A Life (38 page)

4.
what had happened in '93
: a reference to the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793.

She resembled a portrait by Veronese
: Veronese (152888) was a painter of the Venetian school, and his portraits and paintings of religious subjects are noted for their richness of colour and harmony of composition.

5.
on the cliffs near Yport
: Yport is a small fishing village on the coast of Normandy between Étretat and Fécamp. a
s the berline drew up at the door
: the berline (or berlin) is a four-wheeled covered carriage, with a seat behind protected by a hood.

6.
a Norman girl from the Pays de Caux
: the Pays de Caux is that region of Normandy north of Rouen and the river Seine which consists of chalky plateaus ending in steep cliffs by the English Channel and interspersed with valleys leading down to the sea. f
or her mother had suckled Jeanne
: it was customary for the babies of the well-to-do to be breast-fed not by their mothers but by 'wet-nurses' employed for the purpose.

8.
that's all that's left of my farm at Életot
: Életot is a small village some four miles northeast of Fécamp.

She counted out six thousand four hundred francs
: assuming that Maupassant has in mind the monetary values of 1819 and not 1883, one can multiply the franc in the period 181948 by three to obtain the very approximate current value in pounds sterling. I am indebted for this calculation to Graham Robb,
Balzac
(Picador, 1994), p. 430.

10.
and depicted scenes from the fables of La Fontaine
: Jean de La Fontaine (162195) is celebrated for his
Fables
, written in verse. In his fable about the Fox and the Stork, the fox invites the stork to dinner but serves a  broth which only he is able to lap up. The stork gains her revenge by inviting the fox to dinner and serving delicious meat in a vase with a narrow opening, from which only she is able to eat.

11.
the sorry tale of Pyramus and Thisbe
: Maupassant has in mind Ovid's version of this Classical myth (
Metamorphoses
, iv). Pyramus and Thisbe, two young Babylonian lovers who are forbidden by their parents to marry, arrange a tryst by a stream where a mulberry tree grows. On arriving first, Thisbe encounters a lioness: she flees to safety but drops a scarf, which the lioness takes in her mouth that is bloody from devouring prey. When Pyramus arrives he finds the scarf smeared with blood, presumes that Thisbe has been killed by a wild animal, and runs himself through with his sword. Thisbe returns to find her lover dead and kills herself with his sword. The fruit of the mulberry, hitherto white, turns red on account of the spilled blood.

17.
the hamlet of Étouvent in which Les Peuples was located
: both the hamlet and the name of the house are imaginary.

22.
she had read 'Corinne'
:
Corinne
(1807), by Mme de Staël (17661817), tells the story of Lord Osward Nelvil, a reserved and melancholy Englishman, who visits Italy and meets Corinne, a beautiful poetess, in Rome. They fall in love, but his father's dying wish, other family considerations, and his English suspicion of Corinne's flamboyant artistic temperament conspire, after many pages, to make him marry not her but Corinne's half-sister Lucile Edgermond. Corinne dies of grief. a
ll those langorous romances about swallows and captive maidens
: these clichés of romance literature were also commonplace in the English poetry of the Victorian era, for example in
The Princess
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (180992) and
Itylus
by Algernon Swinburne (18371909). s
ome bawdy songs by Béranger
: Pierre-Jean (de) Béranger (17801857) was a popular versifier and songwriter of great renown, considerable facility, and a certain gift for Gallic ribaldry. In Maupassant's story
La Maison Tellier
Rosa sings Béranger's song entitled 'Ma Grand-Mère', with the refrain 'Combien je regrette | Mon bras si dodu, | Ma jambe bien faite, | Et le temps perdu!' ('How much I miss | My arm so plump, | My well-turned ankle, | And the time I've wasted!'). One verse elegantly recalls how Grandmama discovered the soporific benefits of onanism at the age of 15. t
he novels by Walter Scott
: Sir Walter Scott (17711832) had written many famous romances in versefor example,
The Lay of the Last Ministrel
(1805) and
The Lady of the Lake
(1810)before turning to the novel with
Waverley
(1814), the first of over twenty historical romances which were immediately and immensely popular in both Britain and France (and elsewhere in Europe) during the nineteenth century.
The Lady of the Lake
was first published in a French translation in 1820,
Ivanhoe
in 1821.

23.
in the days of the Enlightenment thinkers
: not only Rousseau (see above,  note to p. 3) but also thinkers such as Voltaire (16941778), Denis Diderot (171384), and Jean D'Alembert (171783), all of them either Deist or atheist, and strongly anticlerical.

30.
the small Porte at Étretat
: there are two
Portes
or 'gateways' at Étretat, archways hollowed out of the chalk cliffs: the smaller is the Porte d'Amont (literally the Upstream Gateway), to the east; the larger is the Porte d'Aval (the Downstream Gateway), to the west.

37.
my dear companion before God
: in the French text the Vicomte addresses Jeanne as 'ma commère', which can mean either conjugal partner or godmother. Maupassant uses the ambiguity to heighten expectation in the reader that Jeanne may be about to be married off without her consent.

38.
the serpent-player
: the 'serpent' was 'a bass wind instrument of deep tone, about 8 feet long, made of wood covered with leather and formed with three U-shaped turns' (
OED
).

51.
The Marriage at Cannes
: in the French the priest refers to 'les noces de Ganache', when he means to say not 'the Marriage in Cana' (John 2) but 'les noces de Gamache', a reference to Cervantes's
Don Quixote
(Part II, chs. 212) and a proverbial expression for sumptuous wedding celebrations. 'Ganache', rather than 'Gamache', means 'dolt'. The joke, therefore, is on both the mayor and the Abbé Picot.

57.
that he now said 'tu' to her
: having consummated their marriage, Julien now addresses his wife in the more intimate 'tu' form. When he subsequently suggests that in front of Jeanne's parents they continue to address each by the more formal 'vous' until after their honeymoon, it is clear that he does not want them to know how rapidly he has achieved such intimacy.

61.
the great man, away over there on Saint Helena
: the Emperor Napoleon (17691821), a native of Corsica, was imprisoned on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic after the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and died in this British colony six years later

66.
along the edge of the gulf of Sagone
: Sagone is a port some twenty-five miles north of Ajaccio.

Towards evening they passed through Cargèse
: Cargèse was founded in 1676 by Greek refugees from the southern Peloponnese, who were fleeing the Ottomans and had sought asylum in Corsica, which was then ruled by Genoa. The settlement was burned to the ground by native Corsicans in 1731 but rebuilt by the French, the island's new rulers.

90.
on the upper part of the beach
: in French 'le perret', which denotes the upper part of the beach covered in sand or large stones ('galets') rather than the shingle nearer the water's edge. t
heir bottle of trois-six
: a bottle of spirits, probably so-called because the alcohol was 36 per cent proof

131.
a phaeton requiring only one horse
: a phaeton is a light four-wheeled carriage with seats for two persons.

132.
She looked exactly like the Lady of the Lake
: See above, note to p. 22.

143.
it's like something out of La Fontaine
: La Fontaine (see above, note to p. 10), is noted not only for his
Fables
but also for the
Contes et nouvelles en ver
, collections of light verse tales, of which many are licentious.

145.
she spent whole days reading 'Corinne' or Lamartine's 'Méditations'
: for Corinne, see above, note to p. 22. Alphonse de Lamartine (17901869) published his
Méditations poétiques
in 1820. His first collection of lyric verse, it proved an instant success and is generally considered to mark the beginning of the Romantic period in French literature. The poems are characterized by a gentle, but deeply personal, elegiac tone. Among several anthology pieces 'L'Isolement' ('Isolation') includes the famous line 'Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé' (freely translated, 'You have only to miss one single person for the whole world to seem empty of people'); while 'Le Lac' ('The Lake') reflects on the transience of human experience and contains the often-quoted line: 'O temps, suspends ton vol!' ('O time, arrest your flight').

149.
Dominus vobiscum
: 'God be with you.'

183.
The nickname 'Pullie' stuck
: in French the nickname is 'Poulet' (literally, chicken). The English 'pullet' will not suffice as a translation (being somewhat removed from a plausible diminutive of 'Paul'), but 'Pullie' has the disadvantage of being marginally less ridiculous than 'Poulet'.

185.
the Latin phrase'Sicut leo rugiens circuit quaerens quem devoret'
: '[Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil,] as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour' (1 Peter 5: 8). The phrase was well-known less as a warning against the devil than as a paradigm of Latin grammar.

208.
in the hamlet of Batteville
: this place-name is imaginary.

210.
the fox and the stork, the fox and the crow, the cicada and the ant, and the melancholy heron
: for the first of these fables by La Fontaine, see above, note to p. 10. In the well-known tale of
Le Corbeau et le renard
(The Crow and the Fox), the fox flatters the crow into singing and thus dropping the piece of cheese which it had been holding in its beak. In
La Cigale et la fourmi
(The Cicada and the Ant) the cicada, having been singing all summer, has no provisions laid up for winter. But when she asks her neighbour the ant to make her a loan, the ant has no sympathy and tells her to dance instead. In
Le Héron
the bird refuses to eat the easy prey which presents itself in the river because it constantly wishes for something yet more succulent, only to find, when at last it is truly hungry, that the only available food is a slug.

221.
had been operating between Paris and Le Havre
: the line from Paris to Rouen opened in 1842 and from Paris to Le Havre in 1847. The line and its two termini provide the setting for
La Bête humaine
(1890), Zola's novel about the railways.

226.
She recognized the Palais-Royal
: built for Cardinal Richelieu in 1629, the Palais-Royal later served as a royal residence. Situated just off the rue de Rivoli and not far from the Louvre, it is noted for its formal garden and elegant arcades.

A Selection Of OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, and Maurice Maeterlinck
Three Pre-Surrealist Plays

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 de Laclos
Les Liaisons dangereuses

Mme de Lafayette
The Princesse de Clèves

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

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