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Of Nana, 1880, three hundred thousand copies were quickly sold. Pot-Bouille portrayed the lower bourgeoisie and their servants. Au Bonheur des Dames treated of the great retail shops. La Joie de Vivre came in 1884. Germinal told of mining and the misery of the proletariat. L'Oeuvre pictured the life of artists and authors. La Terre portrayed, with startling realism, the lowest peasant life.
"Buy my coal-mine shares," shouts Robert; "gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 'sont de la pot-bouille de la ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille." "Look," says he, on another occasion, to a very timid, open-countenanced client, "you have a property to sell! I have found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow whose bills are better than bank-notes."
It is simply the indignation of Tartuffe on being exposed. But from the standpoint of art, what can be said in favour of the author of L'Assommoir, Nana and Pot-Bouille? Nothing. Mr. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot's novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Zola's characters are much worse. They have their dreary vices, and their drearier virtues.
* Madame Sidonie, who figures in M. Zola's novel, 'La Curee. The male cousin, mentioned immediately afterwards, is Octave Mouret, the leading character of 'Pot-Bouille' and 'Au Bonheur des Dames. ED. As the procession was starting off, Bongrand came up, and, after shaking hands with Sandoz, remained beside him.
In 1893 the figures for the principal novels of Zola stood thus: Nana, 160,000; L'Assommoir, 127,000; La Débâcle, 143,000; Germinal, 88,000; La Terre, 100,000; La Bête Humaine, 83,000; the same number for Le Rêve; Pot-Bouille, 82,000; whereas L'Oeuvre only counted 55,000; La Conquête de Plassans, 25,000; La Curée, 36,000, and La Joie de Vivre, 44,000.
One need only think over his books and his subjects to be convinced of this: "L'Assommoir" and drunkenness; "Nana" and harlotry; "Germinale" and strikes; "L'Argent" and money getting and losing in all its branches; "Pot-Bouille" and the cruel squalor of poverty; "La Terre" and the life of the peasant; "Le Debacle" and the decay of imperialism.
The shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast; and when 'La Curee and 'Pot-Bouille are more forgotten than 'Le Grand Cyrus, men and women and, above all, boys will laugh and weep over the page of Alexandre Dumas. Like Scott himself, you take us captive in our childhood. XIII. To Theocritus
Nana, in Voltaire, brought 20,000 francs; Pot-Bouille, in Gaulois, 30,000 francs; Bonheur des Dames, La Joie de Vivre, Germinal, L'Oeuvre, La Terre, in Gil Blas, each 20,000 francs; L'Argent, in the same journal, 30,000 francs; Le Rêve, in the Revue Illustrée, 25,000 francs; La Bête Humaine, in Vie Populaire, 25,000 francs; La Débâcle, in the same, 30,000 francs, and Docteur Pascal in Revue Hebdomadaire, 35,000 francs.
Of the series called Les Trois Villes, Rome is the best seller, 121,000; and it is as profound a vilification of the Eternal City as was La Terre of the French peasants, as Pot-Bouille of the French bourgeois. Indeed, all Zola reads like the frenzied attack of a pessimist to whom his native land is a hideous nightmare and its inhabitants criminals or mad folk.
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