Chez Madame Paul, Chez Germaine, Le 19, Le 21, Au Chat Noir... Mean anything to you? At the end of the 19th century, these establishments were notorious for their loose morals. French writer Émile Zola, whose mother was from Chartres, appears to have come across them thanks to his friend, the politician Noël Parfait. The story goes that one night, Parfait took the writer to visit one of these addresses of ill repute. Zola drew inspiration from the visit to write one of the passages in his 1887 novel, La Terre. What isn’t clear is whether on that night he contented himself with merely observing, or whether he joined in the fun with his friend...
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