The Beast Within - Emile Zola [235]
5 applied the brakes: Braking systems on early steam locomotives were notoriously inefficient.
6 crashed into the wagon with the full weight of the thirteen carriages she drew behind her: Zola based the account of this disaster on newspaper reports (in Le Temps and Le Figaro) of three actual train crashes — at Charenton in September 1881, at Cabbé-Roquebrune (near Monte Carlo) in March 1886, and at Groenendael (Belgium) in February 1889. Although each of these accidents was dissimilar (and unlike the situation depicted in the novel), they provided Zola with details such as the fireman and guard jumping off the train, passengers running into the fields, the telescoping of the train on impact, the fire from the locomotive spreading to the rest of the train, examples of horrific injuries and the difficulty of obtaining assistance and medical help.
7 pilot engine: An engine used to assist another locomotive when, for example, a train had to climb a steep gradient.
8 to greet a friend as she came towards her: Zola is careful to make this ‘friend’ feminine (‘une amie’ in French). Flore remains fiercely independent of men to the end.
CHAPTER XI
1 I’ll be able to say I never left this room: Séverine’s reasoning here is difficult to follow.
2 Séverine lay in bed on her back ... watching him walk up and down: There is an echo here of the scene near the beginning of the novel in which Séverine lies on the bed while Roubaud paces the room, planning the murder of Grandmorin (chapter I).
3 his jaw was pushed forward in a savage grimace that made him appear almost deformed: The pronounced jaw was, according to Lombroso, one of the bestial features that distinguished the criminal. Zola incorporates the detail into his initial description of Jacques (chapter II). Here he imagines the feature becoming more pronounced as Jacques’s murderous instinct takes hold of him.
CHAPTER XII
1 just because some prince of theirs wants to be King of Spain: In July, 1870, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1835 — 1905) had been offered and had accepted the vacant throne of Spain. The deal had been arranged by Bismarck; Prince Leopold himself had little enthusiasm for the idea. In France, the prospect of a Prussian prince becoming King of Spain led to fears of encirclement by Prussia.
2 elections and plebiscites and riots in Paris: The elections of May 1869 had been fiercely contested and had led to civil disturbance. They resulted in a moral victory for the opposition (see chapter IX, note 6). The Emperor was forced to agree to opposition demands for a more liberal form of government. On 8 May 1870, a new constitution was voted on by plebiscite and overwhelmingly approved (see Introduction).
3 which should have corroborated his present account: It is not immediately obvious how Roubaud’s evidence at the first inquiry should ‘corroborate’ the confession he has just made, since his earlier evidence had pointed in the direction of a murderer other than himself. It is clear, however, that Denizet is so confident he has solved the case that whatever evidence is put before him will simply confirm the conclusions he has already arrived at.
4 assessor: An assessor sits as adviser to a judge or magistrate and is often skilled in technical points of law.
5 . fashionable ladies of the town: Roger Williams draws attention to the fact that audiences at trials during the Second Empire tended to be dominated by women, especially if the case involved details of a sordid or unseemly kind (Roger L. Williams, Manners and Murders in the World of Louis-Napoleon, University of Washington Press, 1975, p. 10).
6 Napoleonic bees: Bees were introduced as a heraldic device by Napoleon Bonaparte as a replacement for the royal fleur-de-lis.
7 war had been declared: France officially declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. Mobilization, however, had begun before this.
8 a skirmish at one of the frontier