Novelists From France

"Wasn't it true that the moment two women were together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do one another out of them? It was a law of nature!"

"She was listening to his proposals, and continually refusing them with shakes of the head, and that temptress's laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous blonde."

"The Russians had a great taste for her owing to her embonpoint."

"You know, I'm disgusted when dirty little boys run after old women."

"The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used to say, avenged public morality by emptying his money bags."

"Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most politely treated, and admitted into every circle."

"She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an indecisive colour midway between puce and goose dripping."

"The curtain fell on an apotheosis, wherein the Cuckold's Chorus knelt and sang a hymn of gratitude to Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her stature enhanced by her sovran nudity."

"Tout d’un coup, dans la bonne enfant, la femme se dressait, inquiétante, apportant le coup de folie de son sexe, ouvrant l’inconnu du désir. Nana souriait toujours, mais d’un sourire aigu de mangeuse d’hommes."

"Est-ce qu'une femme a besoin de savoir jouer et chanter? Ah! mon petit, tu es trop bête... Nana a autre chose, parbleu! et quelque chose qui remplace tout."

"It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break."

"Quand Hélène revint [...] elle pensait que jamais ils ne s’étaient moins aimés que ce jour-là."

"Hélène slowly surveyed the room. In this respectable society, amongst these apparently decent middle-class people, were there none but faithless wives? With her strict provincial morality, she was amazed at the licensed promiscuity of Parisian life."

"All Paris was now illumined. The tiny dancing flames had speckled the sea of shadows from one end of the horizon to the other, and now, as in a summer night, millions of fixed stars seemed to be serenely gleaming there. Not a puff of air, not a quiver of the atmosphere stirred these lights, to all appearance suspended in space. Paris, now invisible, had fallen into the depths of an abyss as vast as a firmament."

"How she had cheated herself with her integrity and nice honor, which had girt her round with the empty joys of piety! No, no; she had had enough of it; she wished to live!"

"With eyes again dreamily gazing upward, Hélène remained plunged in reverie. She was the Lady Rowena; she loved with the serenity and intensity of a noble mind. That spring morning, that great, gentle city, those early wall-flowers shedding their perfume on her lap, had little by little filled her heart with tenderness."

"They called her 'the chicken', for she had in truth the soft flesh and country freshness of a chicken."

"Nana was a great coquette. She did not always wash her feet, but she wore such tight boots that she suffered a perfect martyrdom; and if anyone questioned her, seeing her face grow purple, she answered that she had a stomach-ache, so as not to confess her coquetry."

"Respectable people... What bastards!"

"As they were all rather short of breath by this time, it was the camembert they could smell. This cheese, with its gamy odour, had overpowered the milder smells of the marolles and the limbourg; its power was remarkable. Every now and then, however, a slight whiff, a flute-like note, came from the parmesan, while the bries came into play with their soft, musty smell, the gentle sound, so to speak, of a damp tambourine. The livarot launched into an overwhelming reprise, and the géromé kept up the symphony with a sustained high note."

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "she’s been more than an hour in there! When the priests set about cleansing her of her sins, the choir-boys have to form in line to pass the buckets of filth and empty them in the street!"

"Cependant Quenu se rappelait une phrase de Charvet, cette fois, qui déclarait que « ces bourgeois empâtés, ces boutiquiers engraissés, prêtant leur soutien à un gouvernement d’indigestion générale, devaient être jetés les premiers au cloaque. » C’était grâce à eux, grâce à leur égoïsme du ventre, que le despotisme s’imposait et rongeait une nation."

"Paris, pareil à un pan de ciel étoilé tombé sur un coin de la terre noire, lui apparut sévère et comme fâché de son retour."

"Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow."

"À cette heure, elle voulut le mal, le mal que personne ne commet, le mal qui allait emplir son existence vide et la mettre enfin dans cet enfer, dont elle avait toujours peur, comme au temps où elle était petite fille."

"Vice, coming from above, flowed along the gutters, spread itself out in the sheets of ornamental water, re-ascended in the fountains of the public gardens to fall again on to the roofs in a fine penetrating rain."

"This was the time when the rush for the spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women."

"Those harlot eyes were never lowered; they courted pleasure, a pleasure without fatigue which one summons and receives."

"He was twenty, and already there was nothing left to surprise or disgust him. He had certainly dreamt of the most extreme forms of debauchery. Vice with him was not an abyss, as with certain old men, but a natural, external growth."

"The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness."

"The Empire had just been proclaimed, after that famous journey during which the Prince President had succeeded in arousing the enthusiasm of some Bonapartist departments. Silence reigned both at the tribune and in the press. Society, saved once more, was congratulating itself and indolently resting, now that a strong government was protecting it and relieving it even of the trouble of thinking and of attending to its own business."

"She never spoke of her husband, nor of her childhood, her family, or her personal concerns. There was only one thing she never sold, and that was herself."

"Etre pauvre à Paris, c'est être pauvre deux fois."

"Endless love and voluptuous appetite pervaded this stifling nave in which settled the ardent sap of the tropics. Renée was wrapped in the powerful bridals of the earth that gave birth to these dark growths, these colossal stamina; and the acrid birth-throes of this hotbed, of this forest growth, of this mass of vegetation aglow with the entrails that nourished it, surrounded her with disturbing odours. ... But amid this strange music of odours, the dominant melody that constantly returned, stifling the sweetness of the vanilla and the orchids' pungency, was the penetrating, sensual smell of flesh, the smell of lovemaking escaping in the early morning from the bedroom of newlyweds."

"Puis le moment de la séparation sonnait, Miette remontait sur son mur. Elle lui envoyait des baisers. Et il ne la voyait plus. Une émotion terrible le prit à la gorge: il ne la verrait plus jamais, jamais."

"For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood."

"They kissed each other again and fell asleep. The patch of light on the ceiling now seemed to be assuming the shape of a terrified eye, staring unblinkingly at the pale, slumbering couple, who now reeked of crime under their sheets, and were dreaming that they could see blood raining down in big drops and turning into gold coins as they landed on the floor."

"Prends garde, mon garçon, on en meurt."

"When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another’s lips. Lovers are made by a kiss."

"Ce fut un naïf, un naïf sublime, resté sur le seuil du temple, à genoux devant des cierges qu’il prenait de loin pour des étoiles."

"A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families."

"Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassans sleeps while Paris fights."

"From that time onwards he seemed to feel out of place in Plassans. He would wander through the streets like a lost soul. At last he made a sudden decision, and left for Paris."

"... il y avait en elle un manque d'équilibre entre le sang et les nerfs, une sorte de détraquement du cerveau et du cœur, qui la faisait vivre en dehors de la vie ordinaire, autrement que tout le monde."

"The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, frustrated by their bad luck, and ready to use any means necessary to advance their cause. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to plunder and steal."

"When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating."

"The couple fell one atop of the other, struck down, finding consolation, at last, in death."

"Lorsque l'avenir est sans espoir, le présent prend une amertume ignoble."

"He knew that henceforth, all his days would resemble one another, and bring him equal suffering. And he saw the weeks, months and years gloomily and implacably awaiting him, coming one after the other to fall upon him and gradually smother him."

"After a time, she believed in the reality of this comedy."