en M. Zola, could understand.

However, a visit to a fishmonger's shop had made him acquainted with the
haddock, the kipper, and likewise the humble bloater; and occasionally, I
believe, when his appetite needed a stimulant he turned to the smoked
fish, which seemed so novel to his palate. The cook, of course, was
mightily incensed thereat. For her part, she most certainly would not eat
haddock or kippers for dinner; she had too much self-respect to do such a
thing, so she boiled or roasted a leg of mutton for her own repast and
the maids'. I do not say that she was wrong; and, indeed, M. Zola never
forced people to eat what they did not care for.

But in the same way he wished for something that he himself could eat,
and he was weary of the perpetual joint and the vegetables _a l'eau_. One
day, when in a jocular spirit he was talking to me on this subject, I
told him that we English had a saying to the effect that 'God sent us
food, but the devil invented cooks.'

'You are quite right,' he replied, 'only as a Frenchman I should put it
this way: "God sent us food, but the devil invented English cooks."'

Towards the end of August he again became very dispirited. The 'cause'
did not at that time appear to be prospering in France, where so many
people remained under the spell of the deceptive declarations and
documents which had been made public in the Chamber of Deputies by War
Minister Cavaignac early in July.

Of course the Revisionists were still hard at work, but in the face of M.
Cavaignac's speech, placarded throughout the 36,000 townships of France,
they seemed to have a very uphill task before them. The anti-Dreyfusites
on their side were more arrogant than ever, and although M. Zola never
once lost faith in the justice of his cause and its ultimate triumph, he
did, on more than one occasion, question whether that triumph would come
in a peaceful way.

Felix Faure was then still President of the Republic, and I am abusing, I
think, no confidence in saying that M. Zola regarded that vain, showy man
as one of the great obstacles to the victory of truth and justice. Faure,
he said to me, had undoubtedly at one time enjoyed well-deserved
popularity; he, Zola, had been received by him and in the most cordial
manner. But the President's intercourse with crowned heads, and his
intimacy with arrogant general officers, coupled with all the flummery of
the Protocole, all the pomp and display observed whenever he stirr