pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,
mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their
place in the world's mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond
Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are
irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola's
pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:

No ordinance of man shall override
The settled laws of Nature and of God;
Not written these in pages of a book,
Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
We know not whence they are; but this we know,
That they from all eternity have been,
And shall to all eternity endure.

* There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
Les Baux and Arles.

And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul
and Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside
them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and
Des Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of
Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the
eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love's rise
in the human breast in answer to Nature's promptings.

M. Zola wrote 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' one summer under the trees of
his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother's home
at Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into
his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance
of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower
thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh
his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural
manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics
have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou
is a mere florist's catalogue.

But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer
such a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
For M. Zola avails himself of a poet's license to crow