hing from
newspapers. This he was able to check by means of the many Paris prints
which he received regularly.

'Here,' he would say, 'this paragraph is taken verbatim from "Le Figaro";
this other appeared in "Le Temps," this other in "Le Siecle,"' and so
forth. And he was not alluding to extracts from editorials, but to
descriptive matter--accounts of demonstrations and ceremonies,
fashionable weddings and other social functions, interviews, and so
forth. The practice upset all his ideas of a foreign correspondent's
duties, which should be to obtain first-hand and not second-hand
information.

In principle this is of course correct, but a correspondent cannot be
everywhere at the same time; and nowadays, moreover, English journalists
in Paris do not enjoy quite the same facilities as formerly. As regards
more particularly the Dreyfus business, the French, with a sensitiveness
that can be understood, have all along deprecated anything in the way of
foreign interference, and the English Pressman of inquiring mind on the
subject has more than once met with a rebuff from those in a position to
give information. Again, the political difficulties between the two
countries of recent years have often placed the Paris correspondents in a
very invidious position.

This brings me to the Fashoda trouble, which arose last autumn while M.
Zola was still in his country retreat. The great novelist's enemies have
often alleged that he was no true Frenchman; but for my part, after
thirty years' intimacy with the French, I would claim for him that his
country counts no better patriot. He is on principle opposed to warfare,
but there is a higher patriotism than that which consists in perpetually
beating the big drum, and that higher patriotism is Zola's.

The Fashoda difficulties troubled him sorely, and directly it seemed
likely that the situation might become serious he told me that it would
be impossible for him to remain in England. The progress of the
negotiations between France and Great Britain was watched with keen
vigilance, and M. Zola was ready to start at the first sign of those
negotiations collapsing. As all his friends were opposed to his return to
France (they had again virtually forbidden it late in September when the
Brisson Ministry finally submitted the case for revision to the Criminal
Chamber of the Cour de Cassation), he would probably have gone to
Belgium, but I doubt whether he would have remained long in that