, and never with less reason. It may be that he accumulated unseemly
details and risky situations too readily; but he was an earnest man with
a definite aim in view, and had formulated for himself a system which
he allowed to work itself out with relentless fatality. The unredeemed
baseness and profligacy of the period with which he had to deal must
also be borne in mind. As to his personal character, it has been fitly
described by M. Anatole France, himself a distinguished novelist.
Zola, said he, "had the candour and sincerity of great souls. He was
profoundly moral. He has depicted vice with a rough and vigorous hand.
His apparent pessimism ill conceals a real optimism, a persistent faith
in the progress of intelligence and justice. In his romances, which
are social studies, he attacks with vigorous hatred an idle, frivolous
society, a base and noxious aristocracy. He combated social evil
wherever he encountered it. His work is comparable only in greatness
with that of Tolstoi. At the two extremities of European thought the
lyre has raised two vast cities. Both are generous and pacific; but
whereas Tolstoi's is the city of resignation, Zola's is the city of
work."

It is still too soon to form an opinion as to the permanent value
of Zola's writings, for posterity has set aside many well-considered
judgments; but their influence has been, and will continue to be, far
reaching. They have opened up new avenues in literature, and have made
possible to others much that was formerly unattainable.

THE ROUGON-MACQUART GENEALOGICAL TREE.

First Generation:

1. ADELAIDE FOUQUE, called AUNT DIDE, born in 1768, married in 1786 to
Rougon, a placid, lubberly gardener; bears him a son in 1787; loses her
husband in 1788; takes in 1789 a lover, Macquart, a smuggler, addicted
to drink and half crazed; bears him a son in 1789, and a daughter in
1791; goes mad, and is sent to the Asylum of Les Tulettes in 1851; dies
there of cerebral congestion in 1873 at 105 years of age. Supplies the
original neurosis.

Second Generation:

2. PIERRE ROUGON, born in 1787, married in 1810 to Felicite Puech, an
intelligent, active and healthy woman; has five children by her; dies
in 1870, on the morrow of Sedan, from cerebral congestion due to
overfeeding. An equilibrious blending of characteristics, the moral
average of his father and mother, resembles them physically. An oil
merchant, afterwards receiver of taxes.

3. ANTOINE MACQUA