The Beast Within - Emile Zola [231]
2 opposition newspapers: From its inception in December 1852, the Second Empire had promoted ‘official’ government newspapers (such as L’Opinion nationale) and exercised rigorous censorship of the opposition press. The latter years of the regime, however, saw a more liberal attitude towards the press and the creation of a number of new opposition newspapers. According to James McMillan, ‘in the run-up to the 1869 elections, some 150 newspapers were founded, 120 of them hostile to the regime. The most vituperative was La Lanterne’ (James McMillan, Napoleon III, Longman, 1991, p. 125). The ‘opposition’ included a range of dissidents from Republicans on the left to Orleanists on the right. Zola himself contributed frequently to the opposition press (see Introduction).
3 two deputies who held official positions in the Emperor’s personal entourage: In March 1869, the Legislative Assembly challenged the right of two members of the Emperor’s ‘household’ to sit as deputies in the lower chamber. The deputies concerned were Monsieur de Bourgoing, the Emperor’s equerry, and Monsieur de Piennes, the Emperor’s chamberlain. The debate raised important constitutional issues.
4 the financial administration of the Prefect of the Seine: The Prefect of the Seine was the famous Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809 — 91), who was responsible for the wholesale rebuilding of central Paris between 1853 and 1869. The issue in question was Haussmann’s request for retrospective sanction of a loan from Le Crédit Foncier to the municipality of Paris amounting to about a quarter of the whole French budget. It was clearly felt that such arrangements should be subject to approval by a municipal council. At the time, no such council existed.
5 the Tuileries Palace: The palace of the Emperor, Napoleon III (1808 — 73).
6 the Ministry of Justice: In France, the judiciary was (and still is) conceived as an instrument of executive authority rather than an authority separate from government. It was overseen by the Ministry of Justice, whose officers were answerable directly to the Emperor. Monsieur Camy-Lamotte’s position within the ministry is the equivalent of a permanent under-secretary (see Introduction).
7 bring them face to face: It was standard procedure for the examining magistrate to arrange a confrontation between a suspect and a witness in order to observe the suspect’s reaction.
8 Petit-Couronne: A town on the river Seine, near Rouen. In the nineteenth century it was a small fishing village.
9 they managed to get from their carriage to the President’s ... while the train was travelling at full speed: In 1869, railway carriages did not have corridors; each compartment was self-contained. Zola assumes his readers will understand that in order to get from one carriage to another it would have been necessary to get outside the train and walk along the carriage footboard, jumping from one carriage to the next. Corridor trains were not introduced until the late 1880s. It is not surprising that Denizet finds such an operation difficult to believe.
10 brain fever: I.e. typhoid.
CHAPTER V
1 Séverine knew that he would be in at one o’clock: How Séverine knew this is not explained. The audacity of this apparently casual visit to the private address of a high-placed government official would have appeared just as remarkable to readers of Zola’s time as it does to the present-day reader. It serves to indicate the extent of the Roubauds’ anxiety.
2 their anxiety would be at an end: Zola’s novel has been interpreted as a ‘riposte’ to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (see Introduction), but this account of the criminal being driven by his own anxiety to confess his crime has a strong affinity with comments made by the investigator Porfiry in Dostoyevsky’s novel. ‘I make damn sure that every hour and every minute he knows, or at least suspects that I know everything ... and that I’m keeping an eye on him night and day ... and if he’s conscious of the never-ending