Read The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) for Free Online

Zola Society, 2000).
    Nelson, Brian (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Zola
(Cambridge: CUP, 2007).
    ——
Zola and the Bourgeoisie: A Study of Themes and Techniques in
Les Rougon-Macquart (London: Macmillan, 1983).
    Thompson, Hannah (ed.),
New Approaches to Zola
(London: The Émile Zola Society, 2003).
    Walker, Philip,
Zola
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
    Wilson, Angus,
Émile Zola: An Introductory Study of His Novels
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1952).
    Background on the Period
    Baguley, David,
Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
    Plessis, Alain,
The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871
(Cambridge: CUP, 1985).
    Price, Roger,
Napoleon III and the Second Empire
(London: Routledge, 1997).
    Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics
    Zola, Émile,
L’Assommoir
, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Robert Lethbridge.
    ——
The Belly of Paris
, trans. Brian Nelson.
    ——
La Bête humaine
, trans. Roger Pearson.
    ——
The Fortune of the Rougons
, trans. Brian Nelson.
    ——
Germinal
, trans. Peter Collier, ed. Robert Lethbridge.
    ——
The Kill
, trans. Brian Nelson.
    ——
The Ladies’ Paradise
, trans. Brian Nelson.
    ——
The Masterpiece
, trans. Thomas Walton, revised by Roger Pearson.
    ——
Money
, trans. Valerie Minogue.
    ——
Nana
, trans. Douglas Parmée.
    ——
Pot Luck
, trans. Brian Nelson.
    ——
Thérèse Raquin
, trans. Andrew Rothwell.

CHAPTER 1
    D ÉSIRÉE clapped her hands. She was a girl of fourteen, big for her age, with a laugh like a five-year-old.
    ‘Maman, Maman!’ she cried. ‘Look at my doll!’
    She had got a piece of cloth from her mother and for the last quarter of an hour had been trying to make it into a doll, wrapping it round and round and tying the end tightly with a piece of thread. Marthe looked up from the stocking which she was darning with exquisite skill, as though embroidering. She smiled at Désirée.
    ‘That’s a little boy-doll!’ she said. ‘Why not make a girl-doll? You should give her a skirt, you know, like a lady.’
    She gave her a scrap of printed calico she found in her work table; then she applied herself to her stocking again. The two of them were seated at one end of the narrow terrace, the daughter on a stool at her mother’s feet. The setting sun, a September sun, still warm, bathed them in a peaceful glow; the garden below, already in grey shadow, was making ready for the night. Not a sound came from elsewhere in this deserted corner of the town.
    And so they went on working for a good ten minutes without speaking. Désirée took infinite pains with the skirt for her doll. Now and again Marthe looked at the child, tenderly and a little sadly. Since she could see that she was struggling, she said:
    ‘Wait. Let me do her arms.’
    She took the doll just as two big lads of seventeen and eighteen descended the steps. They came over and gave Marthe a kiss.
    ‘Don’t scold us, Maman,’ said the cheerful Octave. ‘I took Serge to hear the band… There was a crowd on the Cours Sauvaire!’ *
    ‘I thought you’d been kept behind at school,’ his mother answered quietly, ‘or I should have been very worried.’
    But Désirée, with no more thought for the doll, had flung herself at Serge, crying:
    ‘One of my birds, the blue one, has flown away, the one you gave me for a present.’
    She was on the verge of tears. Her mother, who had supposed this woe forgotten, tried unsuccessfully to draw her attention back to thedoll. She clung to her brother’s arm and, leading him into the garden, urged over and over again:
    ‘Come and see.’
    The gentle, sympathetic Serge followed, trying to console her. She took him to a little glasshouse, with a cage placed on a stand in front of it. There she explained that the bird had escaped just as she had opened the cage door to stop him fighting another bird.
    ‘Heavens above, it’s no wonder,’ said Octave, sitting on the balustrade