TO EMILE ZOLA.
Croisset, near Rouen, June 3, 1874.
I have read it—La Conquête de Plassans—read it all at one breath, as one swallows a glass of good wine; then I ruminated over it, and now, my dear friend, I can talk sensibly about it. I feared, after the Ventre de Paris, that you would bury yourself in the “system” in your resolution. But no! You are a good fellow! And your latest book is a fine, swaggering production!
Perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having a central scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhaps also there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters. There! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects I discover. But what power of observation! what depth! what a masterly hand!
That which struck me most forcibly in the general tone of the work was the ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. That is very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained.
What a perfect bourgeois is Mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice, his resignation, and his flatness! The Abbé Faujas is sinister and great—a true director! How well he manages the woman, how ably he makes himself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then in brutalising her!
As to her (Marthe), I cannot express to you how much I admire her, and the art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. Her hysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. How well you describe the breaking-up of the household!
I forgot to mention the Tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and the Abbé Bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility.
Provincial life, the little gardens, the Paloque family, the Rastoil, and the tennis-parties,—perfect, perfect!
Your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest words and phrases: “The tonsure like a cicatrice;” “I should like it better if he went to see the women;” “Mouret had stuffed the stove,” etc.
And the circle of youth—that was a true invention! I have noted many other things on the margins, viz.:
The physical details which Olympe gives regarding her brother; the strawberry; the mother of the abbé ready to become his pander; and her old trunk.
The harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poor sweetheart, because he detects thereon “an odour of woman.”
The description of the sacristy, with the name of M. Delangre on the wall—the whole phrase is a jewel.
But that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work, is the end! I know of nothing more powerful than that dénouement. Marthe’s visit at her uncle’s house, the return of Mouret, and his inspection of the house! One is seized by fear, as in the reading of some fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendous realism, the intensity of truth. The reader feels his head turned, in sympathy with Mouret.
The insensibility of the bourgeois, who watches the fire seated in his armchair, is charming, and you wind up with one sublime stroke: the apparition of the soutane of the Abbé Serge at the bedside of his dying mother, as a consolation or a chastisement!
There is one bit of chicanery, however. The reader (that has no memory) does not know by instinct what motive prompts M. Rougon and Uncle Macquart to act as they do. Two paragraphs of explanation would have been sufficient.
Never mind! it is what it is, and I thank you for the pleasure it has given me.
Sleep on both ears, now your work is done!
Lay aside for me all the stupid criticisms it draws forth. That kind of document interests me very much.