The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [177]
9. TO THE GAÎTÉ: At the time the novel is taking place, this popular theater was already nearly a century old. It was one of a number of theaters along boulevard du Temple, known as the boulevard du crime because of the melodramas that were popular there. This is the setting of Marcel Carné's brilliant 1945 film, Les Enfants du Paradis.
10. restaurant philippe: See the note for Compas d'Or, page 313.
11. PROMISED THEM AN OMELETTE AU LARD: An omelette with diced salt pork.
12. CHRISTMAS EVE DINNER: Christmas Eve is called réveillon, and it is traditional in France to eat a huge feast to usher in Christmas after midnight Mass.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. WHAT HAPPENED IN ′93: In 1793 the French Revolution turned into the Reign of Terror, when a Committee of Public Safety was formed to prevent any undoing of the gains made by the Revolution. Under the leadership of Robespierre and the hébertistes a sweeping program of arrests was undertaken. Under the Reign of Terror only two trial outcomes were permitted— either acquittal or execution. Some forty thousand people were executed, including many clergy and finally Robespierre himself in July 1794, which marked the end of the Reign of Terror.
2. ONE PER ARRONDISSEMENT: One of a number of anachronisms in this book. Paris is divided into twenty sections called arrondissements, but this division was done in 1861 and the book takes place in 1858.
3. MARRONS GLACéS THAT HAVE FALLEN TO PIECES: Candied chestnuts. The trick is to keep the chestnut whole while peeling it and then slowly cook it in sugar syrup without it crumbling. They are expensive because so many of them break, and then there is nothing to be done with the pieces except sell them cheaply to children.
4. JEAN GOUJON'S NYMPHS: Goujon (c. 1510-68) was a leading architect and sculptor of the French Renaissance. His most famous works were in Paris, where he worked with the architect Pierre Lescot. These include the sculptures for the western wing of the Louvre and the fountain at square des Innocents. Goujon did six nymphs and other decorations. Not all of the fountain, built between 1547 and 1550, remains in the square, and some of Goujon's bas-relief decorations have been moved to the Louvre.
5. BARLEY SUGAR: Sucre d'orge, a hard candy that was already two centuries old at this point. It is brown in color and resembles a hard caramel. Originally it was actually flavored with barley.
6. CULS DE SINGE: Literally monkey bottoms, this is a slang term that shows up in many ways in France, usually for objects with grooves that recede toward the center. It is a type of military insignia, a woodworking term, a type of chair, and, in this case, a melon.
7. “RAUCOURT”: Raucourt, annatto, or achiote is a pod from a tropical tree, the raucou tree, with small pebblelike seeds inside that give off a reddish orange dye. The first recorded use of annatto was by the Carib Indians, who rubbed it on their bodies to greet Columbus, and because of this, native Americans for centuries were called redskins, or peaux-rouges, as is sometimes still said in France. Today it is widely used in the Caribbean to make rice yellow. It was initially imported to Europe to give a reddish tint to chocolate, but by the eighteenth century it was being used in Europe to give a deeper color to cheeses and butters. It is the source of the color in most deep orange cheeses. It is a nearly natural process because annatto contains the same carotene, bixin, as is produced by cattle grazing on rich grasses. But in the wintertime in northern Europe, cattle are given feed, which does not allow them to produce the pigment, and butter and cheeses made from winter milk are very pale. The deeper color of spring and summer was correctly associated with richer milk, but butter and cheese producers made their products look