My Impressions of Zola

Impressions and Opinions, 1 February 1913, pages 66-84, 5,901 words

Manet had persuaded me to go to the bal de l'Assommoir dressed as a Parisian workman, for he enjoyed incongruities, and the blouse and the casquette, with my appearance and my accent, appealed to his imagination. "There is no Frenchman living in London who occupies the same position as you do in Paris," he said, and I pondered over his words as I followed him through tout Paris assembled at the Elysée Montmartre, for the ball given in honour of the play that was being performed at the Ambigu. "But I must introduce you to Zola. There he is," he said pointing to a thickly built, massive man in evening clothes for, as Manet said, a serious writer cannot be expected to put on fancy dress.

Zola bowed and passed on, chilling us a little; Manet would have liked to watch him struggling into a new acquaintanceship, and we walked on together conscious of our failure, myself thinking how pleasant it would have been to have gone with them into a corner, and talked art for half an hour, "and what a wonderful memory it would have been!" I thought, and begged Manet a few minutes later to come with me in search of Zola. But he was nowhere to be found.

"He must have gone home," I said, and Manet answered: "It doesn't matter. You'll find him at home at Mèdan any day you like to go there."

For one reason or another it was not till some months later that I summoned courage and took the train at the Gare St Lazare. There is no station at Mèdan, the nearest station is – (the curious are referred to the time table for I have forgotten the name of it) – and Mèdan is a village known only to peasants, about a mile and a half from the station. Some chance had led Zola there, and being in want of a country residence he had purchased a cottage from one of the peasants, which he had just finished building into a sort of castle; an ugly place it seemed to me, a great red brick wall with a small door in it through which I was taken into the house, and left waiting in the billiard room.

It was not Zola that came down to me, but Madame Zola. She had forgotten me, though I had met her at Manet's studio, and it was only after many tedious explanations that she somewhat reluctantly led me through the house, up many staircases of polished oak, narrow and steep. On the wall of the last little flight there were Japanese prints depicting furious fornications; a rather blatant announcement, I thought of naturalism – but they were forgotten quickly, for in a few seconds I should be in the master's presence. She opened a door and left me, and I found myself in a place as large as the studio of an Academician, lighted by a skylight and a huge window. For a moment or two I lost my way among the massive furniture, and it was not until I passed a lectern that I discovered the master on a sofa by a window correcting proofs.

He did not rise to meet me, but contented himself with untucking his fat leg and motioning with his hand to a seat. His manner was terribly aloof and cold, and my embarrassment increased, for suddenly I remembered I had heard that Zola was never long in doubt as to whether he was talking to a fool or a man of wit, and that at the end of a minute a fool was dismissed peremptorily. "And he has discovered me to be a fool though I haven't said a word." I glanced at the terrible master who lay on the sofa, his glasses on his nose, reading me, divining the commonplace remarks that I was trying to conjure up. "If Homer and Shakespeare were suddenly introduced they would have to begin with remarks about the weather or the pleasure each had taken in the other's work" I said to myself, "and if this man would only give me as much rope as he would to Shakespeare or Homer I might think of something more interesting than the compliments that I am gabbling."

Zola was not then what he is now, a gracious, kindly man in the habit of receiving every one who chooses to call on him, and answering all sorts of questions. He was then the iconoclast, the idol-breaker, a bear that cursed the universe, and bade all comers begone. All the same his writings exhaled a certain large-heartedness and sympathy, and I had always felt while reading his weekly article in The Voltaire that we were intended to understand each other. I had imagined that when I went to see him he would come forward, his hands extended in benevolent gesture, taking me at once into his confidence. This Buddha lying on the sofa, fixing his glasses from time to time on his short, strangely square-cut nose, was in such strange conflict with my dream that I could hardly believe that this could be my Zola in those terrible moments during which I tried to improvise compliments. Not one had produced the faintest impression, no more than water flowing over a block of granite, and feverishly I sought for a subject of conversation, something, no matter what, that might interest him.

The power that the circulating libraries exercised on literature occupied my mind a good deal at that time, and I hurried to the subject, seizing the first transitional phrase.

"The position of the novelist in England is that of a slave," I said, "for books are not bought in England, but hired."

"But if a man writes a book that interests the public, the public will find it."

"The public will find it in time no doubt," I answered, "but the man may starve in the interval."

"Yes, he may; and your difficulty is no small one, a middle-man always between you and your public."

"Ah, he's beginning to see I'm not such a fool after all," I said to myself, and as soon as I had explained the power that their monopoly gave to Mudie and Smith I deflected the conversation dexterously from the practical to the moral question, dropping some disparaging remarks about Puritanism as an artistic influence. Zola, who had been waking for some time out of his slumber, was now wholly awake.

"What you say," the great man said, "is extremely interesting. I have written an article on the influence of Protestantism on art; it will appear in to-morrow's Figaro, and I make this statement, that Protestantism has never produced great art. Milton is the one Protestant writer. The Elizabethans, Shakespeare, and Jonson lived before Protestantism had taken hold of the national spirit, the genius of the nation, and so on."

The conversation then became friendly and pleasant. Zola asked me about George Eliot; which did I think was her best book? What French writer was she most like? Though I felt I was risking my newly- acquired reputation, I had to admit that I could think of no one to compare her with. The conversation paused a moment, and to my surprise and pleasure Zola began to tell me about the novel he was writing. We must have talked for three- quarters of an hour, and then, fearing to outstay my welcome, I bade the master good-bye. He took me downstairs, vivacious all the time, and asked me to come to see him again. Then I knew I had made a friend. "I have made a friend," I repeated to myself as the carriage rolled through the flat, green French country, my eyes noting the mystery of the long low horizon, the poplars pointing to the first stars. A train shrieked across the solitude. "I have made a friend," I repeated to myself as I listened to the distant rattle, and as the rattle died away in faint echoes, absorbed one by one in the dusky night of the long low plain I said: "Yes, he is the very man I had imagined from reading his articles. A clear, well-balanced mind, a sympathetic nature, passionate in his convictions, loyal to his opinions. A little roughness at first; possibly what I mistook for roughness was mere shyness; besides it cannot be amusing to be told to your face that you are a great writer. I shouldn't like it myself."

Years passed. I had written many books. A Mummer's Wife had been translated into French; it had been published in The Voltaire and the Vie Populaire. Charpentier was about to issue it in book form, and Zola had promised to write a preface. The Confessions of a Young Man was appearing in La Revue Independante, and the report had gone abroad that the next instalment would contain a scathing attack on La Terre. I wrote to Zola saying that this was not true, and proposing to spend Monday with him. "On Monday morning you will receive the new number of the Review, and we shall be able to discuss the matter at breakfast. "I knew that the number contained – well, some frivolous remarks about naturalism; these I hoped to be able to explain away. But I did not feel quite at ease, so I called on my way for the faithful Alexis – bulky Alexis's placid temperament would serve as a buffer when the discussion became strained. However happily it might end there could hardly fail to be moments when – I don't think I finished the sentence at the time; I will not seek to do so now.

Our walk lay by the river shimmering like watered silk between green banks full of the lush of June, and beyond them the green French country seemed to rejoice in the sunshine like a living creature. We sauntered, talking about our books, and I took exquisite pleasure in the poplars growing so tall and straight out of the plain, and the white clouds hanging between the trees. And when remembrances of Zola interrupted my reveries I told Alexis exactly what I had written, and the dear fellow assured me that Zola could not take offence at such light criticism.

"Yes, Alexis, but you always say what is agreeable to hear."

As before, Zola was lying on the sofa by the window and after a few words of greeting, he said:

"I'm afraid, my dear friend, that I shall not be able to write the preface. You have made it impossible for me to do so."

The phrases I had used when subjected to a close critical examination proved more difficult of explanation than I had anticipated. The discussion was painful, and the breakfast bell was a welcome relief. "It's over at last," I said to myself; but to my horror instead of answering my thought the master said:

"We are going down to breakfast now, but after breakfast we will go into the matter thoroughly; I will read the passages aloud to you."

"Good Heavens! "I thought, "I wish I hadn't come."

After breakfast Zola, Alexis, and myself walked in the garden talking of indifferent things for an hour or more. Then Zola said:

"We will now go upstairs." He led the way, and I followed, feeling very much as I used to feel at school when ordered a flogging. The master lay on the sofa; I took a small chair; he said: "You'll be more comfortable in a larger one."

The passages were already marked, and they were read to me in a low and deliberate voice. I listened, thinking what was the best defence to set up; Zola commented on every fresh sarcasm.

"How can I write your preface after that? I want to, you know, but I ask you how can I? Listen!"

"Don't you see, my dear friend, that that book is not my real opinion about life and things, but rather an attempt to reduce to words the fugitive imaginings of my mind, its intimate workings, its shifting colours? Has it never come to you to think differently about things? To find your mind in a ferment of contradiction? "

"No," he said, "I do not change my opinions easily. There is Alexis" (he was indeed there, round as a barrel with the inevitable cigar between his teeth); "I have known Alexis these five and twenty years, and I think of him to-day exactly as I always thought of him. With me an opinion is like a heavy piece of furniture; it is moved with difficulty."

"But," I said, "the passages you have just read are from a chapter entitled 'La Synthèse de la Nouvelle Athènes '... and must be taken as an expression of the opinions of the various ratés who assemble there."

"I will admit that as a legitimate defence, but you see the opinions expressed in the café coincide exactly with those which you express yourself in an earlier part of the book."

I had to fall back on the original defence, that a man changes, contradictory thinking should not be taken for the opinions which he holds by and abides by.

"How often do we hear Christians make jokes against Christianity?" I thought the argument specious, but Zola did not notice it. He continued reading: "After what you have written about Goncourt," he said, "you never can go to his house again."

"I don't want to; he isn't a friend."

"The disciples, the childish vanity, the bric-à-brac, even the accusation of making copy out of his brother's corpse, tout est là, rien ne manque. What you say of me is nothing compared with what you say of Goncourt." I hastened to concur in this opinion, but Zola was not to be wheedled. "No, my dear friend," he said gravely and sadly, "you don't call your book Mémoires d'un Jeune Anglais you say Confessions d'un Jeune Anglais, and when we use the word Confessions we mean that at last we are going to tell the truth. I have gone through these pages calling attention to the expressions used, not because I am angry, but because I want to convince you that you have made it impossible for me to write the preface to your Mummer's Wife. What you think of me does not affect me, no, I won't say that; we are old friends. What you say about me does affect me, I mean that nothing that you can say can affect my position.... You admit in your book that you owe your first inspiration to me. I am proud that this is so, and thank you for saying it. I am sorry you have changed your opinions; after all it is the eternal law – children devour their fathers. I make no complaint. Nature has willed it so."

He spoke these words sadly as he walked across the room. The twilight was gathering, the great furniture loomed up like shadows. There were tears in my eyes. Never did I feel so distinct a sensation of my inferiority; the man was great in his simplicity. "The man is greater than his books," I said to myself, "and that is a great deal, for he has written some very fine books."

I have told the story of these two meetings with some levity, but I was deeply moved at the time, and I am troubled even now, for is it always right to wear one's heart on one's sleeve, and to publish one's opinions as they come up in one's mind? Or is it better to look upon one's opinions as heavy pieces of furniture that are moved with difficulty. Alexis had devoted months to the correction of the translation that Charpentier was about to issue, and looked to Zola's preface to recoup himself for the labour he had spent upon the book, and a few casual words of mine had wrecked these hopes. He did not reproach me with having cost him some monetary losses; he merely said, "C'est Charpentier que va boire un bouillon. Mille francs de corrections." The grey- green country stretched out before us, flat and dim – a dark mass of trees in front of us, a poplar striking out of the long plain. Alexis lectured me as we walked through the solitary country, but I did not listen. All the while I thought of Zola's last words as he bade me good-bye. "I hope you understand that our personal relations are the same as they always were, only you have made it impossible for me to write the preface."

At this time Zola was a fat man; soon after he became a thin one. By abstaining from drink at his meals he reduced his weight thirty-six French pounds in two months. He seems to have accepted Balzac's maxim, that the elegance of life exists mainly in the waist. As his waist narrowed his manner of life became more expansive. No longer is he the recluse of Mèdan; he has added a tower to his country house – with what intention I never fully understood – and he lives in a spacious mansion in the Rue de Bruxelles, which he has furnished with oak carvings, tapestries, portraits of archbishops and wrought- iron railings. A plaster cast of the Venus de Milo stands on the balustrade that encircles the staircase. The house seems to reveal a large coarse mind, a sort of coarsely woven net through whose meshes all live things escape, and that brings to shore only a quantity of débris. "From the Rue de Lafayette," I said. Why should he consider it incumbent upon him to collect these things? Great artists need not be learned in bric-à-brac. Manet lived all his life amid red plush furniture; and I am not sure that I should have spoken of Zola's furniture (has it not been described by reporters and reproduced in photography in every illustrated periodical?) if it had not been that with the acquisition of a waist and much general bric-à-brac a definite mental change has come upon Zola. I once heard him say he was going to give a ball. I don't think he ever carried the project into execution. However this may be, his house has, for the last three years, been open to visitors, and he has answered the ten thousand heterogeneous questions that the eleven hundred and fifty-seven interviewers have put to him with unfailing urbanity, and I am bound to admit, with extraordinary common-sense.

His mind is not as intense or penetrating as Tourguèneff's, but it looks with admirable lucidity over a wide surface, and he can answer the most foolish questions reasonably. An elderly lady's applecart has been upset in the Place Cliche, and a reporter calls on Zola for his opinion. He says that he has no precise information on the subject of apples, but he believes that apple-growing is a very large industry in the north of France. If the apple sellers of Montmartre are prevented from exposing their wares for sale, the liberty of the individual is called into question, and a very large and important industry is possibly affected. At the same time the streets cannot – and so on. But even these platitudes he will relieve with some touch of rare common-sense. This touch I have left out, it is the incommunicable secret of his genius. But if any reader of this article should desire to hear Zola talk, I will recommend him to a book called Enquête Litteraire by Jules Huret. Huret's interview with Zola is an astonishing piece of literature. In this interview we perceive, as we should in a long intercourse with Zola himself, that his genius is but the triumph and apotheosis of common-sense. For his genius is wingless, it never rises towards the stars; it maintains itself at what I may term the level of superior mediocrity, and it is with him always, on small as on great occasions. Take his answer to an interviewer who called on him at the Savoy Hotel. Zola had arrived late the night before, and had only just got out of bed. The question was: "What are your impressions of London?" The answer was: "My first impression of London was an excellent appetite. The train was late, and we didn't dine until nine o'clock, but we dined excellently well." Is it possible to answer a foolish question more sensibly?

I said just now that Zola's vision of life was not so intense, penetrating, or subtle as Tourguèneff's. It is radically different. Zola's mind is patriarchal; he is an old-world hero, a patriarch belated in the nineteenth century. Not Abraham himself encamped amid his flocks, herds, and a numerous servitude saw or thought more simply than he does. There are hackney carriages, washerwomen, and châssepots in the Rougon Macquart series, but these are merely adventitious attractions which affect in no way the general character of the work. Hugo is said to be the last of the old-world poets; but the real difference between Zola and Hugo is that one can, and the other cannot, write verse. Take from Hugo his genius of versification and you would get the novelist. He would have produced a set of novels very similar to the Rougon Macquart series. It would have been in twenty volumes, possibly in more, and would have sold as largely. Robbed of his versification, Hugo would have accepted the hackney carriages and the washerwomen. He could not have done otherwise, and both men saw life from the outside, and their tendency was to exaggerate the outside. All the same the hypothetical work would have differed from the Rougon Macquart. Hugo was more naturally an artist than Zola. His imagination was rarer, but it was not more powerful nor more fecund. Zola's imagination is one of the most extraordinary that ever found expression in literature. Think, you who have read the twenty volumes, of the hundreds of places he has shown you and familiarised you with, even as you are familiar with the room you live in. Can you not see incestuous Renée dreaming in her yellow boudoir, or feverishly flung on the skins under the malign shade of tropical plants in the great conservatory? Are not the market-places in your mind – the roofs for ever silhouetting against the pale sky? The smell of the fish and the hundred colours of the fish; the vaults where the children roll amid the feathers? And the scene where they chop the pigeons' heads, disputing how many so-and- so can bleed in an hour? And how intimately conscious we are of the great garden of the Paradou and the adorable death of Albine, who dies asphyxiated by the flowers with which she has filled the room; the enumeration of the flowers, the evocation of an orchestra of scents, for every scent recalls the sound of an instrument, and the last phrase "Albine dies in a supreme hiccup of flowers "-- how wonderful!

And the modes of life, the trees, the various ways in which the human animal gains his livelihood! Do we not all remember the gold chain-makers in L'Assommoir and the vestment makers in Le Rêve? In Au Bonheur des Dames the work of every employé is explained; the phenomena of each passing hour is revealed to us. Germinal is full of every detail of miner life, the ropes, the pulleys, the furnaces, the trucks, the horses. But I must stay my pen or this article will degenerate into a mere catalogue.

But has Zola furnished these extraordinary evocations of the externals of human life with human souls? Has he created characters that will not suffer by comparison with Balzac's? Zola's evocation of souls is slight, nearly always fragmentary and shadowy. A soul haunts in Gervaise, and Coupeau, too, has a soul, and through the numberless pages a few shades flit vaguely recognisable as human souls. That is all. In the line of souls Gervaise is his greatest achievement, and that is why I place L'Assommoir above all his other books. There are other reasons. When he wrote L'Assommoir Zola was more than he ever was before, and certainly more than he ever was since, a pupil of Flaubert. The book is written entirely in Flaubert's manner, the short sentences relieved by the pictorial epithet. The old masters thought that originality was found in individual feeling and seeing rather than in mannerism, and as I share their opinion I think that it is regrettable that Zola did not continue to write in the style in which he produced his finest book. But the style became too laborious for him just as pre-Raphaelitism became too laborious for Sir John Millais, and after L'Assommoir his style became looser, and with every fresh book he seems more and more inclined to abandon himself to the ease of redundant expression. There are fine pages even in his worst books, but so far as my personal taste and interest are engaged in his work I would choose to have revised editions of his early works rather than the new novels he contemplates writing – Lourdes, Paris, Rome, etc.

Revised editions of Zola's works! How easily one drops into talking nonsense. His method of novel-writing does not admit of revision. As well might we ask the editor of a daily paper for concentration of expression in leading articles, dramatic notes, and reports of boat races. During the last ten or a dozen years a striking resemblance has grown up between the Zola novel and the popular newspaper. The novel and the newspaper seem to me to stand on the same footing; the intention of both is the same, and the means employed are the same. It is true that Zola's reports on the Franco-German war are better done than the reports of the war correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. It is also true that the scenery at the "Lyceum" is better painted than the scenery at the "Surrey," but that is hardly a reason for confusing a set taken from Much Ado about Nothing with the pictures of Turner, Constable, and Wilson, and we find a like difference between the battle pieces in War and Peace and those in La Débâcle – a difference not of degree but a difference of kind. Zola's novel is practically the daily paper. He has discovered a formula that suits the average man as well as the Daily Telegraph or the Petit Journal, and he chooses his subjects, not in obedience to an artistic instinct, but in accordance with public taste. Three hundred thousand pilgrims go to Lourdes yearly. Every pilgrim is a certain reader, and the afflicted in all countries are interested in the question. Between belief and unbelief he will steer a middle course just as he steered a middle course between France and Prussia. I heard him boast, without ever perceiving the enormous artistic significance of what he was saying, that he had written a French novel on the war without giving Prussia cause for offence. I take it that the sublime impartiality of the true artist is very different from the mock impartiality of the journalist who wants to get up a controversy. The true artist sees life as God sees it, without prejudice; life is for him – I think the phrase is Flaubert's – une hallucination à transporter.

Zola told me that he had gone into calculation, and allowing for a fortnight's holidays at Christmas, Lourdes would take him seven months to write. Five hundred pages in seven months! Tolstoy took six years to write Anna Karenina, ten to write War and Peace; Flaubert took seventeen years to write La Tentation de St Antoine, eight or nine to write L'Education Sentimentale; and seven or eight translators are already at work on Lourdes; it will appear in the New York Herald, and Mr Bennet has paid a thousand pounds for the serial rights. But adequate information regarding the various forms and languages in which this book will appear would be the subject of an article on bibliography. Suffice it to say here that it will bring Zola something like four thousand pounds before it reaches Charpentier in book form; it will then be read by everybody except men of letters – but their number is so small that the abstention will not materially affect the sale. If the book does not sell three hundred thousand copies it is a failure, and if the book on the Russian Alliance which will follow does not sell half a million it will be a failure. Did any great writer ever see literature from this point of view before?

The idea of conquest seems inherent in Zola. Five and twenty years ago he wrote a book called Le Conquête de Plassans. The idea of conquest cropped up again in L'Oeuvre, and this time it was Paris that was conquered. And now it seems that Zola meditates the conquest of the world. He came to England at the head of an army of journalists; rockets were let off at the Crystal Palace, and trumpets were blown in his honour at the Mansion House. He will probably proceed on a similar mission to St Petersburg (it has already been spoken of); he may even visit America. Why not? There are sixty millions in the United States, who through the medium of translation, may read the Rougon Macquart! The newspapers reported that Madame Zola, astonished at the length of our London suburbs, said: "This is a town that would suit you, Emile." Every house represented to her a possible sale of a novel, Charpentier edition, three francs fifty. If Zola were told that a concierge had not heard his name he would feel discouraged. An enquiry would be set on foot, and if a concierge's guild could be discovered he would arrange to address a meeting. He looks upon all men who do not read his novels as lost. Lost to what? Ah, that I cannot say; not to art, for the quality of his writing does not seem to concern him any more than the quality of the things he buys. The carved woodwork and the iron railings may not be finely wrought, but they photograph all right, and every interviewer is received and every sightseer – Chinese, Peruvians, Esquimaux – all and sundry are granted audience, and the afternoon passes in talking of how books may be best put on the market.

Some translation of his works must appear in every dialect, and to discover one not yet reduced to written characters, and to arrange that the first work printed in it should be a translation of the Rougon Macquart series would be fame indeed. M. Bruneau comes in with the score of the music he has just written for one of the novels, and the gentleman from Paraguay jumps up and proposes to do the opera into the language spoken in his country; the Thibetian might do the same. Bruneau and Zola put their heads together. Hurrah! another outlet has been discovered, and the terms of the contract are discussed. Only the other day in an article on the lyrical drama, after coupling Wagner and Bruneau together, Zola explained that he would create a lyrical drama with human characters; and when he has done this "the colossal Wagner will grow pale on the high pedestal of his symbols." Zola believes that young French composers have not written great music because their libretti are not sufficiently human. In a word, he imagines himself writing various libretti to which the young French composers will add a little music as cream is added to méringues. Well, if a man will talk on all subjects. the time will come when he will talk nonsense. I am afraid that time has come for Zola!

I The desire of gold for its own sake is comprehensible in a way; but Zola has no love of money, he has squandered all he made on vulgar decoration and absurd architecture. The pleasures of life bore him exceedingly, so he says; but I am afraid that he has not acquainted himself with them. Of the pleasures of Art he is equally ignorant. His youth was beset with difficulties sufficient, be it admitted to his credit, to conquer all but the most resolute. He wrote for four hours every morning at a novel, and every afternoon he wrote an article for a newspaper, and those who have felt the pressure of a weekly article, while engaged on a work of the imagination, will appreciate the severity of the ordeal that Zola bore for many years unflinchingly. He had little time for reflection or study, and was only able to catch the few ideas abroad in his day as they passed him. He read his contemporaries, Flaubert, Goncourt, Daudet, and to obtain a platform whence he might preach his doctrine he read Balzac and Hugo; but with the heart of French literature, with Montaigne, St Simon, and La Bruyère it may be doubted if his knowledge is more than rudimentary. The influence of Manet and Flaubert and Goncourt persuaded him that he was interested in the external world, and we hailed L'Assommoir as a masterpiece, for we wished to group ourselves round some great writer. We hugged the belief that, set free from pecuniary anxieties, he would read, think, travel, and refrain from constant production, giving three or four years to the composition and the writing of each book. We believed that he would cultivate refinement of thought, and refinement of literary expression. But Zola was not naturally an artist. Instead of the books becoming more and more beautiful, they have become larger, looser, and uglier, and they serve no purpose whatsoever, except to find money for the purchase of cock-eyed saints on gold backgrounds.

Alas! the ridiculous towers of Mèdan! Alas! the arrival of translators from Paraguay! Alas! the blowing of trumpets before the Lord Mayor of London in honour of La Terre, La Débâcle, L'Argent, and Docteur Pascal!

And, three times, alas, for are we not now menaced by a novel on Lourdes, on Rome, and on Paris? In these novels he will re-write everything that he has written before. His friends will drop away from him; he will be left alone; his excellent cigars will fail to attract us, and smoking bad ones in the café we shall regret his life and his works, and the mistake we made; and when the café closes we shall stand on the edge of the pavement wondering what the end will be. One of us will say, it will probably be Huysmanns: "In Le Ventre de Paris there is a pork butcher who, after having worked ten hours a day all his life is found dead sitting before a table son nez dans le boudin."

"And you think," I shall say, "that he will just drop from sheer exhaustion over his writing table son nez dans le boudin?"

Huysmanns will not answer, he will remember that Zola is the friend of his life. The little group will separate, and wending my way to my little flat in the Rue de la Tour des Dames, I shall think of Zola as a striking instance of the insanity of common-sense