The Fortune of the Rougons | Page 3

inventions. Indeed, several years ago I came by chance upon them both,
in an old French deed which I was examining at the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris. I there found mention of a Rougon family and a
Macquart family dwelling virtually side by side in the same village.
This, however, was in Champagne, not in Provence. Both families
farmed vineyards for a once famous abbey in the vicinity of Epernay,

early in the seventeenth century. To me, personally, this trivial
discovery meant a great deal. It somehow aroused my interest in M.
Zola and his works. Of the latter I had then only glanced through two
or three volumes. With M. Zola himself I was absolutely unacquainted.
However, I took the liberty to inform him of my little discovery; and
afterwards I read all the books that he had published. Now, as it is
fairly well known, I have given the greater part of my time, for several
years past, to the task of familiarising English readers with his writings.
An old deed, a chance glance, followed by the great friendship of my
life and years of patient labour. If I mention this matter, it is solely with
the object of endorsing the truth of the saying that the most
insignificant incidents frequently influence and even shape our careers.
But I must come back to "The Fortune of the Rougons." It has, as I
have said, its satirical and humorous side; but it also contains a strong
element of pathos. The idyll of Miette and Silvere is a very touching
one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in
Provence at the period M. Zola selects for his narrative. Miette is a
frank child of nature; Silvere, her lover, in certain respects foreshadows,
a quarter of a century in advance, the Abbe Pierre Fromont of
"Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." The environment differs, of course,
but germs of the same nature may readily be detected in both characters.
As for the other personages of M. Zola's book--on the one hand, Aunt
Dide, Pierre Rougon, his wife, Felicite, and their sons Eugene, Aristide
and Pascal, and, on the other, Macquart, his daughter Gervaise of
"L'Assommoir," and his son Jean of "La Terre" and "La Debacle,"
together with the members of the Mouret branch of the ravenous,
neurotic, duplex family--these are analysed or sketched in a way which
renders their subsequent careers, as related in other volumes of the
series, thoroughly consistent with their origin and their up-bringing. I
venture to asset that, although it is possible to read individual volumes
of the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting others, nobody can
really understand any one of these books unless he makes himself
acquainted with the alpha and the omega of the edifice, that is, "The
Fortune of the Rougons" and "Dr. Pascal."
With regard to the present English translation, it is based on one made
for my father several years ago. But to convey M. Zola's meaning more
accurately I have found it necessary to alter, on an average, at least one

sentence out of every three. Thus, though I only claim to edit the
volume, it is, to all intents and purposes, quite a new English version of
M. Zola's work.
E. A. V. MERTON, SURREY: August, 1898.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
I wish to explain how a family, a small group of human beings,
conducts itself in a given social system after blossoming forth and
giving birth to ten or twenty members, who, though they may appear, at
the first glance, profoundly dissimilar one from the other, are, as
analysis demonstrates, most closely linked together from the point of
view of affinity. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.
By resolving the duplex question of temperament and environment, I
shall endeavour to discover and follow the thread of connection which
leads mathematically from one man to another. And when I have
possession of every thread, and hold a complete social group in my
hands, I shall show this group at work, participating in an historical
period; I shall depict it in action, with all its varied energies, and I shall
analyse both the will power of each member, and the general tendency
of the whole.
The great characteristic of the Rougon-Macquarts, the group or family
which I propose to study, is their ravenous appetite, the great outburst
of our age which rushes upon enjoyment. Physiologically the
Rougon-Macquarts represent the slow succession of accidents
pertaining to the nerves or the blood, which befall a race after the first
organic lesion, and, according to environment, determine in each
individual member of the race those feelings, desires and passions--
briefly, all the natural and instinctive manifestations peculiar to
humanity--whose outcome assumes the conventional name of virtue or
vice. Historically the Rougon-Macquarts proceed from the masses,
radiate