Dead Men Tell No Tales

Émile Zola

Description

In contrast with the epic scope of the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola's short stories are concerned with the everyday aspects of human existence and the interests of ordinary people. From the cruel irony of `Captain Burle' to the Rabelaisian exuberance of `Coqueville on the Spree', these stories display the broad range of Zola's imagination, using a variety of tones, from the quietly cynical to the compassionate, from the playful to the tragic. Contains: Dead Men Tell No Tales Coqueville on the Spree Captain Burle Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre

Informations

• Publié par: Alma Books
• Date de parution: 07 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780714548296
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dead Men Tell No Tales a nd Other Stories
Émile Zola
Translated by Douglas Parm é e


ALMA CLASSICS


alma classics an imprint of
Alma BOOKS Ltd 3 Castle Yard Richmond Surrey TW10 6TF United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
The stories in this collection first published by Oxford University Press in the volume The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories in 1969 A revised version of these stories first published by Alma Classics in 2009 in the volume Dead Men Tell No Tales Dead Men Tell No Tales and Other Stories first published by Alma Classics in 2017 English Translation © Douglas Parmée, 1969, 2009, 2017 Extra material © Larry Duffy, 2008
Printed in the United Kingdom by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-696-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.


Contents
Chronology
Dead Men Tell No Tales and Other Stories
Captain Burle
Coqueville on the Spree
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre
Extra Material on Émile Zola’s Dead Men Tell No Tales
Émile Zola’s Life
Émile Zola’s Works
Select Bibliography
Note on the Texts
Notes


Chronology
1840 Émile Zola born on 2nd April, in Paris, of French mother and
Italian father.
1843 Family settles in Aix-en-Provence.
1847 Émile’s father dies.
1859 Zola twice fails school-leaving baccalauréat .
1861 Destitute in Paris. Zola obtains post in shop of newly-founded
firm of Hachette. Already writing poetry and short stories.
1864 In charge of Hachette’s publicity. Publishes first collection of
short stories, Contes à Ninon.
1865 Publication of first novel, La Confession de Claude . Liaison
with Gabrielle-Alexandrine Meley; leaves Hachette, and em barks on writing career, at first largely as a journalist (reviewer, critic, short story and feature article writer).
1867 Favourable article on Manet’s painting. As friend of Cézanne,
frequents artistic circles, including many Impressionists. Pub lication of Thérèse Raquin.
1870 Marries Mlle Meley. Publication in serial form of La Fortune
des Rougon , which becomes the first of the twenty-volume cycle of novels concerning the Rougon-Macquart family, published over the next twenty-three years. Takes refuge in Marseilles to avoid invading Prussian army; later becomes Parliamentary correspondent to French government, which had retreated to Bordeaux.
1871 Returns briefly to Paris but leaves to avoid Commune uprising.
1874 Publication of Nouveaux contes à Ninon.
1875 Beginning of collaboration with St Petersburg periodical Vestnik
Evropy ( European Messenger ). Holiday in Saint-Aubin, on Normandy coast.
1876 Holiday in Piriac (see note to ‘Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre’).
1877 Success of L’Assommoir , seventh volume of Rougon-Macquart
series, brings fame and financial security. Holiday in L’Estaque.
1878 Buys property in Médan, village on outskirts of Paris.
1880 Publication of Soirées de Médan . End of collaboration with
Vestnik Evropy.
1882 Publication in France in one volume of six of Zola’s Vestnik
Evropy stories, under collective title of Le Capitaine Burle.
1883 Publication in one volume of further six of Zola’s Vestnik
Evropy stories, under collective title of Naïs Micoulin.
1885 Publication of Germinal , twelfth in the Rougon-Macquart
series.
1888 Starts lifelong liaison with Jeanne Rozerot.
1889 Birth of Denise, daughter of Jeanne and Zola.
1891 Birth of Jacques, son of Jeanne and Zola.
1893 Le Docteur Pascal ends Rougon-Macquart series.
1894 Extended trip to Italy.
1898 Publication of Zola’s article J’Accuse in Paris newspaper
in favour of Dreyfus leads him to take refuge in England to avoid imprisonment. Writes his last story, ‘The Haunted House’ ( Angeline ).
1902 Death of Zola by asphyxiation in his Paris flat; suspicion that
his bedroom chimney may have been deliberately blocked.


Dead Men Tell No Tales a nd Other Stories


Captain Burle *


1
I t was nine o ’ clock and the inhabitants of Vauchamp had just gone to bed, leaving the little town in silence and darkness in the icy November rain. In the Rue des Récollets, one of the narrowest and most deserted in the St Jean district, just one lighted window remained on the third floor of an old house whose broken gutters were disgorging torrents of water. Madame Burle was still awake and sitting beside her meagre fire of vine stumps while her grandson Charles was doing his homework in the dim light of a lamp.
The flat which she rented for one hundred and twenty francs a year consisted of four enormous rooms, quite impossible to heat in winter. Madame Burle slept in the largest of them; her son, the regimental paymaster Captain Charles Burle, occupied the bedroom overlooking the street next to the dining room, and young Charles slept in an iron bedstead tucked away at the far end of the immense disused drawing room with its peeling wallpaper. The few sticks of furniture belonging to the captain and his mother, a solid mahogany Empire suite, dented and battered by many moves from one garrison town to another, were barely visible in the dim light which fell like a fine haze from the lofty ceiling. The cold, hard, red-painted floor tiles were freezing to the feet, for there were only a few odd squares of carpet in front of the chairs in this icy room swept by piercing draughts from the warped doors and window frames.
Madame Burle sat sunk in her yellow velvet armchair beside the fireplace, her face cradled in her hands, looking at the final wisps of smoke from a vine root with the vacant stare of an old woman living in the past. She would spend whole days sitting like this, a tall, long-faced figure whose thin lips never smiled. As the widow of a colonel who had died just as he was about to be made a general, and the mother of a captain, whom she had accompanied even throughout his campaigns, she had become imbued with ideas of duty, honour and patriotism which had turned her into an unbending old lady, as it were shrivelled up by the harshness of strict military discipline. She rarely complained. When her son had been widowed after five years of marriage, she had undertaken her grandson’s upbringing as a matter of course, like a sergeant sternly drilling his recruits. She ruled the child with a rod of iron, never tolerating the slightest caprice or unruly behaviour, making him work well into the night and staying up herself until midnight to see that his homework was completed. Under this harsh regime, Charles, who was a delicate, gentle, little boy, was growing up pale and wan; he had fine eyes but they always seemed unnaturally bright and large.
One single thought was always turning over in Madame Burle’s mind during her long periods of silent meditation: her son had let her down. She was obsessed by this idea and she would continually go back in her mind over her life, from the time of his birth, when she had seen him as a future hero who would reach the highest rank, in a blaze of glory, to the present narrow garrison life filled with the same dull, never-ending routine, his decline into the post of a regimental paymaster captain, from which he would never escape and in which he was becoming inert and apathetic. And yet there had been a time, at the beginning, when she had been proud of him: for a while she had been able to think that her dream was coming true. Burle had come straight out of the crack cavalry school of Saint-Cyr to distinguish himself by his gallantry at the battle of Solferino, * capturing a whole enemy battery with a handful of men. He was decorated, his heroism was reported in the papers and he became known as one of the bravest men in the army. Then slowly this hero had put on weight and become submerged in fat – relaxed, contented, stout, and cowardly. By 1870, he had not gone beyond the rank of captain. He was captured in his first skirmish and had returned from Germany an angry man, swearing that they wouldn’t catch him fighting again, it was all too stupid. Being incapable of learning any other trade and so obliged to stay in the army, he had managed to obtain a post as regimental paymaster, a niche, he said, where at least they’d let him kick the bucket in peace. On the day this happened, Madame Burle had felt her heart break. Her dream had come to an end. Since then she had gritted her teeth and retreated implacably into her shell.
The wind was gusting down the Rue des Récollets and the windows shuddered under the deluge of rain. The old woman looked up from the dying embers of the vine stocks to make sure that Charles was not falling asleep over his Latin translation. This little lad of twelve had become her last hope of finally achieving her dogged ambition of making the name of Burle famous. At first she had loathed her grandson with all the hatred she had felt for his mother, a little lace-worker, pretty and delicate, whom the captain foolishly married when she had resisted his frantic attempts to make her his mistress. When his mother had died and his father had relapsed into a life of debauchery, Madame Burle had pinned all her hopes on her poor, sickly little grandson whom she was bringing up in such difficult circumstances. She wanted him to be strong, for he was to become the hero which Burle had failed to be, and so