of Silvere Mouret (_La
Fortune des Rougon_) and Francois Mouret (_La Conquete de Plassans_).
Helene married M. Grandjean, son of a wealthy sugar-refiner of
Marseilles, whose family opposed the marriage on the ground of her
poverty. The marriage was a secret one, and some years of hardship
had followed, when an uncle of M. Grandjean died, leaving his nephew
a substantial income. The couple then moved to Paris with their young
daughter Jeanne, but the day after their arrival Grandjean was seized
with illness from which he died. Helene remained in Paris, though she
had at first no friends there except Abbe Jouve and his half-brother M.
Rambaud. Jeanne had inherited much of the family neurosis, along with
a consumptive tendency derived from her father, and one of her sudden
illnesses caused her mother to make the acquaintance of Doctor Deberle.
An intimacy between the two families followed, which ripened into love
between the doctor and Helene. Events were precipitated by an attempt
on the part of Helene to save Madame Deberle from the consequences of
an indiscretion in arranging an assignation with M. Malignon, with the
result that she was herself seriously compromised in the eyes of Doctor
Deberle and for the first and only time fell from virtue. Jeanne, whose
jealous affection for her mother amounted to mania, was so affected by
the belief that she was not longer the sole object of her mother's love
that she became dangerously ill and died soon afterwards. This bitter
punishment for her brief lapse killed Helene's love for Doctor Deberle,
and two years later she married M. Rambaud. As Mr. Andrew Lang has
observed, Helene was a good and pure woman, upon whom the fate of her
family fell.

In writing the book Zola announced that his intention was to make all
Paris weep, and there is no doubt that, though a study in realism, it
contains much that is truly pathetic. The descriptions of Paris under
varying atmospheric aspects, with which each section of the book closes,
are wholly admirable.

Le Ventre de Paris.

A study of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets
of Paris. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart (_La
Fortune des Rougon_). She has become prosperous, and with prosperity her
selfishness has increased. Her brother-in-law Florent had escaped from
penal servitude in Cayenne and lived for a short time in her house, but
she became tired of his presence and ultimately denounced