Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [109]
3 Port aux Vins: Situated on the Quai Saint-Bernard, where wine was offloaded on its way to the wine market, the Halle aux Vins, was in the area between the Rue Jussieu and the Quai Saint-Bernard, now occupied by the Faculty of Sciences of the Universities of Paris VI and VII.
4 Buffon: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-88) (see note 2, above), was also the author of a 36-volume natural history covering cosmology, geology, zoology and botany, which was virtually an encyclopaedia of the scientific knowledge of his time.
5 the History of the Consulate and the Empire by Thiers and Lamartine’s History of the Girondins: The historian Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) was the author of authoritative works on both the Revolution and the period of Napoleon I’s rule. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) published his history of the revolutionary faction of the Girondins in 1847. Both men were opponents of the regime of Napoleon III.
CHAPTER V
1 Jeufosse: A small town built around an island upriver from Vernon.
2 sanguine beauty: From the start, Zola stresses that Laurent’s temperament is sanguine (as opposed to bilious, nervous or lymphatic (see Introduction, p. xxvi)). The physical description of Laurent corresponds to a person of sanguine type and the association of the colour red with him reinforces it.
CHAPTER VI
1 . Rue Saint-Victor: The Rue Saint-Victor runs across the angle formed by the meeting of the Rue Monge and the Rue des Écoles. Zola had a room in the Rue Saint-Victor during his first years in Paris.
2 gloria: A sugared coffee or tea with brandy or rum.
CHAPTER VII
1 called each other ‘tu’: Using the familiar second-person singular form of the verb.
2 a sort of diabolical trance: For the first time, the cat François is given some of the sinister attributes that make him such a memorable presence in the novel.
CHAPTER IX
1 La Pitié: The Hospice de la Pitié in the Rue Lacépède was not far from the Rue Saint-Victor. It was built in 1612, originally as a hostel for the homeless, and was later used as an orphanage. In 1809, it became a general hospital attached to the Hôtel-Dieu, staffed by the nuns of Sainte-Marthe. It was demolished in 1912.
CHAPTER XI
1 Saint-Ouen or Asnières: Two towns north of Paris on the Seine, which were popular sites for weekend/day excursions. A number of painters also worked or relaxed here, including Édouard Manet.
2 fortifications: Paris was surrounded by an inner city wall, which chiefly served for customs purposes and to mark the administrative boundary of the city. In 1840, under Louis-Philippe, the fortifications were rebuilt both as a protection for the city and to mark its boundary, along the line of the present boulevards extérieurs. Beyond them was a so-called military zone, which was wasteland that no one was allowed to build on.
3 aspens and oaks: François-Marie Mourad, in his edition of the novel (see Further Reading), points out the similarities between the landscape described here and Édouard Manet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l‘herbe, as well as other paintings, including Claude Monet’s study for a painting, also called Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (pp. 376-8).
4 the Tuileries: The gardens in Paris laid out by Le Nôtre in 1649, a classic example of a French formal garden, usually opposed to the more ‘natural’ style favoured by the English. It is not clear why Camille should think of the Tuileries as an English garden (though a painting by Manet, La Musique aux Tuileries (1862), does show a crowded scene in a relatively informal, almost wood-land setting).
CHAPTER XIII
1 the Morgue: Situated after 1863 at the eastern point of the Île Saint-Louis, where it was moved from the end of the