‘For a Night of Love’ (‘Pour une nuit d’amour’) was written for the Russian review, Le Messager de l’Europe, where it was published in 1876. It was also published in the French review L’Echo universel in 1877. ‘Nantas’ too was published in Le Messager de l’Europe, in October 1878 – this being contemporary with the composition of the first chapters of Nana, Zola’s study of the Parisian demi-monde under the Second Empire (eventually published in 1880): but its storyline has more in common with another instalment of the Rougon-Macquart series, La Curée (The Kill), published in 1871.
For a Night of Love*
1
The small town of P*** is built on a hill. At the foot of the ancient ramparts flows a very deep stream with steep banks, the Chanteclair, doubtless so called because of the crystal-clear song of its limpid water. Arriving along the road from Versailles, the traveller first crosses the Chanteclair over the single span of the stone bridge to the south gate of the town: the bridge’s broad parapets, low and rounded, are used as benches by all the old men of the district. Opposite, the rue Beau-Soleil leads up to a silent square, the Place des Quatre-Femmes, paved with rough slabs of stone, and overrun with thick grass, which makes it look as green as a meadow. The houses sleep. Every half hour, the footsteps of some passer-by dawdling along set a dog barking behind a stable door; and the one bit of excitement in this isolated spot is still the officers heading off, twice a day at their regular time, for a meal at their guest house in the rue Beau-Soleil.
It was in a gardener’s house, on the left, that Julien Michon lived. The gardener had rented out to him a big first-floor room; and, as the gardener himself lived on the other side of the house, looking out onto the rue Catherine where his garden was, Julien lived there in peace and quiet, with his own staircase and door, already content, at the age of twenty-five, to follow the set routines of a reclusive petit bourgeois.
The young man had lost his mother and father very early on in life. The Michons had, in days gone by, been saddlers at Les Alluets, near Mantes. On their death, an uncle had sent the child off to boarding school. Then the uncle himself had passed away, and for five years Julien had had a little job as a copying clerk in the P*** post office. He earned fifteen hundred francs, without a hope of ever earning more. In any case, he saved his money, and couldn’t imagine a more comfortable or a happier condition than his own.
Tall, strong, and bony, Julien had big hands that got in his way. He felt he was ugly, with a square head that looked as if it had been left unfinished after some rough handling by a sculptor all fingers and thumbs; and this made him shy, especially in the presence of young ladies. When a laundress had told him with a laugh that he wasn’t so bad looking, it had left him feeling deeply disturbed. When he ventured out, his arms dangling, his shoulders hunched, his head hanging low, he would take long loping strides to return more quickly into his shadow. His clumsiness left him prey to a continual sense of fright, a pathological longing for ordinariness and obscurity. He seemed to have resigned himself to growing old in this way, without friendship, without love affairs, with the tastes of a cloistered monk.
And this life did not weigh heavily on his broad shoulders. Julien, at heart, was very happy. He had a calm and transparent soul. His daily life, dominated by fixed rules, was imbued with serenity. In the morning he would go to his office, and placidly take up his work where he had left off the night before; then, he would have a bread roll for lunch, and continue his writing; then he had dinner, went to bed, slept. The next day, the sun would rise on the same schedule, week by week, month by month. This slow procession came to be accompanied by a soft and gentle music, rocking him in the daydream of those oxen that pull the cart along and then spend the evening ruminating among fresh straw. He drank in all the charm of monotony. Sometimes, after dinner, he would enjoy going down the rue Beau-Soleil, and sitting on the bridge, waiting for nine o’clock. He let his legs dangle over the water, watching the Chanteclair flowing along beneath him, with the pure murmur of its silver waves. Willows, along both river-banks, trailed their pale heads in their own reflections. From the sky drifted down the fine ashen hues of dusk.
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