An Bonheur des Dames.

Octave Mouret, after his marriage with Madame Hedouin, greatly increased the business of “The Ladies’ Paradise,” which he hoped would ultimately rival the Bon Marche and other great drapery establishments in Paris.  While an addition to the shop was in progress Madame Mouret met with an accident which resulted in her death, and her husband remained a widower for a number of years.  During this time his business grew to such an extent that his employees numbered many hundreds, among whom was Denise Baudu, a young girl who had come from the provinces.  Mouret fell in love with her, and she, after resisting his advances for some time, ultimately married him.  The book deals chiefly with life among the assistants in a great drapery establishment, their petty rivalries and their struggles; it contains some pathetic studies of the small shopkeepers of the district, crushed out of existence under the wheels of Mouret’s moneymaking machine.

La Faute de l’Abbe Mouret.

Serge Mouret, the younger son of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement.  He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother—­a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria.  Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past.  Dr. Pascal Rougon, his uncle, hoping to save his reason, removed him from his accustomed surroundings and left him at the Paradou, the neglected demesne of a ruined mansion-house near Les Artaud, where he was nursed by Albine, niece of the caretaker.  The Abbe fell in love with Albine, and, oblivious of his vows, broke them.  A meeting with Archangias, a Christian Brother with whom he had been associated, and a chance glimpse of the world beyond the Paradou, served to restore his memory, and, filled with horror at himself, he fled from that enchanted garden.  A long mental struggle followed, but in the end the Church was victorious, and the Abbe returned to her service with even more feverish devotion than before.  Albine, broken-hearted, died among her loved flowers in the Paradou.

The tale is to some extend an indictment of the celibacy of the priesthood, though it has to be admitted that the issue is not put quite fairly, inasmuch as the Abbe was, at the time of his lapse, in entire forgetfulness of his sacred office.  As a whole, the book contains some of Zola’s best work, and is both poetical and convincing.

Une Page d’Amour.