The Fat and the Thin

The Fat and the Thin

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Title: The Fat and the Thin
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The Fat and the Thin By Emile Zola

THE FAT AND THE THIN (LE VENTRE DE PARIS)
BY
EMILE ZOLA

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY ERNEST
ALFRED VIZETELLY

Let me have men about me that are fat: Sleek-headed men, and such as
sleep o' nights: Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks
too much: such men are dangerous. SHAKESPEARE: /Julius Caesar/,
act i, sc. 2.

INTRODUCTION
"THE FAT AND THE THIN," or, to use the French title, "Le Ventre de
Paris," is a story of life in and around those vast Central Markets which
form a distinctive feature of modern Paris. Even the reader who has
never crossed the Channel must have heard of the Parisian /Halles/, for
much has been written about them, not only in English books on the
French metropolis, but also in English newspapers, magazines, and
reviews; so that few, I fancy, will commence the perusal of the present
volume without having, at all events, some knowledge of its subject
matter.

The Paris markets form such a world of their own, and teem at certain
hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life, that it was only
natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M. Zola, who,
to use his own words, delights "in any subject in which vast masses of
people can be shown in motion." Mr. Sherard tells us[*] that the idea of
"Le Ventre de Paris" first occurred to M. Zola in 1872, when he used
continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a ramble through the
Halles. I have in my possession, however, an article written by M. Zola
some five or six years before that time, and in this one can already
detect the germ of the present work; just as the motif of another of M.
Zola's novels, "La Joie de Vivre," can be traced to a short story written
for a Russian review.
[*] /Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study/, by Robert
Harborough Sherard, pp. 103, 104. London, Chatto & Windus, 1893.
Similar instances are frequently to be found in the writings of English
as well as French novelists, and are, of course, easily explained. A
young man unknown to fame, and unable to procure the publication of
a long novel, often contents himself with embodying some particular
idea in a short sketch or story, which finds its way into one or another
periodical, where it lies buried and forgotten by everybody--excepting
its author. Time goes by, however, the writer achieves some measure of
success, and one day it occurs to him to elaborate and perfect that old
idea of his, only a faint /apercu/ of which, for lack of opportunity, he
had been able to give in the past. With a little research, no doubt, an
interesting essay might be written on these literary resuscitations; but if
one except certain novelists who are so deficient in ideas that they
continue writing and rewriting the same story throughout their lives, it
will, I think, be generally found that the revivals in question are due to
some such reason as that given above.
It should be mentioned that the article of M. Zola's young days to
which I have referred is not one on market life in particular, but one on
violets. It contains, however, a vigorous, if brief, picture of the