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Updated: May 18, 2025
Daudet, fortunately for his reputation, was a naturalist sui generis, with a delicate artistic perception altogether lacking to the author of the Rougon-Macquart series. He was also an independent, but willing to take lessons in his trade. And how much he learnt from Cousin Bette may be judged by his Numa Roumestan and Froment Jeune et Rissler aine.
Zola listened, continued to write, and in the last volume he gave a genealogical tree of the family of Rougon-Macquart, with such a serenity as if no one ever doubted his theory. At any rate, this tree has one advantage. It is so pretentious, so ridiculous that it takes away from the theory the seriousness which it would have given to less individual minds.
Zola, in his essay on "The Experimental Novel," states that the proper function of setting is to exhibit "the environment which determines and completes the man"; and the philosophic study of environment reacting upon character is one of the main features of his own monumental series of novels devoted to the Rougon-Macquart family.
'LA FAUTE DE L'ABBE MOURET' was, with respect to the date of publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series; but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking, it occupies the ninth place.
A civilized man feels himself a little more free from his family. The curse of Rougon-Macquart is as heathen and superstitious as the curse of Ravenswood; only not so well written. But in this twilight barbaric sense the feeling of a racial fate is not irrational, and may be allowed like a hundred other half emotions that make life whole.
He was the first to import into the Rougon-Macquart stock a fat face with regular features, which showed all the coldness of a grave yet not over-intelligent nature. This boy grew up with the determination of some day making an independent position for himself. He attended school diligently, and tortured his dull brain to force a little arithmetic and spelling into it.
The name Rougon-Macquart has to me always suggested that splendid and amusing type of the cynical rogue, Robert Macaire. But, of course, both Rougon and Macquart are genuine French names and not inventions. Indeed, several years ago I came by chance upon them both, in an old French deed which I was examining at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
This has been made into a kind of pseudo- scientific doctrine by M. Zola, in the long series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. Hawthorne treated it with a more delicate and a serener art in "The House of the Seven Gables." It is curious to mark Hawthorne's attempts to break away from himself from the man that heredity, and circumstance, and the divine gift of genius had made him.
Since then M. Zola has written "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." Critics have repeated ad nauseam that these last works constitute a new departure on M. Zola's part, and, so far as they formed a new series, this is true. But the suggestion that he has in any way repented of the Rougon-Macquart novels is ridiculous.
Now I think that every one will accept my excuses, and will acquit me of plagiarism. I see the Rougon-Macquart series, each volume presented to him by the author, Goncourt, Huysmans, Duranty, Ceard, Maupassant, Hennique, etc.; in a word, the works of those with whom I grew up, those who tied my first literary pinafore round my neck.
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