sused the power they held, who sacrificed the national interests, who
trampled truth and justice under foot, and rendered their country an
object of amazement, distrust, and ridicule throughout the length and
breadth of Europe (Russia not excepted) will be censured and condemned in
no uncertain voice by the France of to-morrow.

But I am forgetting the prefects and sub-prefects. I mentioned them
partly because M. Zola himself might have been one of them. It is not
generally known, I believe, that at the time of the Franco-German war he
in some degree assisted one of the sub-prefects in the discharge of his
duties, and (had he only so chosen) might even have become a sub-prefect
himself. He had been an opposition, a Republican journalist, before the
fall of the Empire, and M. Gambetta, during his virtual dictatorship
throughout the latter part of the Franco-German war, was very fond of
appointing journalists of that description to office, both in the army
and the Civil Service. M. Zola, then, might have become a sub-prefect to
begin with; and, later, a full-blown prefect. Picture him in a cocked hat
and a uniform bedizened with gold lace, and with a slender sword dangling
by his side. That, at all events, was how sub-prefects and prefects used
to array themselves when 'in the exercise of their functions.'

I doubt of M. Zola would ever have made a good functionary. His character
is too independent, and in all likelihood he would have resigned the very
first time that he happened to have 'a few words' with his Minister. But
politics having caught him in their grasp he would doubtless (like the
few functionaries of independent views who throw up their posts in
France) have next come forward as a candidate for the Chamber or the
Senate. And then--why not? He might have been an Under-Secretary of
State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic. True, as
he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators
are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and
fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart)
twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy,
and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure
possessed were infinitesimal. And so the idea of Emile Zola, President of
the Republic, may not be so far-fetched after all, particularly when one
remembers Zola's great powers of observation, analysis, and foresigh