The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fat and the Thin, by Emile Zola

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Title: The Fat and the Thin

Author: Emile Zola

Translator: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #5744]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAT AND THE THIN ***

Produced by Dagny; John Bickers

THE FAT AND THE THIN

(LE VENTRE DE PARIS)

By Emile Zola

Translated, With An Introduction, By Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

Let me have men about me that are fat:
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
SHAKESPEARE: _Julius Caesar_, act i, sc. 2.

INTRODUCTION

"THE FAT AND THE THIN," or, to use the French title, "Le Ventre de
Paris," is a story of life in and around those vast Central Markets
which form a distinctive feature of modern Paris. Even the reader who
has never crossed the Channel must have heard of the Parisian _Halles_,
for much has been written about them, not only in English books on
the French metropolis, but also in English newspapers, magazines, and
reviews; so that few, I fancy, will commence the perusal of the present
volume without having, at all events, some knowledge of its subject
matter.

The Paris markets form such a world of their own, and teem at certain
hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life, that it was
only natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M.
Zola, who, to use his own words, delights "in any subject in which vast
masses of people can be shown in motion." Mr. Sherard tells us[*] that
the idea of "Le Ventre de Paris" first occurred to M. Zola in 1872, when
he used continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a ramble through
the Halles. I have in my possession, however, an article written by
M. Zola some five or six years before that time, and in this one can
already detect the germ of the present work; just as the motif of
another of M. Zola's novels, "La Joie de Vivre," can be traced to a
short story written for a Russian review.

[*] _Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study_, by Rober