Its connection with the Rougon-Macquart series is somewhat slight. Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (La Fortune des Rougon), having served his time in the Army, came to the plain of La Beauce, and became an agricultural labourer on the farm of La Borderie, which belonged to Alexandre Hourdequin. He fell in love with Lise Mouche, who, however, married Buteau, and Macquart subsequently married her sister Francoise. Constant quarrels now arose between the two sisters as to the division of their father’s property, and in the end Francoise was murdered by her sister. Macquart, tired of the struggle, decided to rejoin the army, which he did immediately after the outbreak of war.
The interest of the book is, however, largely connected with the history of the Fouans, a family of peasants, the senior member of which, having grown old, divided his land among his three children. The intense and brutish rapacity of these peasants, their utter lack of any feeling of morality or duty, their perfect selfishness, not stopping short of parricide, form a picture of horror unequalled in fiction. It is only to be regretted that the author, in leaving nothing to the imagination, has produced a work suitable only for the serious student of sociology.
La Debacle.
In the earlier volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series Zola had dealt with every phase of life under the Second Empire, and in this novel he tells the story of that terrific land-slide which overwhelmed the regime. It is a story of war, grim and terrible; of a struggle to the death between two great nations. In it the author has put much of his finest work, and the result is one of the masterpieces of literature. The hero is Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (La Fortune des Rougon). After the terrible death of his wife, as told in La Terre, Jean enlisted for the second time in the army, and went through the campaign up to the battle of Sedan. After the capitulation he was made prisoner, and in escaping was wounded. When he returned to active service he took part in crushing the excesses of the Commune in Paris, and by a strange chance it was his hand that killed his dearest friend, Maurice Levasseur, who had joined the Communist ranks. La Debacle has been described as “a prose epic of modern war,” and vast though the subject be, it is treated in a manner that is powerful, painful, and pathetic.
In the preface to the English translation (The Downfall. London: Chatto & Windus) Mr. E. A. Vizetelly quotes from an interview with Zola regarding his aim in writing the work. A novel, he says, “contains, or may be made to contain, everything; and it is because that is my creed that I am a novelist. I have, to my thinking, certain contributions to make to the thought of the world on certain subjects, and I have chosen the novel as the best way of communicating these contributions to the world. Thus La Debacle, in the form of a very precise and accurate relation of a series of historical facts—in other words, in the form of a realistic historical novel—is a document on the psychology of France in 1870. This will explain the enormous number of characters which figure in the book. Each character represents one etat d’ame psychologique of the France of the day. If my work be well done, the reader will be able to understand what was in men’s minds and what was the bent of men’s minds—what they thought and how they thought at that period.”
Le Docteur Pascal.
In this, the concluding novel of the Rougon-Macquart series, Zola gathers together the threads of the preceding volumes and makes a vigorous defence of his theories of heredity. The story in the book is both simple and sad. Doctor Pascal Rougon, a medical man at Plassans and a distinguished student of heredity, had brought up his niece Clotilde (daughter of Aristide Rougon alias Saccard) from childhood. Years afterwards they found that they passionately loved one another, but they did not marry, as Pascal, who had lost money, thought that by doing so she would sacrifice her interests. (In this connection it is right to mention that marriage between an uncle and a niece is legal in France, and is not uncommon.) With fine self-sacrifice Pascal persuaded Clotilde to go to Paris to live with her brother who was wealthy and wanted her to nurse him. Soon after her departure Pascal showed symptoms of a fatal affection of the heart, and after some weeks of great suffering telegraphed for Clotilde to come back. One hour before her return he died. His mother, Madame Felicite Rougon, who feared that his researches on heredity might bring scandal on the family, burned all his papers, and in one hour destroyed the work of a lifetime. A child was born to Clotilde seven months after the death of Doctor Pascal; a child which he intensely desired, in the hope that through it might come the regeneration and rejuvenation of his race.
Zola, in an interview quoted by Mr. E. A. Vizetelly in the preface to his translation of Le Docteur Pascal (London: Chatto & Windus), states that in this book he has been able to defend himself against all the accusations which have been brought against him. “Pascal’s works on the members of his family,” says Zola, “is, in small, what I have attempted to do on humanity, to show all so that all may be cured. It is not a book which, like La Debacle, will stir the passions of the mob. It is a scientific work, the logical deduction and conclusion of all my preceding novels, and at the same time it is my speech in defence of all that I have done before the court of public opinion.”