The Fat and the Thin | Page 4

hold --it is a personal
opinion--that in the vast majority of cases the former are largely
governed by the last. I conceive, therefore, that a novel which takes our
daily sustenance as one of its themes has the best of all /raisons d'etre/.
A foreign writer of far more consequence and ability than
myself--Signor Edmondo de Amicis--has proclaimed the present book
to be "one of the most original and happiest inventions of French
genius," and I am strongly inclined to share his opinion.
It should be observed that the work does not merely treat of the
provisioning of a great city. That provisioning is its /scenario/; but it
also embraces a powerful allegory, the prose song of "the eternal battle
between the lean of this world and the fat--a battle in which, as the
author shows, the latter always come off successful. It is, too, in its way
an allegory of the triumph of the fat bourgeois, who lives well and beds
softly, over the gaunt and Ishmael artist--an allegory which M. Zola has
more than once introduced into his pages, another notable instance
thereof being found in 'Germinal,' with the fat, well-fed Gregoires on
the one hand, and the starving Maheus on the other."
From this quotation from Mr. Sherard's pages it will be gathered that M.
Zola had a distinct social aim in writing this book. Wellnigh the whole
social question may, indeed, be summed up in the words "food and

comfort"; and in a series of novels like "Les Rougon-Macquart,"
dealing firstly with different conditions and grades of society, and,
secondly, with the influence which the Second Empire exercised on
France, the present volume necessarily had its place marked out from
the very first.
Mr. Sherard has told us of all the labour which M. Zola expended on
the preparation of the work, of his multitudinous visits to the Paris
markets, his patient investigation of their organism, and his keen
artistic interest in their manifold phases of life. And bred as I was in
Paris, a partaker as I have been of her exultations and her woes they
have always had for me a strong attraction. My memory goes back to
the earlier years of their existence, and I can well remember many of
the old surroundings which have now disappeared. I can recollect the
last vestiges of the antique /piliers/, built by Francis I, facing the Rue
de la Tonnellerie. Paul Niquet's, with its "bowel-twisting brandy" and
its crew of drunken ragpickers, was certainly before my time; but I can
readily recall Baratte's and Bordier's and all the folly and prodigality
which raged there; I knew, too, several of the noted thieves' haunts
which took the place of Niquet's, and which one was careful never to
enter without due precaution. And then, when the German armies were
beleaguering Paris, and two millions of people were shut off from the
world, I often strolled to the Halles to view their strangely altered
aspect. The fish pavilion, of which M. Zola has so much to say, was
bare and deserted. The railway drays, laden with the comestible
treasures of the ocean, no longer thundered through the covered ways.
At the most one found an auction going on in one or another corner,
and a few Seine eels or gudgeons fetching wellnigh their weight in gold.
Then, in the butter and cheese pavilions, one could only procure some
nauseous melted fat, while in the meat department horse and mule and
donkey took the place of beef and veal and mutton. Mule and donkey
were very scarce, and commanded high prices, but both were of better
flavour than horse; mule, indeed, being quite a delicacy. I also well
remember a stall at which dog was sold, and, hunger knowing no law, I
once purchased, cooked, and ate a couple of canine cutlets which cost
me two francs apiece. The flesh was pinky and very tender, yet I would
not willingly make such a repast again. However, peace and plenty at
last came round once more, the Halles regained their old-time aspect,

and in the years which followed I more than once saw the dawn rise
slowly over the mounds of cabbages, carrots, leeks, and pumpkins,
even as M. Zola describes in the following pages. He has, I think,
depicted with remarkable accuracy and artistic skill the many varying
effects of colour that are produced as the climbing sun casts its early
beams on the giant larder and its masses of food--effects of colour
which, to quote a famous saying of the first Napoleon, show that "the
markets of Paris are the Louvre of the people" in more senses than one.
The reader will bear in mind that the period dealt with by the author in
this work is that of 1857-60, when