The Belly of Paris (Modern Library Classics)
Emile Zola
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0812974220
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point.
Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.
Les filles de Feu, Les Chimères et autres textes
Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)
sleepy, was almost dozing in his arms. And Quenu was beginning to get annoyed. ‘Be careful, you fool,’ he shouted at Léon. ‘Don’t you know how to hold a skin yet? Stop looking at me. It’s the skin you should look at, not me! That’s right, hold it like that and don’t move!’ With his right hand Léon was holding aloft a long piece of sausage skin, at one end of which a large funnel had been inserted; with his The Belly of Paris 87 left hand he coiled the black pudding round a metal bowl while
colourings. Unfortunately, the skate was rotten; its tail was falling off and the ribs of its fins were breaking through the skin. ‘You must throw that skate away,’ said Florent, as he approached. La Belle Normande laughed. Looking up, Florent saw her standing before him, leaning against the bronze lamp post which lit up the four stalls in her section. She was standing on a box to protect her feet from the water and seemed very tall as he looked up at her. She pursed her lips, looking even more
herself unable to solve the mystery of the Quenus’ cousin. She spied on him, followed him, undressed him with her eyes, scrutinized him from head to foot, enraged beyond words at her failure to satisfy her rampant curiosity. Since he had begun to visit the Méhudins, she was forever haunting the stairs and landings. She soon realized that La Belle Lisa was extremely annoyed to see Florent frequenting ‘those women’, so every morning she called in at the charcuterie with a ration of information
carefully fastened and the session began. Charvet and Florent were naturally those whose utterances were listened to with the greatest attention. Gavard had been unable to hold his tongue and had gradually given away the whole story of Cayenne; Florent thus acquired a halo of martyrdom. His words were received as articles of faith. One evening, Gavard, annoyed at hearing his friend attacked behind his back, cried: ‘Leave him alone! He was at Cayenne!’ But Charvet was nettled by this advantage.
And when a ray of sunlight fell across the offal and gave it a golden hue, an expression of rapture came into his eyes, and he felt happier than if he had been privileged to see Greek goddesses filing past in their splendid nudity, or the châtelaines of romance in their brocaded robes.* The painter became the great friend of the two children. He loved beautiful animals, and such they were. For a long time he dreamt of painting a huge picture of Cadine and Marjolin as lovers in Les Halles, among the
