Ten years later, in 1874, M. Zola published a second volume of short
stories, entitled _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon_. His position, his literary
character, had in the meantime undergone a profound modification. In
1874 he was no longer unknown to the public or to himself. He had
already published four of the Rougon-Macquart novels, embodying the
natural and social history of a French family during the Second Empire.
He was scandalous and famous, and already bore a great turbulent
name in literature and criticism. The _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon_,
composed at intervals during that period of stormy evolution, have the
extraordinary interest which attends the incidental work thrown off
by a great author during the early and noisy manhood of his talent.
After 1864 M. Zola had written one unsuccessful novel after another,
until at last, in _Thérèse Raquin_, with its magnificent study of
crime chastised by its own hideous after-gust, he produced a really
remarkable performance. The scene in which the paralytic mother tries
to denounce the domestic murderess was in itself enough to prove that
France possessed one novelist the more.
This was late in 1867, when M. Zola was in his twenty-eighth year.
A phrase of Louis Ulbach’s, in reviewing _Thérèse Raquin_, which he
called “littérature putride,” is regarded as having stated the question
of Naturalism and M. Zola who had not, up to that time, had any notion
of founding a school, or even of moving in any definite direction, was
led to adopt the theories which we identify with his name during the
angry dispute with Ulbach. In 1865 he had begun to be drawn towards
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and to feel, as he puts it, that in the
_salons_ of the Parnassians he was growing more and more out of his
element “among so many impenitent _romantiques_.” Meanwhile he was
for ever feeding the furnaces of journalism, scorched and desiccated
by the blaze of public life, by the daily struggle for bread. He was
roughly affronting the taste of those who differed from him, with
rude hands he was thrusting out of his path the timid, the dull, the
old-fashioned. The spectacle of these years of M. Zola’s life is not
altogether a pleasant one, but it leaves on us the impression of a
colossal purpose pursued with force and courage. In 1870 the first
of the _Rougon Macquart_ novels appeared, and the author was fairly
launched on his career. He was writing books of large size, in which
he was endeavouring to tell the truth about modern life with absolute
veracity, no matter how squalid, or ugly, or venomous that truth might
be.
But during the whole of this tempestuous decade M. Zola, in his
hot battle-field of Paris, heard the voice of Ninon calling to him
from the leafy hollows, from behind the hawthorn hedges, of his own
dewy Provence--the cool Provence of earliest flowery spring. When
he caught these accents whistling to his memory from the past, and
could no longer resist answering them, he was accustomed to write a
little _conte_, light and innocent, and brief enough to be the note
of a caged bird from indoors answering its mate in the trees of the
garden. This is the real secret of the utterly incongruous tone of the
_Nouveaux Contes_ when we compare them with the _Curée_ and _Madeleine
Férat_ of the same period. It would be utterly to misunderstand the
nature of M. Zola to complain, as Pierre Loti did the other day, that
the coarseness and cynicism of the naturalistic novel, the tone of
a ball at Belleville, could not sincerely co-exist with a love of
beauty, or with a nostalgia for youth and country pleasures. In the
short stories of the period of which we are speaking, that poet which
dies in every middle-aged man lived on for M. Zola, artificially, in a
crystal box carefully addressed “à Ninon là-bas,” a box into which, at
intervals, the master of the Realists slipped a document of the most
refined ideality.
Of these tiny stories--there are twelve of them within one hundred
pages--not all are quite worthy of his genius. He grimaces a little too
much in “Les Epaules de la Marquise,” and M. Bourget has since analysed
the little self-indulgent _dévote_ of quality more successfully than M.
Zola did in “Le Jeûne.” But most of them are very charming. Here is “Le
Grand Michu,” a study of gallant, stupid boyhood; here “Les Paradis des
Chats,” one of the author’s rare escapes into humour. In “Le Forgeron,”
with its story of the jaded and cynical town-man, who finds health
and happiness by retiring to a lodging within the very thunders of a
village blacksmith, we have a profound criticism of life. “Le Petit
Village” is interesting to us here, because, with its pathetic picture
of Woerth in Alsace, it is the earliest of M. Zola’s studies of war.
In other of these stories the spirit of Watteau seems to inspire
the sooty Vulcan of Naturalism. He prattles of moss-grown fountains,
of alleys of wild strawberries, of rendezvous under the wings of the
larks, of moonlight strolls in the bosquets of a château. In every one,
without exception, is absent that tone of brutality which we associate
with the notion of M. Zola’s genius. All is gentle irony and pastoral
sweetness, or else downright pathetic sentiment.
The volume of _Nouveaux Contes à Ninon_ closes with a story which is
much longer and considerably more important than the rest. “Les Quatre
Journées de Jean Gourdon” deserves to rank among the very best things
to which M. Zola has signed his name. It is a study of four typical
days in the life of a Provençal peasant of the better sort, told by
the man himself. In the first of these it is spring: Jean Gourdon is
eighteen years of age, and he steals away from the house of his uncle
Lazare, a country priest, that he may meet his coy sweetheart Babet
by the waters of the broad Durance. His uncle follows and captures
him, but the threatened sermon turns into a benediction, the priestly
malediction into an impassioned song to the blossoming springtide.
Babet and Jean receive the old man’s blessing on their betrothal.
Next follows a day in summer, five years later; Jean, as a soldier in
the Italian war, goes through the horrors of a battle and is wounded,
but not dangerously, in the shoulder. Just as he marches into action
he receives a letter from Uncle Lazare and Babet, full of tender
fears and tremors; he reads it when he recovers consciousness after
the battle. Presently he creeps off to help his excellent colonel,
and they support one another till both are carried off to hospital.
This episode, which has something in common with the “Sevastopol” of
Tolstoi, is exceedingly ingenious in its observation of the sentiments
of a common man under fire.
The third part of the story occurs fifteen years later. Jean and Babet
have now long been married, and Uncle Lazare, in extreme old age, has
given up his cure, and lives with them in their farm by the river.
All things have prospered with them save one. They are rich, healthy,
devoted to one another, respected by all their neighbours; but there
is a single happiness lacking--they have no child. And now, in the
high autumn splendour--when the corn and the grapes are ripe, and the
lovely Durance winds like a riband of white satin through the gold and
purple of the landscape--this gift also is to be theirs. A little son
is born to them in the midst of the vintage weather, and the old uncle,
to whom life has now no further good thing to offer, drops painlessly
from life, shaken down like a blown leaf by his access of joy, on the
evening of the birthday of the child.
The optimistic tone has hitherto been so consistently preserved, that
we must almost resent the tragedy of the fourth day. This is eighteen
years later, and Jean is now an elderly man. His son Jacques is in
early manhood. In the midst of their felicity, on a winter’s night,
the Durance rises in spate, and all are swept away. It is impossible,
in a brief sketch, to give an impression of the charm and romantic
sweetness of this little masterpiece, a veritable hymn to the Ninon
of Provence; but it raises many curious reflections to consider that
this exquisitely pathetic pastoral, with all its gracious and tender
personages, should have been written by the master of Naturalism, the
author of _Germinal_ and of _Pot-Bouille_.