ny readers of 'His Masterpiece' will find
Sandoz the most interesting personage in the book. It is needless, I
think, to enter into particulars on the subject. The reader may take
it from me that everything attributed in the following pages to Pierre
Sandoz was done, experienced, felt or said by Emile Zola. In this
respect, then 'His Masterpiece' is virtually M. Zola's 'David
Copperfield'--the book into which he has put most of his real life. I
may also mention, perhaps, that the long walks on the quays of Paris
which in the narrative are attributed to Claude Lantier are really M.
Zola's walks; for, in his youth, when he vainly sought employment
after failing in his examinations, he was wont, at times of great
discouragement, to roam the Paris quays, studying their busy life
and their picturesque vistas, whenever he was not poring over the
second-hand books set out for sale upon their parapets. From a purely
literary standpoint, the pictures of the quays and the Seine to be found
in _L'Oeuvre_ are perhaps the best bits of the book, though it is all
of interest, because it is essentially a _livre vecu_, a work really
'lived' by its author. And if in the majority of its characters, those
readers possessing some real knowledge of French art life find one man's
qualities blended with another's defects, the appearance of a third, and
the habits of a fourth, the whole none the less makes a picture of great
fidelity to life and truth. This is the Parisian art world as it really
was, with nothing improbable or overstrained in the narrative, save its
very first chapter, in which romanticism is certainly allowed full play.

It is quite possible that some readers may not judge Claude Lantier, the
'hero,' very favourably; he is like the dog in the fable who forsakes
the substance for the shadow; but it should be borne in mind that he is
only in part responsible for his actions, for the fatal germ of insanity
has been transmitted to him from his great-grandmother. He is, indeed,
the son of Gervaise, the heroine of _L'Assommoir_ ('The Dram Shop'), by
her lover Lantier. And Gervaise, it may be remembered, was the daughter
of Antoine Macquart (of 'The Fortune of the Rougons' and 'Dr. Pascal'),
the latter being the illegitimate son of Adelaide Fouque, from whom
sprang the insanity of the Rougon-Macquarts. At the same time, whatever
view may be taken of Claude's artistic theories, whatever interest his
ultimate fate may inspire, it cannot