loyer,[*] the late M. Fernand Xau, Editor of
the Paris "Journal," they thought "La Confession de Claude" a trifle
stiff, and objected to their clerks writing books in time which they
considered theirs, as they paid for it.

[*] He sent me to Hamburg for ten days in 1892 to report on
the appalling outbreak of cholera in that city, with the
emoluments of ten pounds a day, besides printing several
articles from my pen on Parisian topics.--E. V.

Zola, cast, so to say, adrift, with "Les Contes a Ninon" and "La
Confession de Claude" as scant literary baggage, buckled to, and set
about "Les Mysteres de Marseille" and "Therese Raquin," while at the
same time contributing art criticisms to the "Evenement"--a series of
articles which raised such a storm that painters and sculptors were in
the habit of purchasing copies of the paper and tearing it up in the
faces of Zola and De Villemessant, the owner, whenever they chanced to
meet them. Nevertheless it was these articles that first drew attention
to Manet, who had hitherto been regarded as a painter of no account, and
many of whose pictures now hang in the Luxembourg Gallery.

"Therese Raquin" originally came out under the title of "A Love Story"
in a paper called the "Artiste," edited by that famous art critic and
courtier of the Second Empire, Arsene Houssaye, author of "Les Grandes
Dames," as well as of those charming volumes "Hommes et Femmes du 18eme
Siecle," and many other works.

Zola received no more than twenty-four pounds for the serial rights of
the novel, and he consented at the insistence of the Editor, who pointed
out to him that the periodical was read by the Empress Eugenie, to draw
his pen through certain passages, which were reinstated when the story
was published in volume form. I may say here that in this translation,
I have adopted the views of the late M. Arsene Houssaye; and, if I have
allowed the appalling description of the Paris Morgue to stand, it is,
first of all, because it constitutes a very important factor in the
story; and moreover, it is so graphic, so true to life, as I have seen
the place myself, times out of number, that notwithstanding its horror,
it really would be a loss to pass it over.

Well, "Therese Raquin" having appeared as "A Love Story" in the
"Artiste," was then published as a book, in 1867, by that same Lacroix
as had issued Zola's preceding efforts in novel writing. I was living
in Paris at the time, and