This work, which will comprise several episodes, is therefore, in
my mind, the natural and social history of a family under the Second
Empire. And the first episode, here called "The Fortune of the Rougons,"
should scientifically be entitled "The Origin."
EMILE ZOLA PARIS, July 1, 1871.
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS
CHAPTER I
On quitting Plassans by the Rome Gate, on the southern side of the town,
you will find, on the right side of the road to Nice, and a little way
past the first suburban houses, a plot of land locally known as the Aire
Saint-Mittre.
This Aire Saint-Mittre is of oblong shape and on a level with the
footpath of the adjacent road, from which it is separated by a strip of
trodden grass. A narrow blind alley fringed with a row of hovels borders
it on the right; while on the left, and at the further end, it is closed
in by bits of wall overgrown with moss, above which can be seen the
top branches of the mulberry-trees of the Jas-Meiffren--an extensive
property with an entrance lower down the road. Enclosed upon three
sides, the Aire Saint-Mittre leads nowhere, and is only crossed by
people out for a stroll.
In former times it was a cemetery under the patronage of Saint-Mittre, a
greatly honoured Provencal saint; and in 1851 the old people of Plassans
could still remember having seen the wall of the cemetery standing,
although the place itself had been closed for years. The soil had been
so glutted with corpses that it had been found necessary to open a new
burial-ground at the other end of town.
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