fifty, the young ladies eyed him as if he were a genuine
curiosity. A hundred 2 1_2 d. stamps in four days! What could he do with
them? Nobody could tell. When, shortly afterwards, he returned for
another supply of the same kind, the Norwood post-office was convulsed.
And I doubt if even now some of the young ladies have quite got over that
brief but extraordinary run on the so-called 'foreign stamp.'

I hope they do not imagine that M. Zola was hungry, and bought those
stamps to eat.

XIII

WINTER DAYS

The winter was hardly a cold one, but it proved very tempestuous, and
Upper Norwood, standing high as it does, felt the full force of the
gales. Christmas found M. Zola alone; still, this did not particularly
affect him, as Christmas, save as a religious observance, is but little
kept up in France, where festivity and holiday-making are reserved for
the New Year. In M. Zola's rooms the only token of the season was a huge
branch of mistletoe hanging over the chimney-piece. This he had bought
himself, after I had told him of the privileges attached to mistletoe in
England. There were, however, no young ladies to kiss, and, if I remember
rightly, Mme. Zola, who had been absent in Paris, did not return to
Norwood until a day or two before the New Year.

While her husband formed a fairly favourable opinion of England, its
customs and its climate, Mme. Zola, I fear, was scarcely pleased with
this country. At all events, she finally left it vowing that she would
never return. But then for three or four weeks bronchitis and kindred
ailments had kept her absolutely imprisoned in her room--her illness
lasting the longer, perhaps, because she was unwilling to place herself
in the hands of any medical man.

The New Year was but a day or two old, when one of the London morning
newspapers announced with a great show of authority that an application
for the extradition of M. Zola was imminent. Somebody, moreover, informed
the same journal that he had recognised and interviewed M. Zola an
evening or two previously, to which statement was appended a brief
account of some of M. Zola's views. All this amazed me the more as on the
very day mentioned in the newspaper I had been with the master till nine
P.M. and I could hardly believe than anybody had interviewed him after
that hour. Moreover, my wife had since seen him, and he had said nothing
to her of any visit or inte