The Kill (Oxford World's Classics)

The Kill (Oxford World's Classics)

Language: English

Pages: 320

ISBN: 0199536929

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


'It was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.'

The Kill (La Curée) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire (1852-70) and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure. The all-pervading promiscuity of the new Paris is reflected in the dissolute and frenetic lives of an unscrupulous property speculator, Saccard, his neurotic wife Renée, and her dandified lover, Saccard's son Maxime.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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small paving stones with the intense glow of a roaring conflagration. As Renée pushed open the door of the vestibule, she found herself face-to-face with her husband’s manservant on his way to the servants’ hall with a silver kettle. The man was magnificent, all dressed in black, tall, solid, with the white face and neatly trimmed side-whiskers of an English diplomat and the grave, dignified air of a judge. The young woman detained him with a question. “Baptiste, has Monsieur returned?” “Yes,

to avoid stepping over the line and planting a kiss. At one point a prankster must have given a slight push. The line tightened up, and coats pressed a little more deeply into skirts. There were little shouts and laughs—endless laughs. Baroness von Meinhold was heard to say, “But sir, I can’t breathe. Don’t hold me so tight!” which was so funny and made the whole line laugh so madly that the “columns,” shaken by all the hilarity, staggered, crashed into each other, and had to hold each other up

way in which she lived her entire life. She believed she no longer had to struggle against evil, that it was inside her, that logic authorized her to pursue wicked knowledge to the end. For her that knowledge was still more a matter of curiosity than of appetite. Thrown into Second Empire society, abandoned to her fantasies, supplied with money, encouraged in her most ostentatious eccentricities, she surrendered, regretted it, and ultimately succeeded in killing off what remained of decency in

and raked over the coals by his brother the minister for having threatened the security of the city’s delegation bonds, which depended on the solidity of the Crédit Viticole, proved even less fortunate in his speculation on real estate. Mignon and Charrier had broken with him completely. If he lashed out at them, it was because of the dull rage he felt at having made the mistake of building on his share of the land he’d bought with them, while they had prudently sold their share. While they were

Saccard that his wife was a bottomless pit. He advised him never to give her another cent so that she would be forced to sell them her share of the property at once. He would have preferred to deal with Saccard alone. From time to time he tested the waters, going so far as to say, with the weary, indifferent air of a man of the world, “You know, I really need to put my files in order. . . . Your wife scares me, old man. I wouldn’t want the authorities to get hold of certain documents I have in my

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