Naïs Micoulin (Unabridged)

By Émile Zola

This carefully crafted ebook: "Naïs Micoulin (Unabridged)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Naïs Micoulin (1884) was one of Zola's short stories about the trials of a factory worker in what was then the village of L'Estaque and is now administratively part of Marseille. Naïs, the wild child, has grown up into a sensual young lady. Stirred to the depths of his soul, Frederick contemplates his servant and soon, they indulge in caresses. Until Naïs' father swears to kill the man who dared to touch his daughter. Émile Zola (1840 – 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: e-artnow
• Release date: Nov 10, 2013
• ISBN: 4064066373382

Émile Zola

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.

Book preview

Emile Zola

Naïs Micoulin

(Unabridged)

Translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

e-artnow, 2021

EAN 4064066373382

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

I

Table of Contents

DURING the fruit season a brown-skinned little girl with bushy black hair used to come every month to the house of Monsieur Rostand, a lawyer of Aix, in Provence, bringing with her a huge basket of apricots or peaches, so heavy that she had hardly strength enough to carry it. She would wait in the large entrance-hall, whither all the family went to greet her.

‘So it’s you, Naïs,’ the lawyer would say. ‘You’ve brought us some fruit, eh? Come, you’re a good girl. And how is your father?’

‘Quite well, sir,’ replied the little girl, showing her white teeth.

Then Madame Rostand would take her into the kitchen and ask her about the olives, the almonds, and the vines. But the most important question was whether there had been any rain at L’Estaque, where the Rostands’ estate was situated, a place called La Blancarde, which was cultivated by the Micoulins. There were but a few dozen almond and olive trees, but the question of rain was none the less an important one in this province, where everything perishes from drought.

‘There have been a few drops,’ Naïs would say. ‘The vines want more.’

Then, having imparted her news, she ate a piece of bread and some scraps of meat, and set out again for L’Estaque in a butcher’s cart which came to Aix every fortnight. Frequently she brought some shell-fish, a lobster, a fine eel, for Micoulin fished more than he tilled the ground. When she came during the holidays, Frédéric, the lawyer’s son, used to rush into the kitchen to tell her that the family would soon take up their quarters at La Blancarde, and that she must get some nets and lines ready. He was almost like a brother to her, for they had played together as children. Since the age of twelve, however, she had called him ‘Monsieur Frédéric,’ out of respect. Every time old Micoulin heard her speak familiarly to the young man he boxed her ears, but in spite of this the two children were sworn allies.

‘Don’t forget to mend the nets,’ repeated the schoolboy.

‘No fear, Monsieur Frédéric,’ replied Naïs. ‘They’ll be ready for you.’

Monsieur Rostand was very wealthy. He had bought a splendid seignorial mansion in the Rue du Collège at a very low price. The Hôtel de Coiron, built during the latter part of the seventeenth century, had twelve windows in its frontage, and contained enough rooms to house a religious order. Amid those vast rooms the family, consisting of five persons, including the two old servants, seemed lost. The lawyer occupied merely the first floor. For ten years he had tried, without success, to let the ground and second floors, and finally he had decided to lock them up, thus abandoning two-thirds of the house to the spiders. Echoes like those of a cathedral resounded through the empty sonorous mansion at the least noise in the entrance-hall, an enormous hall with a staircase from which one could easily have obtained sufficient material to build a modern dwelling.

Immediately after his purchase, Monsieur Rostand had divided the grand drawingroom into two offices, by means of