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If Winnebago had taken the trouble to glance at the title of the book she laid face down on the pencil boxes as you entered, it would have learned that the book was one of Balzac's, or, perhaps, Zangwill's, or Zola's. She never could overcome that habit of snatching a chapter here and there during dull moments. She was too tired to read when night came.
Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, find no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write popular stories like Zola's Fecundity or Tolstoy's Resurrection without giving the smallest offence to readers who can also think decently.
On this proposition, combined with a second one, namely, that even as France as a nation will be the first to discard Christianity, so she will be the first to promulgate a new faith based on reason, science and the teachings of life, is founded the whole argument of M. Zola's Trilogy. Having thus dealt with the Trilogy's religious aspects, I would now speak of "Paris," its concluding volume.
A little girl of mine, who found herself face to face with these cats one day in his room, was quite startled by them, and has since expressed the opinion that Sir John Tenniel ought to have seen them before he drew the Cheshire cat for 'Alice in Wonderland. For my own part I can imagine the laughter and the jeers of M. Zola's artistic friends when those choice specimens of British art are shown to them in Paris.
L'Oeuvre is mentioned because its finished style is rather a novelty in Zola's vast vat of writing wherein scraps and fragments of Victor Hugo, of Chateaubriand, of the Goncourts, and of Flaubert boil in terrific confusion. Zola never had the patience, nor the time, nor perhaps the desire to develop an individual style.
Zola's truth answers the exact description of the skeleton in the cupboard; that is, it is something of which a domestic custom forbids the discovery, but which is quite dead, even when it is discovered. Macaulay said that the Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Word for word, I should take Zola's word as to the fact, not because I have the means of affirming him more reliable, but because I have rarely known the observant instinct of poets to fail, and because I believe that every reader will find in himself sufficient witness to the veracity of Zola's characterizations.
At this point I would simply say that M. Zola's interests were, in my estimation, of far more consequence than the claims of public curiosity, however well meant and even flattering its nature. One effect of the Press Association's contradiction was to revive the Norway and Switzerland stories.
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.
There being no "facts," Zola's laborious series is futile; it may be true to art, but it is not true to life. His vision is incomplete, is inexhaustive; it lacks humour, and to the scientific novelist the lack of humour is fatal. He is the one novelist who cannot succeed without it.
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