Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (65 page)

Parliament
: the Chamber of Deputies (‘Chambre des Députés’) denotes the various bodies constituting France’s Legislative Assembly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1852 Napoleon III made the Corps Législatif (Legislative Assembly) the lower chamber of the French Parliament, its members being elected by universal (male) suffrage. Its powers were shared with the more powerful executive arm, the Conseil d’État (Council of State), and the Sénat (Senate). Ministers were appointed by the Emperor and were responsible only to him. The Third Republic (after 1871) re-established the name Chambre des Députés. The French Parliament later became known as the National Assembly (‘Assemblée Nationale’).

jobber
: (
remisier
in French) one who acts as intermediary between brokers, touting for custom and getting a commission on each transaction, rather like a bookmaker’s ‘runner’.

by-elections … Opposition
: elections had been held in May 1863, but on 20 March 1864 by-elections were held for two districts of Paris. Government candidates were very soundly defeated by Carnot and Garnier-Pagès; the latter had been a member of the 1848 (Republican) government.

Duchies question
: the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, by a treaty of 1852 agreed by Russia, Sweden, England, and France, were to be returned to Denmark. However, in February 1864 Bismarck occupied Holstein and invaded Schleswig. Russia, Sweden, and England supported Denmark, but France suggested a vote by the relevant populations. This in effect nullified the treaty of 1852, and Denmark lost out to Prussia.

all end
: it would in fact all end badly for France, but well for a strong German Empire.

Mexico
: when Mexico, under President Juarez, refused to pay interest on foreign debt in 1861, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom signed the Convention of London to combine their efforts to restore interest payments. However, Napoleon III, seeking a base from which to expand French trade, as well as hoping to acquire Mexican silver mines, decided to invade Mexico, whereupon the United Kingdom and Spain withdrew. A French expeditionary force was sent to Mexico in 1861 to defeat Juarez’s republic and establish an empire under the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who accepted the crown in October 1863. This intervention proved to be extremely costly as well as unsuccessful: it ended with the execution
of Maximilian in June 1867 and the restoration of the Juarez republic.

glorious … reign
: Eugène Rouher used this expression in response to Thiers’s criticism. See note to p. 8.

loan … January
: the loan was voted in December 1863. A public subscription, opened in January 1864, was enthusiastically supported and raised over 249 million francs.

coup d’état
: the
coup d’état
of 2 December 1851, by which the nephew of Napoleon I, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, then President of the Second Republic, seized power and a year later became the Emperor Napoleon III.

Thiers
: Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877), Minister of the Interior in 1834 and President of the State Council from 1836 to 1840. A member of the Legislative Assembly from 1863 to 1870, and one of the main opponents of the Empire. He had commented savagely on the huge cost of the Mexican adventure.

champion of liberty
: when the Emperor dissolved the National Assembly in 1852 he restored universal male suffrage and could thus be seen as a supporter of liberty. The constitution, however, gave him more or less absolute power. To win back diminishing support he made further liberal reforms in November 1860.

International Workingmen’s Association
: also known as ‘The First International’, formed in an attempt to unite various left-wing political groups and trades unions to fight for better conditions for workers. It was not in fact formed until September 1864, so after the presumed date of this conversation; but the slight anachronism served Zola’s purpose of introducing in the first chapter a number of subjects and themes that would recur in the novel.

Suez project
: the building of the Suez Canal began in 1859; the work was interrupted in 1863–4 due to problems with Turkey, but resumed in 1865 and was finished in 1869. The Canal, owned by the French and Egyptian Suez Canal Company, was opened in November of that year. The British government opposed the project throughout its construction, objecting to the use of slave labour, but became a minority shareholder in the Suez Company in 1875.

the notice …
make demand
: Mazaud refers to a process by which a financial intermediary with a troublesome client can demand payment. If payment is not made, the agent can sell the shares the client has bought, and if the client cannot cover any loss then he is ‘posted’, that is, his failure to meet his engagements is announced to the Bourse at large.

victorias
: low, four-wheeled carriages for two, with folding hood.

‘Wet Feet’
: Fr. ‘pieds humides’.

Plassans
: birthplace of the Rougon-Macquart family. Zola’s fictional name for Aix-en-Provence, where he lived from 1843 until 1858, when he went to Paris.

Crédit Mobilier
: influential bank, founded by the Péreire brothers in 1852.
It provided Zola with much useful material for this novel. The Crédit Mobilier crashed in 1870.

coupé
: small, enclosed four-wheeled carriage with internal seating for two and an outside seat for the driver.

Bacchante
: the Bacchantes were female devotees of Bacchus (Dionysus in the Greek version), god of wine and intoxication. The Bacchantes are more often represented as dishevelled madwomen than dressed in designer clothes—the contrast suggests (deceptively) the possibility of raging passions beneath the Baroness’s cultivated exterior.

English cheques
: in the 1860s cheques, much used in England, were still a relative novelty in France, hence their description as ‘English’. They gradually became popular in France in the course of the Second Empire.

collector of revenues
: the
receveur de rentes
in the nineteenth century was a public servant responsible for coordinating the collection of taxes and fines for his area. He received a salary plus commission. The actual collecting was done by a subordinate.

stamped paper
: official documents, to be authentic, had to bear a government stamp.

Saccard … wife
: this part of Saccard’s life is related in
The Kill
.

Karl Marx … Gazette
: the full title of the newspaper was
Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie
(‘New Rhenish Newspaper: Organ of Democracy’). Karl Marx (1818–83), the influential socialist thinker, published this German daily newspaper in Cologne from June 1848 until May 1849. It was called ‘New’ because it followed Marx’s previous
Rheinische Zeitung
, suppressed in 1843. Marx arrived in Paris in 1843, was expelled at the end of 1844, moved to Brussels, then visited England with Friedrich Engels and went back to Paris briefly in 1848, before returning to Cologne then London in 1849. The first part of Marx’s famous
Capital
appeared in French, translated by Joseph Roy, in 1867. Marx died in London in 1883.

June Days
: in fact Marx had left Paris before the insurrection of the people of Paris against the government in the ‘June Days’ of 1848. General Cavaignac was sent to suppress the protest, and in the resulting conflict over ten thousand people were killed or injured and four thousand deported to Algeria.

universal happiness
: for Sigismond’s theories Zola drew largely on
La Quintessence du socialisme
(‘The Quintessence of Socialism’, 1886), by A. Schaeffle, who discusses various versions of contemporary socialist economic theory. He also read the articles of the collectivist Jules Guesde in
Le Cri du Peuple
, and Georges Renard’s ‘Le Socialisme actuel en France’ in
La Revue socialiste
(1887–8).

wife … Lombardy
: Maxime was the lover of his stepmother Renée, Saccard’s wife, but, encouraged by his father, he married the ailing consumptive Louise de Mareuil for the sake of her dowry of a million francs. She died six months after the marriage. This story is related in
The Kill
.

Avenue de l’Impératrice
: now the Avenue Foch.

maisons de plaisance
: elaborate mansions built for the pleasure of their owners, usually in the countryside or on the outskirts of big cities, associated with aristocratic festivities and often built by aristocrats for their mistresses. Sometimes also called
folies
(‘follies’), like the Folie-Beauvilliers mentioned below. They were less grand than
chateaux
but grander than the average
hôtel
(large townhouse or mansion).

Rue du Cardinal Fesch
: the street was named to honour the uncle of Napoleon I, but later renamed Rue de Chateaudun to commemorate a battle of the Franco-Prussian War. A number of mansions were destroyed by Haussmann’s new streets.

Tuileries
: the official residence of the Emperor. It was burned down in 1870.

La Villette … Saint-Mandé … Châtillon
: all in or near Paris—La Villette in the north-east, Saint-Mandé, a small town in the Île de France, and Châtillon a south-western suburb.

Work Foundation
: its French title, ‘L’Oeuvre du Travail’ (‘The Work of Toil’) brings together the titles of two of Zola’s works—
L’Oeuvre
(1886) and the later
Travail
(1901).

École Polytechnique
: state-run institution of higher education and research, one of France’s
grandes écoles
that open the path to important careers in industry, government, and public service. Initially located in the Latin Quarter of central Paris, it moved to Palaiseau in 1976.

Port Said
: this work, the starting-point of the Suez Canal, had begun on 25 April 1859; see note to p. 8.

Lebanon range
: the construction of a Beirut–Damascus road through the Lebanon mountain range was completed in 1863, after the interruption of the war in Syria in 1860.

Taurus range
: mountain complex in southern Turkey dividing the coastal region from the Anatolian Plateau.

railway system
: after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856, at the conclusion of the Crimean War, Turkey granted mining, banking, and railway concessions to European investors, and railway construction began in the mid-nineteenth century.

the Sultan
: the thirty-second Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Aziz (1830–76) modernized the Ottoman navy and established the Ottoman railway network, but was later accused of betraying Turkish interests by his granting of concessions to foreigners. In May 1876, after a popular uprising in Constantinople (Istanbul), he was deposed by his ministers, and his death—recorded as suicide but perhaps assassination—occurred a few days later.

bank in Constantinople
: the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople was founded in 1856, first as a British establishment then Anglo-French in 1863.

Grand Vizier
: the most powerful minister of the Sultan in the Ottoman Empire.

Zouaves …
Lamoricière
: in 1849 an Italian constituent assembly had proclaimed a Roman Republic, whereupon a French expeditionary force seized Rome, re-established the power of Pope Pius IX, and left a protective military presence there. After the Italian War, in which France had supported the cause of Italian independence, the Treaty of Villafranca in 1859 proposed various reforms to be undertaken by the Pope. Then, in 1860, the Pope, struggling to keep control of Rome and the Papal States, almost broke with France, which was, however, still supporting him against the encroachments of King Victor-Emmanuel, and put General Lamoricière in charge of organizing an army of twenty thousand multinational Catholic volunteers. The Italian minister Cavour demanded that the Pope disband this army. The Pope refused and Italian troops were sent into the Papal States. On 18 September 1860 the Papal troops were defeated at Castelfidardo near Ancona. After Castelfidardo, the Franco-Belgian battalion of the Papal army became the Papal Zouaves.

Carmel
: Mount Carmel is regarded as a holy place where, according to the Bible (1 Kings 18), Elijah rebuilt an ancient ruined altar and for a time lived. The Carmelite religious order was founded in the twelfth century on the site said to have been Elijah’s cave.

Egyptian expedition
: Napoleon I’s bold bid to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great by conquering the East. The campaign in Egypt and Syria began with Napoleon’s setting out from Toulon in 1798. He was able to capture Malta and invade Egypt, but the French campaign in Egypt and Syria, which had been intended to protect French trade interests and damage British power in the East, ended in 1801. The French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and Napoleon and his army, cut off from France, were eventually, despite many victories, forced to withdraw.

Sidney … St-Jean-d’Acre
: Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith (1764–1840), British naval officer who fought in the American and the French revolutionary wars, served in the Royal Swedish Navy during the war with Russia, then in the Mediterranean with the Royal Navy. Napoleon said that if he had been able to take Acre in 1799 he would have been able to make himself Emperor of the East. He marched on Acre after capturing Gaza and Jaffa. Smith, having sailed to Acre, helped the Turkish commander to reinforce the defences. He was able to capture French siege artillery being sent by ship from Egypt, and to bombard French troops from the sea. The French made several attacks but on 9 May a final French assault was repelled. Soon after this Napoleon left the army in Egypt and sailed back to France. Acre, in the Ottoman province of Syria (now Akko, in Israel), was previously a Crusader fortress.

Druzes … intervene
: the Druze–Maronite massacre had occurred two years earlier. After the partitioning of Lebanon in 1842 conflicts between Christians and Druzes in Lebanon came to a head in July 1860, when Druze and Sunni Muslims killed thousands of Maronite and other
Christians in Lebanon and Damascus: churches and missionary schools were burnt down; the Druzes and Muslims also suffered heavy losses. Napoleon III, citing France’s long-standing role as protector of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, intervened, with the agreement of the Ottoman Empire, sending an expeditionary force of six thousand soldiers in August 1860 to impose order. That army remained in Lebanon until 1861.