The Beast Within

Émile Zola

Description

The Beast Within (1890) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. The seventeenth of twenty volumes of Zola’s monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to the heart of heredity and human nature. Jacques Lantier is a violent man. Kept in check by his dedication to his work as an engine driver, he manages to suppress the disturbing fantasies of rape and murder that fill his tortured mind. While waiting for his train to get repaired, he meets his cousin Flore, a beautiful young woman who inflames him with desire and deadly intent. At the last moment, he flees before he can harm her, only to witness a gruesome murder at night by the railroad tracks. When a police investigation fails to find the killer, life in Le Havre returns to a sense of calm, and even Lantier seems to put the past behind him. When he begins an affair with Severine, the wife of his boss Roubaud, he is roped into a plot to kill the man and steal a secret fortune. The Beast Within is a story of family and fate, a thrilling and detailed novel that continues a series rich enough for its author to explore in twenty total volumes. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Émile Zola’s The Beast Within is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Sujets

• Classiques
• Tous les classiques
• 19th century
• French literature
• Classics
• Paris
• Fiction
• Les Rougon-Macquart

Informations

• Publié par: Mint Editions
• Date de parution: 21 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781513287157
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Beast Within
Émile Zola
 
The Beast Within was first published in 1890.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2021.
ISBN 9781513282138 | E-ISBN 9781513287157
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks.com
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
Project Manager: Micaela Clark
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services
 
C ONTENTS I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII
 
I
Entering the room, Roubaud placed the pound bread, the p â t é and the bottle of white wine on the table. But the morning, before going down to her post, Mother Victoire must have covered the fire of her stove with such dust that the heat was suffocating. And the deputy station master, having opened a window, leaned on it.
It was Impasse d’Amsterdam, in the last house on the right, a high house where the West Company housed some of its employees. The window, on the fifth floor, at the angle of the mansard roof which turned back, looked out on the station, this wide trench piercing the quarter of Europe, a whole abrupt unfolding of the horizon, which seemed to enlarge still further this afternoon. noon, a gray sky in the middle of February, a humid and warm gray, crossed by sun.
Opposite, under this dusting of rays, the houses in the rue de Rome blurred, faded away, light. On the left, the marquees of the covered halls opened their giant porches, with smoky windows, that of the main lines, immense, where the eye plunged, and that the post office and the boiler house separated from the others, smaller, those of ’Argenteuil, Versailles and the Belt; while the Pont de l’Europe, on the right, cut with its iron star the trench, which one could see reappearing and spinning beyond it, as far as the Batignolles tunnel. And, at the bottom of the window itself, occupying the whole vast field, the three double tracks which came out of the bridge, ramified, drew apart in a fan whose metal branches, multiplied, innumerable, were going to be lost under the awnings. The three switchman posts, in front of the arches, showed their little bare gardens. In the confused erasure of wagons and machines cluttering up the rails, a large red signal stained the pale daylight.
For a moment, Roubaud was interested, comparing, thinking of his station in Le Havre. Each time he came to spend a day in Paris in this way, and went to see Mother Victoire, he was resumed in the profession. Under the marchioness of the main lines, the arrival of a train from Mantes had animated the platforms; and he followed the machine with his eyes, machine-tender, with three low and coupled wheels, which began to disconnect the train, needy alert, taking and driving back the wagons on the storage tracks. A different machine, powerful one, a machine to express, to two large devouring wheels, parked alone, let go by his fireplace a big black smoke, straight upright, very slowly in the still air. But all his attention was taken by the three-twenty-five train, bound for Caen, already full of its travelers, and which was waiting for its machine. He did not see the latter, stopped beyond the Pont de l’Europe; he only heard her asking for the way, with light, hurried whistles, person that impatience wins. An order was shouted, she answered with a short blow that she understood. Then, before starting, there was silence, the traps were opened, the steam hissed at ground level, in a deafening jet. And then he saw overflowing from the bridge this whiteness which abounded, swirling like a blanket of snow, soaring through the iron frames. A whole corner of the space was white with it, as the heightened fumes of the other machine widened their black veil. Behind, were muffled prolonged sounds of horns, cries of command, shocks of turntables. A tear occurred, he distinguished, at the bottom, a train from Versailles and a train from Auteuil, one going up, the other going down, crossing each other.
As Roubaud was about to leave the window, a voice calling out his name made him lean over. And he recognized, below, on the terrace of the fourth, a young man of about thirty, Henri Dauvergne, chief conductor, who lived there in the company of his father, deputy chief of the main lines, and his sisters, Claire and Sophie, two adorable blondes of eighteen and twenty, leading the household with the two men’s six thousand francs, in the midst of a continual burst of gaiety. We could hear the elder laughing, while the younger sang, and a cage, full of island birds, competed in rolls.
—Here! Monsieur Roubaud, are you in Paris then? … Ah! yes, for your business with the sub-prefect!
Again leaning on his elbows, the deputy station master explained that he had to leave Le Havre that very morning by the six-forty express. An order from the head of operations called him to Paris, he had just been lectured on importance. Happy again not to have left his place.
—And madam? asked Henri.
Madame had wanted to come, too, for some shopping. Her husband was waiting for her there, in this room, to which Mother Victoire gave them the key, on each of their trips, and where they liked to have lunch, quiet and alone, while the good woman was detained downstairs, at her health post. That day, they had eaten a bun in Mantes, wanting to get rid of their groceries first. But three o’clock had struck, he was dying of hunger.
Henri, to be amiable, asked one more question:
“And you sleep in Paris?”
No no! they both returned to Havre in the evening by the six-thirty express. Ah well! yes, vacation! We only disturbed you to flank you your package, and immediately to the niche!
For a moment the two employees looked at each other, nodding their heads. But they couldn’t hear each other, a frenzied piano was coming to burst into sound notes. The two sisters had to hit it together, laughing louder, exciting the birds of the islands. Then the young man, who was in his turn cheerful, bowed and entered the apartment; and the sous-chef alone remained for a moment with his eyes on the terrace, whence all that youthful gaiety rose. Then, looking up, he saw the machine which had closed its traps, and which the switchman was sending on the train to Caen. The last flakes of white vapor were lost among the great swirls of black smoke, soiling the sky. And he, too, returned to the bedroom.
In front of the cuckoo clock which marked twenty past three, Roubaud had a desperate gesture. What the devil could S é verine linger on like this? She never left it when she was in a store. To overcome the hunger that plowed his stomach, he had the idea of setting the table. The large room, with two windows, was familiar to him, serving at the same time as bedroom, dining room and kitchen, with its walnut furniture, its bed draped in red cotton, its dresser, its round table., his Norman wardrobe. He took napkins, plates, forks and knives, two glasses from the sideboard. It was all extremely clean, and he amused himself by the housework, as if he had played at a dinner party, happy the whiteness of the linen, very much in love with his wife, himself laughing at the good, fresh laugh which she was about to burst out when he opened the door. But, when he had placed the p â t é on a plate, and placed the bottle of white wine next to it, he was worried, looked around. Then, quickly, he drew from his pockets two forgotten packages, a small tin of sardines and some Gruyere cheese.
Half-past struck. Roubaud walked up and down, turning his ear towards the stairs at the slightest noise. In his idle wait, passing in front of the mirror, he stopped, looked at himself. He was not growing old, he was approaching forty, without the fiery red of his curly hair having paled. His beard, that he wore whole, remained thick, she too, of a sun-blond. And, of medium height, but of extraordinary vigor, he liked himself, satisfied with his slightly flat head, the low forehead, the thick neck, his round and sanguine face, lit by two large lively eyes… His eyebrows met, brushing his forehead with the jealous bar. As he had married a woman fifteen years younger than himself, these frequent glances, given to the mirrors, reassured him.
There was a sound of footsteps, Roubaud ran to open the door a crack. But it was a newsagent from the station, returning to her house next door. He returned, took an interest in a box of seashells, on the buffet. He knew her well, this box, a gift from S é verine to mother Victoire, her nurse. And this little object was enough, the whole story of her marriage was unfolding. Already three years soon. Born in the South, in Plassans, to a father who was a carter, left the service with the stripes of sergeant-major, a long time mixed postman at the station of Mantes, he had passed postman chief at that of Barentin; and it was there that he had known her, his dear wife, when she came from Doinville to take the train, in the company of Mademoiselle Berthe, the daughter of President Grandmorin. S é verine Aubry was only the youngest of a gardener, who died in the service of the Grandmorins; but the president, her godfather and her tutor, spoiled her so much, making her the companion of his daughter, sending them both to the same boarding school in Rouen, and she herself had such a native distinction that Roubaud had long been content with the desired distance, with the passion of a worker sided for a delicate gem, he considered precious. There was the only novel of his existence. He would have married her penniless, for the joy of having her, and when he had finally emboldened himself, the realization had exceeded the dream: in addition to S é verine and a dowry of ten thousand francs, the president, today in retired, a member of the board of directors of the West Company, had given him his protection. The day after the wedding, he had passed sous-chef at Le Havre station. He undoubtedly had for him his notes of good employee, solid in his post, punctual, honest, of a narrow mind, but very stra