stant quarrels now arose between the
two sisters as to the division of their father's property, and in
the end Francoise was murdered by her sister. Macquart, tired of the
struggle, decided to rejoin the army, which he did immediately after the
outbreak of war.

The interest of the book is, however, largely connected with the history
of the Fouans, a family of peasants, the senior member of which, having
grown old, divided his land among his three children. The intense and
brutish rapacity of these peasants, their utter lack of any feeling
of morality or duty, their perfect selfishness, not stopping short of
parricide, form a picture of horror unequalled in fiction. It is only to
be regretted that the author, in leaving nothing to the imagination, has
produced a work suitable only for the serious student of sociology.

La Debacle.

In the earlier volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series Zola had dealt with
every phase of life under the Second Empire, and in this novel he tells
the story of that terrific land-slide which overwhelmed the regime. It
is a story of war, grim and terrible; of a struggle to the death between
two great nations. In it the author has put much of his finest work, and
the result is one of the masterpieces of literature. The hero is Jean
Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (_La Fortune
des Rougon_). After the terrible death of his wife, as told in _La
Terre_, Jean enlisted for the second time in the army, and went through
the campaign up to the battle of Sedan. After the capitulation he was
made prisoner, and in escaping was wounded. When he returned to active
service he took part in crushing the excesses of the Commune in Paris,
and by a strange chance it was his hand that killed his dearest friend,
Maurice Levasseur, who had joined the Communist ranks. _La Debacle_
has been described as "a prose epic of modern war," and vast though the
subject be, it is treated in a manner that is powerful, painful, and
pathetic.

In the preface to the English translation (_The Downfall_. London:
Chatto & Windus) Mr. E. A. Vizetelly quotes from an interview with Zola
regarding his aim in writing the work. A novel, he says, "contains, or
may be made to contain, everything; and it is because that is my creed
that I am a novelist. I have, to my thinking, certain contributions to
make to the thought of the world on certain subjects, and I have chosen
the novel as the best way of communicating