“Mme Hennebeau was already growing tired of this visit, happy one minute to alleviate the tedium of her exile by playing this role of a zoo guide, then immediately repulsed by the vague odour of poverty that hung everywhere, despite the cleanliness of the carefully selected houses she dared to enter. In any case all she did was repeat a series of stock phrases; she never bothered her head about all these workers toiling and suffering at her gates.
‘Now’, said Mme Hennebeau, resting her case, ‘if anyone in Paris asks you about our villages, you can tell them. Never noisier than it is now, people living proper family lives, with everybody healthy and happy as you can see. It’s the sort of place you could come for a holiday, with clean air and lots of peace and quiet.”
They left the house with the spellbound air of people emerging from a freak show….
Émile Zola, “Germinal”, 1885.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 