The Kill

Paris in those days was a most interesting spectacle for a man like Aristide Saccard. The Empire had just been proclaimed following the famous trip during which the Prince-President5 had succeeded in kindling the enthusiasm of a few Bonapartist départements. Both the legislature and the press had been silenced. Saved yet again, society congratulated itself, relaxed, and slept in now that a strong government protected it and freed it from the cares of thinking and dealing with its own affairs. Its one abiding preoccupation was to decide which amusements it would choose to kill the time. In Eugène Rougon’s felicitous phrase, Paris sat down to di

From the very first days Aristide Saccard sensed the approach of this rising tide of speculation, whose spume would one day cover all of Paris. He followed its progress closely. He found himself smack in the middle of the torrential downpour of gold raining down on the city’s roofs. In his incessant turns around city hall, he had caught wind of the vast project to transform Paris, of the plans for demolition, of the new streets and hastily pla

“You’ll need to look around,” Eugène said.

“You’re right, I’ll look around,” answered Aristide, without a trace of rancor, seeming not to notice that his brother was refusing to start him off with an initial contribution.

The thought of that initial investment now burned within him. His plan was set; with each passing day it grew more mature. But the first few thousand francs were still nowhere to be found. His tension increased. He looked at people now with a nervous and searching eye, as if scrutinizing every passerby for a potential lender. At home, Angèle continued to lead a happy if retiring life, but Aristide remained on the lookout for an opportunity, and his gregarious laughter grew increasingly shrill as time passed and no such opportunity presented itself.

Aristide had a sister in Paris. Sidonie Rougon had married a law clerk from Plassans, whom she had accompanied to the capital to set up a shop on the rue Saint-Honoré selling fruits from the south of France. By the time her brother caught up with her, the husband had vanished, and the shop had long since gone under. She was living in a small three-room apartment above another shop on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière. She leased the shop as well, a cramped and mysterious boutique in which she pretended to sell lace. And the window did contain pieces of guipure and Valencie

Mme Sidonie was thirty-five years old, but she dressed so carelessly and had so little feminine appeal that one would have thought her much older. In truth she had no age. She always wore the same black dress, frayed at the pleats and rumpled and discolored from use, so that it resembled a lawyer’s robe threadbare from frequent rubbing against the courtroom rail. With a black hat pulled down to her forehead to hide her hair and a pair of heavy shoes, she walked the streets carrying a small basket whose handles were mended with string. This basket, which never left her side, was a whole world unto itself. If she opened it even slightly, all sorts of things spilled out: date books, folders, and above all bundles of paper bearing official stamps whose illegible writing she deciphered with remarkable dexterity. She had in her the makings of a business broker and a clerk of court. She lived among defaulted bills, writs, and court orders. Each time she sold ten francs’ worth of pomade or lace, she wormed her way into the good graces of her clients and became the business agent of her customers, ru