hing. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an
ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three
years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of
literature and of public interest in literature took place. Thus, M.
Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made
many another man recoil. "The Fortune of the Rougons," and two or three
subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree
of attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of
"L'Assommoir" that he awoke, like Byron, to find himself famous.

As previously mentioned, the Rougon-Macquart series forms twenty
volumes. The last of these, "Dr. Pascal," appeared in 1893. Since
then M. Zola has written "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." Critics have
repeated _ad nauseam_ that these last works constitute a new departure
on M. Zola's part, and, so far as they formed a new series, this
is true. But the suggestion that he has in any way repented of the
Rougon-Macquart novels is ridiculous. As he has often told me of recent
years, it is, as far as possible, his plan to subordinate his style and
methods to his subject. To have written a book like "Rome," so largely
devoted to the ambitions of the Papal See, in the same way as he had
written books dealing with the drunkenness or other vices of Paris,
would have been the climax of absurdity.

Yet the publication of "Rome," was the signal for a general outcry on
the part of English and American reviewers that Zolaism, as typified by
the Rougon-Macquart series, was altogether a thing of the past. To my
thinking this is a profound error. M. Zola has always remained faithful
to himself. The only difference that I perceive between his latest
work, "Paris," and certain Rougon-Macquart volumes, is that with time,
experience and assiduity, his genius has expanded and ripened, and that
the hesitation, the groping for truth, so to say, which may be found in
some of his earlier writings, has disappeared.

At the time when "The Fortune of the Rougons" was first published, none
but the author himself can have imagined that the foundation-stone of
one of the great literary monuments of the century had just been laid.
From the "story" point of view the book is one of M. Zola's very best,
although its construction--particularly as regards the long interlude of
the idyll of Miette and Silvere--is far from being perfect. Such a work
when first issued mi