40,000 pounds, besides giving employment to three men for twenty years,
consists of numerous chambers and passages, whose walls are inlaid with
coloured spars, shells, coral, ammonites, and crystals. This work is
ingenious enough, but when one enters a bath-room and finds a stuffed
alligator there, keeping company with a statue of Venus and a terra-cotta
of the infant Hercules, one is apt to remember how perilously near the
ridiculous is to the sublime.

Ridiculous also to some minds may seem the Duchess of York's dog and
monkey cemetery, in which half a hundred of that lady's canine and simian
pets lie buried with headstones to their tombs commemorating their
virtues. This cemetery, however, greatly commended itself to M. Zola,
who, as some may know, is a rare lover of animals. Among the various
distinctions accorded to him in happier times by his compatriots there is
none that he has ever prized more highly than the diploma of honour he
received from the French 'Society for the Protection of Animals,' and I
believe that one of the happiest moments he ever knew was when, as
Government delegate at a meeting of that society, he fastened a gold
medal on the bosom of a blushing little shepherdess, a certain Mlle.
Camelin, of Trionne, in Upper Burgundy, a girl of sixteen, who, at the
peril of her life, had engaged a ravenous wolf in single combat, killed
him, and thereby saved her flock.

And M. Zola's books teem with his love of animals. During his long exile
one of the few requests addressed to him from France, to which he
inclined a favourable ear, was an appeal on behalf of a new journal
devoted to the interests of the animal world. To this he could not refuse
his patronage, and he gave it enthusiastically, well knowing how much
remains to be accomplished in inculcating among the masses such affection
and patience as are rightful with regard to those dumb creatures who
serve man so well.

The Duchess of York's cemetery reminded him of his own. Below his house
at Medan a green islet rises from the Seine. This he purchased some years
ago, and there all his favourites have since been buried: an old horse, a
goat, and several dogs. During his exile a fresh interment took place in
this island cemetery, that of his last canine favourite, the poor
'Chevalier de Perlinpinpin,' who, after vainly fretting for his absent
master, died at last of sheer grief and loneliness. Those only can
understand Emile Zola who have seen him as