1
Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study, by Robert Harborough Sherard, pp. 103, 104. London, Chatto & Windus, 1893.
2
1851. Two days after the Coup d’Etat. – Translator.
3
At the Paris central markets potatoes are sold by the hamper, not by the sack as in England. – Translator.
4
Fort is the French term, literally “a strong man,” as every market porter needs to be. – Translator.
5
These rotisseries, now all but extinct, were at one time a particular feature of the Parisian provision trade. I can myself recollect several akin to the one described by M. Zola. I suspect that they largely owed their origin to the form and dimensions of the ordinary Parisian kitchen stove, which did not enable people to roast poultry at home in a convenient way. In the old French cuisine, moreover, roast joints of meat were virtually unknown; roasting was almost entirely confined to chickens, geese, turkeys, pheasants, etc.; and among the middle classes people largely bought their poultry already cooked of the rotisseur, or else confided it to him for the purpose of roasting, in the same way as our poorer classes still send their joints to the baker’s. Roasting was also long looked upon in France as a very delicate art. Brillat-Savarin, in his famous Physiologie du Gout, lays down the dictum that “A man may become a cook, but is born a rotisseur.” – Translator.
6
See M. Zola’s novel, The Fortune of the Rougons. – Translator
7
See M. Zola’s novel, Money.
