dle of his
address it cracked harshly and the packed crowd at the end of the court
broke into derisive laughter. He too turned upon the scoffers, but not
as Labori had done before him. He was not on his own ground as the great
advocate had been, and he seemed to search for words that would not
come. The incident, however, seemed to brace him for a while and for a
minute or two he read in a firmer tone, though that pathetic tremor
of the papers he held still went on and sometimes seemed to make it
difficult for him to read.

When at last the tragic farce was over, the foregone conclusion arrived
at and the sentence of fine and imprisonment pronounced, I found Zola
alone at home in a state of profound dejection. "I don't pity myself,"
he said. "I am not to be pitied but this poor France, ce pauvre France."
He returned to the words again and again. "I thought," he said, "that
one had only to light the torch of Truth and to throw it into that pit
of darkness to make everything clear, but they have stifled the flame
with lies. It is finished, it is all finished." I ventured to tell him
that I could not and would not believe it, that the verdict of the Court
of Cassation was the merest nothing in comparison with the verdict of
the world which he had beyond doubt secured. France would come to reason
yet. He refused to be cheered, and saying that he was in need of rest,
bade me goodnight dispiritedly and went to bed. Now that the trial was
over I had no further business to detain me in Paris, but I saw him by
appointment next day before I left for London. He was in full fighting
trim again. "We shall do something yet," he said; "despair wins no
battles and there are still honest men in France." I made a farewell
call on Maitre Labori and found him so husky that he could barely
speak, but he poured scorn on the idea that he had worn his voice by the
prodigious effort of that sustained relation. He had been so imprudent
as to drive home in the humid air of a January evening and he had caught
a cold. For his own part he was quite sanguine of ultimate success--not
sanguine only, but assured. "We shall win yet," he prophesied
confidently. "No cause ever failed in the long run which had such an
array of truth behind it." He might well have added that no cause ever
succeeded which had behind it such a battalion of lies and liars as was
ranked upon the other side.

CHAPTER XVI

A Few Letters--J. M. Barrie--George Meredith