ere even the Emperor has read
many of his books) saw him on one occasion. Then, when M. Yves Guyot
called, he brought with him an English friend who was pledged to secrecy.

A well-known English novelist and art critic, M. Zola's oldest English
friend, and his earliest champion in this country, likewise saw him.
Further, in a friendly capacity he received an English journalist for
whom he has much regard, and who came to see him quite apart from any
journalistic matters. To this list I will add the names of Mr. Andrew
Chatto and Mr. Percy Spalding of Messrs. Chatto and Windus, and Mr.
George P. Brett, of the Macmillan Company of New York.

Such, then, were M. Zola's visitors and guests--say, apart from the
Warehams, myself and family, less than a score of persons, the total
duration of whose visits added together amounted perhaps to a hundred and
twenty hours spread over many long and trying months.

At times when we chatted together, M. Zola and myself, and mention was
made of his friends--of persons occasionally whom we both knew--he
referred to the many estrangements caused by the divergence of views on
the Dreyfus affair. Friends of twenty and thirty years' standing, men who
had laboured sided by side often in pursuit of the same ideal, had not
only quarrelled and parted but had assailed each other with the greatest
virulence in the Press and at public meetings.

Many whom he himself had regarded as close and sincere friends had
trodden upon all the past and attacked him abominably, as though he were
the veriest scum of the earth. Some in the earlier stages of the affair
had hypocritically feigned sympathy, in order to provoke his confidence,
and had then turned round to hold him up to execration and ridicule. One
or two had behaved so badly that he had refused ever to receive them at
his house again.

He spoke to me of an eminent French _litterateur_ who at the outset of
the agitation on behalf of Dreyfus had immediately promised his help, and
had even prepared articles and appeals on behalf of the prisoner of
Devil's Island. But this _litterateur_ had of recent years been lapsing
into mysticism, and at the behests of the reverend father his confessor,
he had abruptly destroyed what he had written, and gone over to the other
side to wage desperate warfare upon the cause he had promised to help.

The writer in question (one who will probably leave a name in French
literature) was tortured by the everlasting fea