e. To how many confessions, to how many suicides has it led? Of
how many reformed lives has it been the mainspring? The great
lecturer, John B. Gough, used to tell a story of a railway employee
whose mind was overthrown by his disastrous error in misplacing a
switch, and who spent his days in the mad-house repeating the phrase:
"If I only had, if I only had." His was not an intentional or wilful
dereliction. But in the hearts of how many repentant sinners does
there not echo through life a similar mournful refrain. This lesson
has been taught by Zola in more than one of his romances.

In "A Love Episode" how poignant is this expiation! In all literature
there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene
Grandjean. Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type. The old
"neurosis," seen in earlier branches of the family, reappears in these
characters. Readers of the series will know where it began. Poor
little Jeanne, most pathetic of creations, is a study in abnormal
jealousy, a jealousy which seems to be clairvoyant, full of
supernatural intuitions, turning everything to suspicion, a jealousy
which blights and kills. Could the memory of those weeks of anguish
fade from Helene's soul? This dying of a broken heart is not merely
the figment of a poet's fancy. It has happened in real life. The
coming of death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly
always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive. Parents
know what it is to sit with bated breath and despairing heart beside
the bed of a sinking child. Seconds seem hours, and hours weeks. The
impotency to succour, the powerlessness to save, the dumb despair, the
overwhelming grief, all these are sorrowful realities. How vividly are
they pictured by Zola. And, added to this keenness of grief in the
case of Helene Grandjean, was the sense that her fault had contributed
to the illness of her daughter. Each sigh of pain was a reproach. The
pallid and ever-paling cheek was a whip of scorpions, lashing the
mother's naked soul. Will ethical teachers say that there is no
salutary moral lesson in this vivid picture? To many it seems better
than a cart-load of dull tracts or somnolent homilies. Poor, pathetic
little Jeanne, lying there in the cemetery of Passy--where later was
erected the real tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff, though dead she yet spoke
a lesson of contrition to her mother. And though the second marriage
of Helene has been styled an anti-