Read Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Page 43


  Palais-Bourbon: housing the National Assembly, i.e. the French parliament, immediately across the river from the Place de la Concorde.

  Rue de Bourgogne: just behind the National Assembly, in the seventh arrondissement.

  La Plume: see Introduction, p. xvii.

  Duroy enjoys himself: the original French here is Duroy s’amuse, quite possibly a wickedly topical reference to Paul Bonnetain’s notorious novel about onanism (Chariot s’amuse), published in 1883, the year before Maupassant started writing Bel-Ami. The other title Maupassant mischievously evokes here is that of Victor Hugo’s 1832 play, Le Roi s’amuse.

  Bois du Vésinet: Le Vésinet is just to the west of Paris, in the bend of the Seine.

  Gastine Renette: famous gun-maker with a shooting range on the Allée d’Antin (which is now the Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt), frequented by Maupassant himself.

  from Le Cannet to Golfe Juan: to the north-east of Cannes.

  the Îies de Lérins: the Île Sainte-Marguerite and the smaller Île Saint-Honorat, the former barely 1 km. offshore.

  the Esterel: i.e. the Massif de L’Esterel, the range of hills south-west of Cannes towards Saint-Raphael, culminating in Mont Vinaigre (618 m.). Given the latter’s distance from the sea, the ‘pyramid-shaped mountain’ in question here is probably the Pic de l’Ours.

  Le Voltaire: see Introduction, p. xvii.

  Comte de Paris: still, today, the title assumed by the pretender to the French throne. The very rich Orléanist descendant referred to here, born in 1838, had been allowed back into France in 1872, claiming the title of Philippe VII from 1883 until his death in 1894.

  Bazaine: Marshal Achille Bazaine (1811–88) had commanded the army of the Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War. His surrender at Metz, with 170,000 officers and men, had been such a military catastrophe that in 1873 he was condemned to death before the sentence was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment. But he managed to escape from the lie Sainte-Marguerite, spending the rest of his life in Madrid.

  Le Colbert’… ‘La Dévastation: a mixture of real and imaginary names. See Introduction, p. xviii.

  May the 10th, which is a Saturday: it has been pointed out that this was only the case in 1879. The chronology of the novel places Duroy’s marriage in May 1882, Forestier having died the previous spring.

  fortifications: built 1840–4, creating a new fortified boundary just outside the line of the present-day boulevard périphérique; beyond it was a (military) zone on which no building was officially allowed.

  Chatou: another of Maupassant’s riverside haunts, 2 km. to the east of Le Vésinet (see note to p. 118).

  forest of Saint-Germain: filling the curve of the Seine north of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, some 20 km. west of Paris.

  Poissy: 5 km. north-west of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  Mantes: i.e. Mantes-la-Jolie, approx. 60 km. north-west of Paris; from there to Rouen, the railway more or less follows the Seine.

  Cheops pyramid: the Great Pyramid of Cheops (built in 2600 BC) is nearly 140 m. high. A 51m. fretted ironwork spire (described here as ‘ugly’ by the same Maupassant who would later develop a particularly ferocious loathing for the Eiffel Tower) was added to Rouen cathedral in the nineteenth century, thereby doubling its height.

  La Foudre: literally ‘The Thunderbolt’. This was a powerful steam-engine supplying Rouen with water, with a 136m. high chimney. The reference to the ‘smoky horde of factories’ reminds us that Rouen was France’s fifth largest city in the nineteenth century, and a major industrial centre (notably for ship-building and metallurgy). Most of this Saint-Sever sector, on the south side (i.e. the left bank) of the Seine, was destroyed during the Second World War.

  Paul and Virginie: the idealized young lovers in Bernadin de Saint-Pierre’s classic novel, Paul et Virginie (1787). Both its subject and its exotic location (Mauritius) form an ironic contrast to the setting and context of this scene.

  Napoleon I on a yellow horse: yellow because of the faded image itself; as for the evocation of a heroic national past, such imperial nostalgia was often prevalent in conservative rural France.

  Saint-Denis: formerly a village just outside Paris, now part of its northern suburbs.

  raspail: a liqueur, popular at the time, invented by François-Vincent Raspail (1794–1878) who combined a career in chemistry and revolutionary politics.

  one of the biggest in France: the forest of Roumare, in the bend of the Seine west of Rouen. The Michelin Guide proposes a 36-km. and two-hour round trip by car.

  SGDG: it has been suggested that this acronym stands for ‘Sans Garantie Du Gouvernement’ (i.e. no government liability). A possibly wittier alternative is the ‘Syndicat Général de la Direction Générale’ (i.e. the management union).

  Sèvres: across the river, south of the Bois de Boulogne. that word: i.e. forestier, the French for ‘forester’.

  Tortoni’s: famous café at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens (no. 22) and the Rue Taitbout. Established by Velloni at the very end of the eighteenth century, it had been taken over by another Italian who gave it his name. As early as 1840 it was known for its ices (more like sorbet than ice-cream) and remained fashionable in spite of its humble decor. It was one of Flaubert’s favourite haunts. It closed down in 1894.

  Watteau: the painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), whose fêtes galantes and fêtes champêtres are filled with young women of porcelain beauty.

  senators … deputies: the names appear to have been invented by Maupassant who almost certainly enjoyed doing so, given the punning possibilities contained in them (‘Remontel’ has sexual connotations, ‘Rissolin’ culinary ones, etc.).

  names: also probably invented (see previous note). At one point in his drafting, Maupassant called Crèvecœur ‘Percecote’, as appropriate a name for a man with a rapier as Carvin.

  Holy Trinity: the Église de la Trinité, in the ninth arrondissement; and situated on what is later called the ‘vast square and all the streets that run into it’ (p. 208), i.e. the Place d’Estienne-d’Orve (so named in i860 but incorrectly called in the novel (p. 201) the ‘Place de la Trinité’, though the church does open out onto a small terrace–with the fountain to which Maupassant refers–which has always been known as the ‘Square de la Trinité’). It should be noted that, in having her choose this particular rendezvous (Maupassant had orginally planned for it to be at the church of Saint-Augustin, at the end of her street), Mme Walter goes a symbolically considerable distance away from her own conjugal home and towards Duroy’s stamping-ground. This had been precisely his strategy: ‘first at a place she would choose, then, later, somewhere he chose’.

  twenty years ago, or twenty-five: it was completed, in fact, in November 1867, fifteen years before. ‘All its details’ included decorations for which a number of Maupassant’s artist friends had been responsible. In drawing attention to this church, the novel mimes the advertising mechanisms of the échos (see notes to p. 51).

  Rennes: in Brittany.

  Some very important things are going on: the whole of this paragraph more or less transposes events leading to the downfall of Jules Ferry’s government over the Tunisian crisis. See Introduction, pp. ix-xi.

  Figuig: in the Moroccan Sahara, on the border with Algeria.

  two Chambers: the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

  Comte de Lambert-Sarrazin: the speech of this imagined figure bears more than a passing resemblance to the one by the Due de Broglie (1821–1901) in the same summer of 1882 as in the novel.

  President of the Council: the official term for the head of the government, the equivalent of prime minister. The ‘side-whiskers’ in question belong to Jules Ferry. See Introduction, p. ix.

  General Belloncle: the model for this figure is General Saussier, sent to command French troops in Tunisia on 10 October 1881.

  tears of Dido, not of Juliet: the contrast here is between the way these two tragic heroines gave themselves tearfully to their lovers: Dido (in Virgil??
?s Aeneid) because she did not want to be unfaithful to the memory of her dead husband; Juliet because Romeo had killed her cousin and was about to go into exile.

  Maisons: i.e. Maisons-Lafitte, another riverside hamlet (north of Saint-Germain-en-Laye).

  fallen to sixty-four or sixty-five francs: the scam is based on fact: in 1879, the value of these bonds had fallen to 203 francs; by 1884 thay had shot up to 506 francs.

  Rothschilds: at the time, the most powerful of all the Jewish banking families in France, collectively known as the ‘Haute Banque’. The phenomenally rapid rise of Alphonse de Rothschild (1827–1905) resulted from the enormous profits his extended family made from state loans after the battle of Waterloo.

  Rue Drouot … Chaussée d’Antin: Duroy is in the ninth arrondissement. The Rue Drouot is only two blocks from the offices of La Vie française (on the Boulevard Poissonnière). By turning left up it, he can get back up the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette to his marital address in the Rue Fontaine. To reach the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin, he has to retrace his steps along the Boulevard Montmartre.

  rue des Vosges: now part of the Rue des Amiraux, in the heart of the working-class eighteenth arrondissement, and a somewhat unlikely address for the Comte de Vaudrec’s lawyer.

  consent: French law at the time held women to be ‘legally incapable’, thus requiring the agreement of their closest male relative in order to inherit.

  Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré: the premier Parisian address, instantly recognizable as a marker of wealth and power.

  a vast canvas by the Hungarian painter Karl Marcowitch: identifiable as Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900), living in France since 1870 and best known for his religious and history paintings. The picture in question evokes his gigantic Christ devant Pilate, rejected by the Salon but put on show in June 1881 at the Hôtel Sedelmeyer, 6 rue La Rochefoucauld. It was sold to an American collector in 1887 for a price rumoured to be between 150,000 and 600,000 francs.

  Jacques Lenoble: revealingly, Maupassant first wrote here ‘Jacques Legrand’, too easily identifiable as (an inversion of) Georges Petit who owned a gallery at 8 rue de Sèze where he promoted modern painting. Petit is himself referred to on p. 243.

  electric light: invented as recently as 1880 and thus a sign of luxury.

  Jockey Club: the most élitist of the Parisian gambling-clubs, founded in 1833 (cf. note to p. 54), and situated during this period at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Rue Scribe.

  famous people: more authorial inventions.

  L’Officiel: i.e. the Journal Officiel, the government newspaper in which honours and awards were gazetted.

  Rue des Martyrs: also in the ninth arrondissement, not very far from the Duroys’ own address.

  immune from the law: a privilege enjoyed by deputies since 1875, except in cases of in flagrante delicto.

  divorce: not in fact restored until the 1884 Loi Naquet. This scene in the novel takes place in 1883, at a time when the whole question of divorce was a matter of vigorous public debate.

  Trouville: popular summer resort on the Normandy coast. Saint-Germain: i.e. Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  Mont-Valérien: fortress on the western outskirts of the capital, just across the river from the Bois de Boulogne.

  Le Pecq: at that time still a village, on the river itself, just outside Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  Marly: i.e. Marly-le-Roi, due south from where they stand.

  Sartrouville: across the Seine (i.e. on the right bank) towards Argenteuil.

  La Roche-Guyon, east of Vernon which is some 80 km. from Paris.

  20th of October: of 1883. The novel thus lasts just over three years (cf. note to 28th of June, p. 3).

  bishop of Tangiers: the final transposition of the Moroccan affair (see Introduction, p. ix-xi). The establishment of the Tunisian protectorate had resulted in the creation of an archdiocese of Carthage under the aegis of Algiers under Cardinal Lavigerie (1825–92). There were also bishops of Oran and Constantine, such spiritual direction being inseparable from colonial domination. Lavigerie himself moved to Tunisia and built a cathedral on the site of the citadel of Carthage. His order of White Fathers effectively extended French influence throughout central Africa.

  A SELECTION OF OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  APOLLINAIRE, Three Pre-Surrealist Plays

  ALFRED JARRY, and

  MAURICE MAETERLINCK

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC Cousin Bette

  Eugénie Grandet

  Père Goriot

  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE The Flowers of Evil

  The Prose Poems and Fanfarlo

  DENIS DIDEROT This is Not a Story and Other Stories

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS (PÈRE) The Black Tulip

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Louise de la Vallière

  The Man in the Iron Mask

  La Reine Margot

  The Three Musketeers

  Twenty Years After

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS (FILS) La Dame aux Camélias

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Madame Bovary

  A Sentimental Education

  Three Tales

  VICTOR HUGO The Last Day of a Condemned Man and Other Prison Writings

  Notre-Dame de Paris

  J.-K. HUYSMANS Against Nature

  JEAN DE LA FONTAINE Selected Fables

  PIERRE CHODERLOS Les Liaisons dangereuses

  DE LACLOS

  MME DE LAFAYETTE The Princesse de Cléves

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT A Day in the Country and Other Stories Mademoiselle Fifi

  PROSPER MÉRIMÉE Carmen and Other Stories

  BLAISE PASCAL Pensées and Other Writings

  JEAN RACINE Britannicus, Phaedra, and Athaliah

  EDMOND ROSTAND Cyrano de Bergerac

  MARQUIS DE SADE The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales

  GEORGE SAND Indiana

  The Master Pipers

  Mauprat

  The Miller of Angibault

  STENDHAL The Red and the Black

  The Charterhouse of Parma

  JULES VERNE Around the World in Eighty Days

  Journey to the Centre of the Earth

  Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas

  VOLTAIRE Candide and Other Stories

  Letters concerning the English Nation

  ÉMILE ZOLA L’Assommoir

  The Attack on the Mill

  La Bête humaine

  Germinal

  The Ladies’ Paradise

  The Masterpiece

  Nana

  Thérèse Raquin

  Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures

  Eight German Novellas

  GEORG BÜCHNER Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck

  J. W. VON GOETHE Elective Affinities

  Erotic Poems

  Faust: Part One and Part Two

  E. T. A. HOFFMANN The Golden Pot and Other Tales

  J. C. F. SCHILLER Don Carlos and Mary Stuart

  LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Orlando Furioso

  GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO The Decameron

  MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO Orlando Innamorato

  LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES The Lusíads

  MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quixote de la Mancha

  Exemplary Stories

  DANTE ALIGHIERI The Divine Comedy

  Vita Nuova

  BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS Nazarín

  LEONARDO DA VINCI Selections from the Notebooks

  NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI Discourses on Livy

  The Prince

  MICHELANGELO Life, Letters, and Poetry

  PETRARCH Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works

  GIORGIO VASARI The Lives of the Artists

  SERGEI AKSAKOV A Russian Gentleman

  ANTON CHEKHOV Early Stories

  Five Plays

  The Princess and Other Stories

  The Russian Master and Other Stories

  The Steppe and Other Stories

  Twelve Plays

  Ward Number Six and Other Stories

  A Woman’s Kingdom
and Other Stories

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY An Accidental Family

  Crime and Punishment

  Devils

  A Gentle Creature and Other Stories

  The Idiot

  The Karamazov Brothers

  Memoirs from the House of the Dead

  Notes from the Underground and The Gambler