o all the true hearts that have followed and loved him through
years of mingled blame and praise, hard-earned victory and unmerited
reviling, he is at this hour dearer even than he was before; for he has
now put the seal upon his principles, and to the force of precept has
added that of the most courageous personal example.'

This then is what I wrote immediately after the publication of Zola's
letter 'J'accuse,' basing myself simply on my knowledge of the master's
character, of the passions let loose in France, and of a few matters
connected with the Dreyfus case, then kept secret but now public
property. And had I to write anything of the kind at the present time, I
should, I think, have but few words to alter beyond substituting the past
for the present or future tense. In one respect I was mistaken. I did not
imagine the truth to be quite so near at hand. Since January 1898,
however, nine-tenths of it have been revealed and the rest must now soon
follow. And I hold, as all hold who know the inner workings of l'Affaire
Dreyfus, that M. Zola's exile, like his letter to President Faure and his
repeated trials for libel, has in a large degree contributed to this
victory of truth. For by going into voluntary banishment, he kept not
only his own but also Dreyfus's case 'open,' and thus helped to foil the
last desperate attempts that were being made to prevent the truth from
being discovered.

I should add that in the following pages I deal very slightly with
l'Affaire Dreyfus, on which so many books have already been written.
Indeed, as a rule, I have only touched on those incidents which had any
marked influence on M. Zola during his sojourn in this country.

E. A. V.

MERTON, SURREY.
June 1899.

WITH ZOLA IN ENGLAND

I

ZOLA LEAVES FRANCE

From the latter part of the month of July 1898, down to the end of the
ensuing August, a frequent heading to newspaper telegrams and paragraphs
was the query, 'Where is Zola?' The wildest suppositions concerning the
eminent novelist's whereabouts were indulged in and the most
contradictory reports were circulated. It was on July 18 that M. Zola was
tried by default at Versailles and sentenced to twelve months'
imprisonment on the charge of having libelled, in his letter 'J'accuse,'
the military tribunal which had acquitted Commandant Esterh