairières.
J'ai joué si longtemps sur tes coteaux fleuris,
Que brins d'herbe et graviers me sont de vieux amis."[18]
Those rambles undoubtedly helped to rouse a sense of poetry in Zola and his companions. Besides providing themselves with provisions—at times a small joint of raw mutton and some salad plants, which they cooked or dressed in the wilds—they carried books, volumes of the poets, in their pockets or their bags. One year, 1856, Victor Hugo reigned over them like an absolute monarch. They were conquered by the majesty of his compositions, enraptured by his powerful rhetoric. His dramas haunted them like splendid visions. After being chilled by the classic monologues which they were compelled to learn by heart at the college, they felt warmed, transported into an orgy of quivering ecstacy, when they lodged passages of "Hernani" and "Ruy Blas" in their minds. Many a time, on the river-bank, after bathing, they acted some scenes together.[19] Indeed, they knew entire plays, and on the way home, in the twilight, they would adapt their steps to the rhythm of those lines which were sonorous like trumpet-blasts. But a day came when one of them produced a volume of Alfred de Musset's poems, the perusal of which set their hearts quivering. From that hour their worship for Hugo received a great blow, his lines fled from their memories, and Musset alone reigned over them. He became their constant companion in the hollows, the grottoes, the little village inns where they rested; and, again and again, they read "Rolla" or the "Nights," aloud.[20]
Thus their young natures awoke to love. Cézanne and Baille were then about eighteen years of age, Zola was seventeen. But their