The fall of the bodies
The fall of the bodies ( French: La Chute des corps ) is the second volume of the novel trilogy The Great Families by the French writer Maurice Druon , which was published by Julliard in Paris in 1950 .
Volume 1 - The Great Families ( Les Grandes Familles ) and Volume 3 - Rendezvous in Hell ( Rendez-vous aux Enfers ) came out in 1948 and 1951. The German edition of the entire trilogy in the broadcast by Lotte Frauendienst was published by Henry Goverts in Stuttgart in 1961 .
content
Paris and Mauglaives Castle 1928 to October 1932.
The blind man's hunt
After the death of her husband François Schoudler, his widow Jacqueline Schoudler stayed mostly with her mother Juliette de La Monnerie at the Mauglaives castle of her blind 84-year-old uncle, Marquis Urbain de La Monnerie. Jacqueline's father-in-law, Baron Noël Schoudler - owner of the Schoudler bank and the newspaper Echo du Matin - wanted Jacqueline to talk to Dr. phil. Simon Lachaume married and Uncle Urbain had Major Charles Gilon from neighboring Montprély in mind as the new husband for the niece, but the widow is interested in the 37-year-old Captain Gabriel De Voos. This handsome man with no fortune is a war comrade of the major. Captain De Voos - who is still loved by the actress Sylvaine Dual in Paris - quickly stays at Mauglaives. He quit his service in the army, married Jacqueline and became Count De Voos. The captain makes his wife sexually submissive. Jacqueline is happy with her second husband.
The blind landlord, formerly a passionate hunter, can only have his Piqueur Laverdure report on his current hunting experiences .
After an absence of more than ten years, Simon Lachaume, Secretary General of the Echo du Matin and Deputy Ministerial Director in the Paris Ministry of Education, visits his mother in Mureaux - in Berry near Mauglaives. He wants to be elected to parliament by his home department. Simon Lachaume rents a villa in Jeumont and transplanted the mother and the sick older brother Louis from their primitive but familiar home to the villa or a nursing home.
Simon Lachaume becomes a Member of Parliament. His patron Noël Schoudler triumphs. Jacqueline left her son Jean-Noël and daughter Marie-Ange with the Schoudler family. Jean-Noël hates Simon Lachaume, who is presented to him as a role model by his grandfather.
The Théâtre des Deux-Villes
Simon Lachaumes mother dies. The new MP goes in and out of the 56-year-old courtesan Marthe Bonnefoy on Quai Malaquais. Marthe in Directoirestil adorn furnished apartment portraits of famous personalities. The amazed young lover is the successor to the doctor Professor Lartois. In conversation with Marthe, Simon Lachaume foresees the financial ruin of Noël Schoudler. Because Schoudler invests extravagantly - for example in the bankrupt Talma theater. And he wants to turn the Echo du Matin into an international paper.
Noël Schoudler doesn't like his daughter-in-law's long stay outside Paris. He is also against Jacqueline's connection with the captain and warns her: He, Noël Schoudler, is the guardian of his two grandchildren. Jacqueline's uncle Urbain had started a liaison with Odile de Bondumont while his wife, who died in 1875, was still alive. Even when Odile was also widowed after 1875, Uncle Urbain had successfully postponed the due second marriage for decades.
Sylvaine Dual got a supporting role from the great playwright Edouard Wilner at the Théâtre des Deux-Villes and goes to bed with him. The 71-year-old Wilner deliberately, carefully dividing up the dwindling strength, takes on the much younger actress. But Sylvaine soon became obsolete too. No wonder, if you consider that the aged seducer has already documented eight hundred - mostly successful - attempts at seduction by more or less weak women. One of the entries concerns the poet Inès Sandoval, born in 1888.
The big noise
In the spring of 1929, the 60-year-old stockbroker Karl Strinberg appeared out of nowhere in Paris. Both Noël Schoudler, who has recently started building industrial facilities again, and Minister Anatole Rousseau, who directs and manages French finances from his office in Rue de Rivoli , are keen on the loan from the billionaire financier with Norwegian citizenship. Simon Lachaume is supposed to investigate Schoudler's tricks in the matter for Rousseau. The minister receives the information he hoped for. Schoudler thinks the loan is a safe bet. Rousseau then clears the way for Schoudler to speculate. The minister, who had been responsible for the cultural department for years, rose from finance minister to prime minister. Shortly before the happiness of France is perfect, i.e. Strinberg's loan is to be accepted, the Scandinavian disappears via Zurich and Brussels to London . Back at his hotel on Place Vendôme , he is found with his wrists open. The financial magnate is said to have been a Baltic terrorist in the past . His securities turn out to be forgeries.
Simon Lachaume reacts quickly and without errors. He brings into his hands proof of the insanity of the bankrupt Noël Schoudler and leaves the hundred-year-old Schoudler empire with little noise. The big bank crash is not long in coming. Schoudler's counters on Rue des Petits-Champs are closed by the government. In the Chamber the President gave the floor to Monsieur Lachaume. The traitor overthrew the first government in his short parliamentary career. Anatole Rousseau fails when he asks the vote of confidence. After the ousted Prime Minister Lachaume scolded a “little rag”, he suffered a heart attack . Simon Lachaume will most likely rise in the new administration; at least up to the undersecretary of state .
With one foot in the grave
On May 29, 1930, Marquis Urbain de La Monnerie finally fulfilled a long-cherished wish of his heart for his languishing lover, Odile de Bondumont. The couple are getting married. The next day the newlywed dies. From then on the Marquis did not mention the marriage at all.
Indeed, in the new government, which is proving to be fairly stable, Simon Lachaume will become Undersecretary of State for Fine Arts . He and Marthe Bonnefoy, who is fifteen years his senior, fall apart as friends. The Undersecretary of State sleeps with one woman after the other and ultimately prefers the actress Sylvaine Dual as a tried and tested bed companion. Simon Lachaume helps Isabelle Meignerais to adopt Sylvaine Dual's neglected seven-year-old “daughter” Lucienne at her urgent request. It soon turns out that Isabelle is incapable of exercising motherhood. The bustling woman returns the child to the Dominican convent .
Baron Noël Schoudler, impoverished after the bank crash, is lying in the Pension Heckenrose in Ville-d'Avray with obliterating arteritis . Professor Lartois and a surgeon friend decide to have two amputations when necrosis begins . The baron dies after the second operation. His fourteen-year-old grandson Jean-Noël Schoudler visits him beforehand. The grandfather can hardly bequeath anything to the boy. Jean-Noël realizes that he and his sister Marie-Ange will have to rely on their own strength in the future.
The silence of Mauglaives
Already at the age of forty, the formerly handsome Major Gabriel De Voos, a drinker, ages suddenly and becomes ugly. Away from Mauglaives - in Paris - he is looking for a change in love and falls back on his former girlfriend Sylvaine Dual. Gabriel met Simon Lachaume for the first time on this occasion. The Undersecretary's verdict on the husband of the woman he once wanted to marry is quickly made: “Big mouth and probably stupid and drunk”. Simon Lachaume will stay with Sylvaine. She is happy about each of his visits. Maurice Druon describes one of the greetings as follows: "Without saying a word, Simon slapped her twice, right, left ... This is how Simon and Sylvaine found out that they were in love."
Jacqueline still desires Gabriel; despite his Parisian escapades ; despite his drunkenness; despite his pathological jealousy of the dead François Schoudler; his predecessor at Jacqueline. For all of Gabriel's physical attraction, Jacqueline cannot forget her first husband. When she accidentally speaks to the drunk Gabriel, who comes home at night, as François, he kills her during a burst of anger with a deer run. Laverdure hushed up the act. The piqueur throws the corpse over the dilapidated balustrade of the loggia into the palace garden. Jacqueline's mother Juliette de La Monnerie, who guesses the name of the perpetrator Gabriel, helps cover up the manslaughter.
Gabriel De Voos no longer drinks because he knows about his addiction to chat when he is drunk. He can be reactivated in his southern Algerian regiment. Urbain de La Monnerie dies. His two heirs, Marie-Ange and Jean-Noël, have to leave half of the inheritance to the descendants of Odile de Bondumont.
reception
The stockbroker Karl Strinberg reminds Drissen of both Alexandre Stavisky and Ivor Kreuder .
German-language literature
German-language first edition
- The big families . Henry Goverts Verlag Stuttgart 1961. 854 pages.
Used edition
- The fall of the bodies. German broadcast of Lotte Frauendienst. 408 pages. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1966 (Licensor: Goverts, Stuttgart)
Secondary literature
- Klaus D. Drissen: Literature and Politics. Gaullism in the work of Maurice Druon . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Paris, New York 1992 (Diss. Uni Wuppertal 1991), ISBN 3-631-44717-5
Web links
- Entry in WorldCat
- 1962: Propad stanov : Entry of Bogomil Fatur's translation into Slovenian in WorldCat
- 1992: Крушение столпов (Kruschenije stolpow): Entry of the translation into Russian by N. Kudrjawzewa-Luri (Н. Кудрявцева-Лури) in the WorldCat
- 2010 Barcelona: La caída de los cuerpos : Entry of the translation into Spanish by Amparo Albajar in WorldCat
Remarks
- ↑ Vol. 1 was already published in 1949 in the transmission by Gustav Rademacher in the Bonn publishing house of the Europäische Bücherei under the title Who wears golden chains ( Who wears golden chains as d-nb.info).
- ↑ Vol. 2, p. 50 below: Simon Lachaume is 41 years old. Vol. 1, p. 18 below and p. 39 above: He was born in 1887.
- ↑ Maurice Druon also calls the deer run horned club (edition used, p. 333, 1. Zvo).
Individual evidence
- ↑ French Editions Julliard
- ^ French Quai Malaquais
- ^ French rue des Petits-Champs
- ↑ Edition used, p. 315, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 322, 1. Zvo
- ↑ Drissen, p. 64, 5. Zvo