, when the revision proceedings began, when
M. Brisson fell from office, when M. Dupuy, listening to the clamour of a
pack of jackals, transferred the revision inquiry from the Criminal
Chamber to the entire Court of Cassation, I thought that it might really
be advisable for him to speak out. But, anxious though he was, disgusted,
indignant, too, at times, he would do nothing to add fuel to the flame.
Passions were roused to a high enough pitch already, and he had no desire
to inflame them more.

Besides the cause was in very good hands; Clemenceau and Vaughan, Yves
Guyot and Reinach, Jaures and Gerault-Richard, Pressense, Cornely, and
scores of others were fighting admirably in the Press, and his
intervention was not required. Many a man circumstanced as M. Zola was
would have rushed into print for the mere sake of notoriety, but he
condemned himself to silence, stifling the words which rose from his
throbbing heart. And, after all, was not that course more worthy, more
dignified?

Thus I could only return one answer to the newspaper men who wrote to me
or called at my house. Late in autumn there was an average of three
applications a week. One or two gentlemen, I believe, imagined that M.
Zola was staying very near me, and, failing to learn anything at my
place, they tried to question one or two tradesmen in the neighbourhood.
One of these, a grocer, became so irate at the frequent inquiries as to
whether a Frenchman, who wrote books and had a grey beard, and wore
glasses, was not staying in the vicinity, that he ended by receiving the
reporters with far more energy than politeness, not only ordering them
out of his shop at the double quick, but pursuing them with his
vituperative eloquence. 'Taking one consideration with another, a
reporter's lot, at times, is not a happy one.'

A climax was reached when one gentleman, after communicating with M. Zola
by letter through various channels and receiving no answer from him,
ascertained my address and called there. As servants are not always to be
depended upon, we had made it virtually a rule at home that whenever a
stranger was seen at the front door my wife herself should, if possible,
answer it. And she did so in the instance I am referring to.

Well, the gentleman first asked for me, and on learning that I was
absent, he explained that he was a friend, a private friend of M. Zola,
whom he wished to see on an important private matter. Could she, my wife,
oblige him