In 1883, M. Zola published a third volume of short stories, under
the title of the opening one, _Le Capitaine Burle_. This collection
contains the delicate series of brief semi-autobiographical essays
called “Aux Champs,” little studies of past impression, touched with a
charm which is almost kindred to that of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s
memories. With this exception, the volume consists of four short
stories, and of a set of little death-bed anecdotes, called “Comment
on Meurt.” This latter is hardly in the writer’s best style, and
suffers by suggesting the immeasurably finer and deeper studies of the
same kind which the genius of Tolstoi has elaborated. Of these little
sketches of death, one alone, that of Madame Rousseau, the stationer’s
wife, is quite of the best class. This is an excellent episode from the
sort of Parisian life which M. Zola seems to understand best, the lower
middle class, the small and active shopkeeper, who just contrives to
be respectable and no more. The others seem to be invented rather than
observed.
The four stories which make up the bulk of this book are almost typical
examples of M. Zola’s mature style. They are worked out with extreme
care, they display in every turn the skill of the practised narrator,
they are solid and yet buoyant in style, and the construction of each
may be said to be faultless. It is faultless to a fault; in other
words, the error of the author is to be mechanically and inevitably
correct. It is difficult to define wherein the over-elaboration shows
itself, but in every case the close of the story leaves us sceptical
and cold. The _dénouement_ is too brilliant and conclusive, the
threads are drawn together with too much evidence of preoccupation. The
impression is not so much of a true tale told as of an extraordinary
situation frigidly written up to and accounted for. In each case a
certain social condition is described at the beginning, and a totally
opposite condition is discovered at the end of the story. We are
tempted to believe that the author determined to do this, to turn the
whole box of bricks absolutely topsy-turvy. This disregard of the soft
and supple contours of nature, this rugged air of molten metal, takes
away from the pleasure we should otherwise legitimately receive from
the exhibition of so much fancy, so much knowledge, so many proofs of
observation.
The story which gives its name to the book, “Le Capitaine Burle” is
perhaps the best, because it has least of this air of artifice. In a
military county town, a captain, who lives with his anxious mother and
his little pallid, motherless son, sinks into vicious excesses, and
pilfers from the regiment to pay for his vices. It is a great object
with the excellent major, who discovers this condition, to save his
friend the captain in some way which will prevent an open scandal, and
leave the child free for ultimate success in the army. After trying
every method, and discovering that the moral nature of the captain
is altogether too soft and too far sunken to be redeemed, as the
inevitable hour of publicity approaches, the major insults his friend
in a café, so as to give him an opportunity of fighting a duel and
dying honourably. This is done, and the scandal is evaded, without,
however, any good being thereby secured to the family, for the little
boy dies of weakness and his grandmother starves. Still, the name of
Burle has not been dragged through the mud.
M. Zola has rarely displayed the quality of humour, but it is present
in the story called “La Fête à Coqueville.” Coqueville is the name
given to a very remote Norman fishing-village, set in a gorge of
rocks, and almost inaccessible except from the sea. Here a sturdy
population of some hundred and eighty souls, all sprung from one or
other of two rival families, live in the condition of a tiny Verona,
torn between contending interests. A ship laden with liqueurs is
wrecked on the rocks outside, and one precious cask after another
comes riding into Coqueville over the breakers. The villagers, to
whom brandy itself has hitherto been the rarest of luxuries, spend
a glorious week of perfumed inebriety, sucking splinters that drip
with bénédictine, catching noyeau in iron cups, and supping up curaçao
from the bottom of a boat. Upon this happy shore chartreuse flows like
cider, and trappistine is drunk out of a mug. The rarest drinks of the
world--Chios mastic and Servian sliwowitz, Jamaica rum and arrack,
crême de moka and raki drip among the mackerel nets and deluge the
seaweed. In the presence of this extraordinary and fantastic bacchanal
all the disputes of the rival families are forgotten, class prejudices
are drowned, and the mayor’s rich daughter marries the poorest of
the fisher-sons of the enemy’s camp. It is very amusingly and very
picturesquely told, but spoiled a little by M. Zola’s pet sin--the
overcrowding of details, the theatrical completeness and orchestral
big-drum of the final scene. Too many barrels of liqueur come in, the
village becomes too universally drunk, the scene at last becomes too
Lydian for credence.
In the two remaining stories of this collection--“Pour une Nuit
d’Amour” and “L’Inondation”--the fault of mechanical construction is
still more plainly obvious. Each of these narratives begins with a
carefully accentuated picture of a serene life: in the first instance,
that of a timid lad sequestered in a country town; in the second, that
of a prosperous farmer, surrounded by his family and enjoying all the
delights of material and moral success. In each case this serenity is
but the prelude to events of the most appalling tragedy--a tragedy
which does not merely strike or wound, but positively annihilates. The
story called “L’Inondation,” which describes the results of a bore on
the Garonne, would be as pathetic as it is enthralling, exciting, and
effective, if the destruction were not so absolutely complete, if the
persons so carefully enumerated at the opening of the piece were not
all of them sacrificed, and, as in the once popular song called “An
’Orrible Tale,” each by some different death of peculiar ingenuity.
As to “Pour une Nuit d’Amour,” it is not needful to do more than say
that it is one of the most repulsive productions ever published by its
author, and a vivid exception to the general innocuous character of his
short stories.
No little interest, to the practical student of literature, attaches
to the fact that in “L’Inondation” M. Zola is really re-writing, in a
more elaborate form, the fourth section of his “Jean Gourdon.” Here,
as there, a farmer who has lived in the greatest prosperity, close to
a great river, is stripped of everything--of his house, his wealth,
and his family--by a sudden rising of the waters. It is unusual for
an author thus to re-edit a work, or tell the same tale a second time
at fuller length, but the sequences of incidents will be found to be
closely identical, although the later is by far the larger and the more
populous story. It is not uninteresting to the technical student to
compare the two pieces, the composition of which was separated by about
ten years.