



Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature
(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)







THE MONOMANIAC

(_LA BÊTE HUMAINE_)


By ÉMILE ZOLA


Translated and Edited, with a Preface
By EDWARD VIZETELLY


London
HUTCHINSON & CO
Paternoster Row. 1901

_All rights reserved._




[Illustration: "SÉVERINE UTTERED AN INVOLUNTARY CRY, AND ROUBAUD TURNED
ROUND, TERRIFIED." _p._ 196.]




TABLE OF CONTENTS

 PREFACE
 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII




PREFACE

This striking work, now published for the first time in England, but a
hundred thousand copies whereof have been sold in France, is one of the
most powerful novels that M. Émile Zola has written. It will be doubly
interesting to English readers, because for them it forms a missing
link in the famous Rougon-Macquart series.

The student of Zola literature will remember in the _Assommoir_ that
"handsome Lantier whose heartlessness was to cost Gervaise so many
tears." Jacques Lantier, the chief character in this _Bête Humaine_,
this _Human Animal_ which I have ventured to call the _Monomaniac_, is
one of their children. It is he who is the monomaniac. His monomania
consists in an irresistible prurience for murder, and his victims
must be women, just like that baneful criminal who was performing his
hideous exploits in the streets of the city of London in utter defiance
of the police, about the time M. Zola sat down to pen this remarkable
novel, and from whom, maybe, he partly took the idea.

Every woman this Jacques Lantier falls in love with, nay, every girl
from whom he culls a kiss, or whose bare shoulders or throat he happens
to catch a glimpse of, he feels an indomitable craving to slaughter!
And this abominable thirst is, it appears, nothing less than an
irresistible desire to avenge certain wrongs of which he has lost the
exact account, that have been handed down to him, through the males of
his line, since that distant age when prehistoric man found shelter in
the depths of caverns.

Around this peculiar being, who in other respects is like any ordinary
mortal, M. Émile Zola has grouped some very carefully studied
characters. All are drawn with a firm, masterly hand; all live and
breathe. Madame Lebleu, caught with her ear to the keyhole, is worthy
of Dickens. So is Aunt Phasie, who has engaged in a desperate underhand
struggle with her wretch of a husband about a miserable hoard of £40
which he wants to lay hands on. The idea of the jeering smile on her
lips, which seem to be repeating to him, "Search! search!" as she lies
a corpse on her bed in the dim light of a tallow candle, is inimitable.

The unconscious Séverine is but one of thousands of pretty Frenchwomen
tripping along the asphalt at this hour, utterly unable to distinguish
between right and wrong, who are ready to do anything, to sell
themselves body and soul for a little ease, a few smart frocks, and
some dainty linen. The warrior girl Flore, who thrashes the males, is a
grand conception.

But the gem of the whole bunch is that obstinate, narrow-minded,
self-sufficient examining-magistrate, M. Denizet; and in dealing with
this character, the author lays bare all the abominable system of
French criminal procedure. Recently this was modified to the extent
of allowing the accused party to have the assistance of counsel while
undergoing the torture of repeated searching cross-examinations at
the hands of his tormentor. But in the days of which M. Émile Zola is
writing, the prisoner enjoyed no such protection. He stood alone in the
room with the examining-magistrate and his registrar, and while the
former craftily laid traps for him to fall into, the latter carefully
took down his replies to the incriminating questions addressed to him.
It positively makes one shudder to think how many innocent men must
have been sent to the guillotine, or to penal servitude for life,
like poor Cabuche, during the length of years this atrocious practice
remained in full vigour!

The English reader, accustomed to