narrow and stringent bonds of certain forms of Socialism, it was to
the broader and more generous ideas of Charles Fourier that he finally
inclined, striving to adapt them to the needs of a new century. It is
certain that some of his suggestions remained nebulous, that several
were not strictly practical, but it should be remembered that at the
outset of "Les Quatre Évangiles" he had announced that the series would
form a kind of "poem in prose, divided into four chants." It would
be unfair to neglect that statement, for it shows he did not intend
"Fécondité" and "Travail" to be taken as severely practical works. They
partook, as one has said, of a constructive character---as opposed
to Zola's earlier and purely destructive writings--but they were not
intended to be the final plans of an architect or an engineer, or the
ultimate provisions of a new code. They were the roughest of sketches,
so to say, suggestions which here and there might be found useful by
those who might have to solve the problems which they reviewed. And it
must be at least admitted that their tendency was good. In "Fécondité"
it was most healthful; in "Travail" it was most pacific and calming,
Zola's manifest intention being to quiet the angry passions of the
hour, to direct Labour towards peaceable courses in its quest for the
fulfilment of its aspirations.
Such books cannot be judged as one would judge ordinary novels. They
were, to a certain point, drafted in the form of novels in order that
they might reach the great majority; but Zola, with superb disdain,
now cast many of the rules and conventions of novel-writing aside.
After the publication of "Travail," Vizetelly sent him word that the
English translation had been regarded less as a work of fiction than as
a combination of sermon and pamphlet, to which the reviewers and the
public did not seem to take very kindly. Zola replied under date of
May 8, 1901:
"I have never consulted the tastes of the public, and I am
too old nowadays to modify my work in order to please it.
I am writing these books with a certain purpose before me,
a purpose in which the question of form is of secondary
importance. I have no intention of trying to amuse people
or thrill them with excitement. I am merely placing certain
problems before them, and suggesting in some respects certain
solutions, showing what I hold to be wrong and what I think
would be right. When I have finished these 'Évangiles,' when
'Vérité' and 'Justice' are written, it is quite possible that
I shall write shorter and livelier books. Personally I should
have everything to gain by doing so, but for the present I am
fulfilling a duty which the state of my country imposes on
me."
Most of "Travail" was written in 1900, in December of which year it
began to appear in "L'Aurore." In April, 1901, it was published as
a volume.[2] A little later in the same year, the virulence of the
Dreyfus agitation having subsided and public attention being turned to
the Assumptionists and other religious orders, in connection with M.
Waldeck-Rousseau's Association Bill, the director of the Opéra Comique
in Paris thought the moment favourable for the production of a one-act
lyrical drama, entitled "L'Ouragan," the prose libretto of which, set
to music by M. Bruneau, had been written by Zola some years previously.
"L'Ouragan" was not a particularly ambitious work and the moderate
success it achieved was perhaps all that could have been expected for
it.
After the production of that piece Zola began to consider the subject
of his next book, "Vérité," which gave him no little trouble. It
seems likely that when he first planned his series he had thought of
showing in this particular volume that scientific truth, and not the
assertions, delusions, and errors of religious systems, should be
taken as the guiding principle of life. But the Dreyfus case, which
had intruded into a few pages of "Travail," haunted him. He knew that
it had supplied one of the most shocking exhibitions of mendacity that
the world had ever witnessed; and it followed that "Vérité" ought
not merely to inculcate a belief in scientific truth. It also ought
to recall people to the practice of truthfulness in their every-day
life. Thus Zola's subject expanded. He had always intended to show the
evil effects of the training given to children in certain so-called
religious schools, where, according to his view, their minds were
perverted, deprived of all self-reliance by the intrusion of the
supernatural. But the Dreyfus case had shown him there was more than
that. The mendacity so current throughout the period of the Affair had
come almost entirely from men trained by the Roman Church. Moreover
that Church's share in the Affair, its hostility and its intrigues
against the Republic under cover of the anti-Semitic agitation, were
now every day more apparent. Zola had repeatedly declared that he
would write no novel on the Dreyfus case, for he did not wish anybody
to say that he had earned a single _sou_, directly or indirectly,
by the Affair. But it was ever beside him, with its influence, its
revelations, its lessons. And it seemed to him fit that everybody
should understand that in one way and another such turmoil, frenzy,
and mendacity would never have been possible if it had not been for
the Roman Church. The case haunting him more and more, he gradually
yielded to the obsession, resolving, however, to cast the military men
on one side, for after all they had only been agents, in some degree
the victims of their training. In lieu of them he would depict those
whom he regarded as the real culprits. It had been settled that the
book should deal with school life; and it would be easy to adapt a
kind of Dreyfus case to such surroundings. A Jewish schoolmaster might
be substituted for a Jewish officer, while as for the crime which it
would be necessary to impute to him, there had been a terrible affair
at Lille, not long previously, the murder of a little boy, in which a
certain Brother Flamidien--who was spirited away by his colleagues--had
been implicated. Some such brother would represent Esterhazy in Zola's
work, Dreyfus being represented by Simon, the Jewish schoolmaster.
That Zola repeatedly hesitated with respect to this _pastiche_ of the
Dreyfus case is certain. In the summer of 1901 he wrote to Vizetelly
that he was preparing "Vérité," but that none of it would be ready for
several months, for he was still doubtful whether he would introduce
certain elements into the work or not. Finally, as the only means,
perhaps, of relieving his mind, he took the plunge, resolving upon an
adaptation of the Affair on the lines one has indicated. Yet he again
paused more than once, as he mentioned in another letter. That was
written on September 12, when he further stated that he would have
nothing ready until the ensuing month of January, 1902, when he wrote
to Vizetelly:
"Thanks for your good wishes for the New Year, and pray
accept ours for yourself and all your family. I find I shall
not have 'Vérité' ready for publication as a book until next
October, and that the _feuilleton_ will not begin to appear
until the early days of June. As you would like to have a few
chapters in advance, however, I think I may be able to send
the first ones about the end of next month.... I wish you
good health, good work, and am very cordially yours,
"ÉMILE ZOLA."
Again there came delays, perhaps, because for the purposes of his book
Zola was following the campaign against the religious orders.[3] At all
events the proofs of the first four chapters were not sent to Messrs.
Chatto till July 10, on which date the novelist wrote to Vizetelly
that the serial issue would begin in "L'Aurore" on September 10. About
this time, July, Zola had completed the actual writing of the work,
and revised the proofs of Book I, the first forty pages of which were
as good as anything he had ever penned. But as the work proceeded
its hybrid character became manifest. As the Affaire Flamidien had
suggested itself to Zola's mind it would have been better if the
criminal part of the work had been confined to it. The grafting of
the Dreyfus case upon another one led to various difficulties in the
narrative, and the very restraint which Zola imposed upon himself in
his veiled account of the real Affair was prejudicial to the general
effect. In the writer's opinion the best part of the work was that
describing the conflict between the hero Marc and his wife, Geneviève,
the former a free-thinker, the latter a product of Catholic training,
who after forgetting her faith amid her love, remembered it when the
question of training and educating her daughter arose.
In that connection it may be mentioned that while Zola was in England
during the Dreyfus case, he and Vizetelly in their strolls together
discussed such matters more than once. Vizetelly had occasion to
mention incidents well within his knowledge, which showed what serious
trouble sometimes supervened when husband and wife were not of the same
belief. Those conversations were doubtless remembered by Zola while
he was writing "Vérité," in which, however, he described a far more
dramatic and more painful situation than had been sketched to him.
Chats of that kind led to discussions on religion generally. Vizetelly
having mentioned various changes which had come over him in matters
of belief, Zola replied by recounting some of his own experiences.
Baptised a Catholic, he had made his First Communion, and though
it was not true that he had ever been a choir-boy he had walked in
religious processions. But a little later, rejecting now one dogma
and now another, he had gradually freed himself from all such bonds,
merely clinging for a time to such Deism as Voltaire suggested when
he said or wrote: "_Si Dieu n'existait pas il faudrait l'inventer_."
Would Voltaire have used such words, however, if he had lived in the
nineteenth century, the age of science? Zola thought not. For his part,
in religion as in literature and other matters, he had been unable to
tarry long in any half-way house. He had at last largely embraced the
Positivism which acknowledges only that which is manifest, and which
neither accepts nor denies that which is hypothesis only. Zola had
known Littré, Wybouroff, and others, and he had at least met Pierre
Laffitte; but his creed, apparently, had come to him less directly than
indirectly, that is filtered through the philosophy of Taine. For the
rest, as a great admirer of M. Berthelot, he was a fervent believer in
Science. In spite of the many limits to our knowledge nowadays, he held
that Science would some day succeed in solving directly or indirectly
the whole riddle of the universe. Nevertheless, though he could not
believe in the supernatural such as it was expounded by the Christian
churches, he fully understood that many should cling to such beliefs
in their craving for some certainty and consolation. It seemed to
him monstrous, however, that so many grossly superstitious practices
should have been grafted on the elementary principles of Christianity,
and that the Roman Catholic Church should be primarily an engine of
political domination. At the same time he held the opinion that there
was far more broadness of views among Catholics generally than among
Protestants. The latter certainly had one good trait, their minds might
be narrower, their self-righteousness might be almost repulsive, but
their rigidity of principles at least stimulated them to truthfulness,
whereof, said Zola, they had given conspicuous proof during the Dreyfus
case. The French Protestants were only a handful, but they possessed
the courage of their convictions; they had not hesitated to testify to
the truth, whatever risk they ran in doing so.
The reader may think it curious that Zola should have expressed himself
as a Positivist, and yet have harboured sundry petty superstitions,
such as were enumerated in a previous chapter. That contradiction may
well have proceeded from the duality of his nature, to which reference
has been made more than once. However, in the novelist's later years
the writer never observed any particular trace of the curious practices
recorded by Dr. Toulouse. He had at least largely rid himself of them.
The only sign he gave of arithmomania while he was in England was to
count the women's hairpins which he saw littering the streets when he
took his walks abroad; but he did that, he explained, to occupy his
mind when he was alone and because he was struck by the vast number of
hairpins which Englishwomen contrived to lose. Once or twice, too, in
conversation he spoke of his luck, but people often do that without
putting any particular faith in luck. In England he had certainly
relinquished the practice of fingering things or setting them in
particular positions before he left a room, and he gave no sign that
he was haunted by any fear of death. Of that, on the occasions when he
was ill, he spoke quite calmly, though in the spirit of a man who held
that when one died it was for ever. At various times he had given some
attention to spiritualism, but had found no little imposture in it, and
nothing, said he, had convinced him of the survival of the individual
soul.
Throughout the summer of 1902 he remained at Médan, correcting further
proofs of "Vérité," and making a few preparations for "Justice," which
was to have been the last of his "Évangiles." In August he wrote half a
dozen times to Vizetelly respecting the translation of "Vérité" and its
publication in England and America. Such business letters are of little
interest, however, to the general public. It may just be mentioned that
he said on one occasion, "Times are still very hard, but one consoles
oneself by working"; the reference in this case being less to pecuniary
matters than to his position in France generally, for he still remained
under a cloud, as it were, in consequence of his participation in the
Affair. In the early part of September he once more wrote to Vizetelly
about "Vérité," and then came silence. At that moment, however, there
was no occasion for further correspondence. So a few weeks passed,
Vizetelly steadily proceeding with his translation of "Vérité" which
had begun to appear in "Reynolds's Newspaper." But all at once, on
September 29, telegrams from Paris startled the world with the news
that Émile Zola had been found dead in his bedroom and that his wife
had narrowly escaped dying with him. Circulation was also given to an
absurd rumour that the case was one of suicide. On receipt of the news,
Vizetelly, naturally enough, started for Paris.
On the previous day, Sunday, September 28, Zola and his wife had
quitted Médan to take up their autumn and winter quarters at 21 _bis_
Rue de Bruxelles, Paris, of which house they rented the ground and the
first floors, the upper stories being tenanted by other persons, who by
means of a communicating doorway came and went by the staircase of the
adjoining house, in such wise that the Zolas were isolated from those
who dwelt above them. Their chief apartment on the ground floor was a
spacious dining-room, with a verandah whence one looked into a pleasant
garden. Upstairs were two drawing-rooms, two principal bedrooms, a
dressing and bath room, and the novelist's study, and in the winter
all these apartments were warmed by hot air from an apparatus in the
cellars. Naturally that apparatus had not been used during the summer,
and thus the rooms were chilly when the Zolas returned from Médan. A
fire was therefore lighted in their bedroom--with some difficulty, it
would seem, for the chimney did not draw well. This chimney was common
both to the Zolas' bedroom and to some apartments overhead, occupied by
other tenants, one of whom had recently had it swept in its upper part.
The sweeping, it is thought, may have brought down sundry fragments
of brickwork and cement, which remained obstructing the lower part
of the chimney, the Zolas on their side having given no orders for
sweeping it, as, on account of the heating apparatus in the cellars,
it was seldom used by them. In any case, whatever may have been the
exact cause, the chimney was certainly obstructed, and on the evening
of September 28 Madame Zola, observing that the fire burnt very badly,
expressed an intention of having the chimney examined by some workmen
who were engaged on various repairs in the rooms.
She and her husband sat down to dinner that evening about eight
o'clock. They were very hungry and made a hearty meal. Then, at an
early hour, being somewhat tired by their removal from the country to
town, they retired to rest. At that moment Madame Zola observed that
the bedroom fire was smouldering, and asked her husband if he wished
it to be extinguished. He answered that he did not think it necessary,
for it would soon burn out. Then one or the other lowered to within a
few inches of the hearth the sheet-iron _tablier_, a kind of screen
or shutter with which most French fireplaces are provided. They went
to bed and fell asleep, but about three o'clock in the morning Madame
Zola suddenly awoke, experiencing a feeling of great oppression. Her
head was heavy and she was seized with nausea. She managed to get
out of bed for the purpose of going to the adjoining dressing-room,
but was no sooner on her feet than faintness came over her and she
had to cling to the bedstead for support. At last she contrived to
drag herself to the dressing-room, where she was able to breathe more
freely. But the feeling of nausea persisted, and at last came violent
vomiting, which kept her in the dressing-room for three quarters of an
hour. This, however, helped to save her life, and feeling considerably
relieved, she quitted the dressing-room and returned to bed. Her
coming and going had wakened her husband, and after scolding a little
pet dog which slept in the room on an arm-chair, from which it had
climbed upon the bed, Madame Zola, thinking that she heard her husband
complain, turned to him and inquired if he also felt unwell. "It is
curious, but I do," he answered, explaining that his symptoms were akin
to hers. She thereupon suggested that she should summon the servants,
but he replied: "It is not worth while. We are both suffering from
indigestion. It will be nothing, we shall be all right to-morrow."
Then, intending to open a window or go to the dressing-room as his wife
had done, he rose, looked for his slippers, and took a few steps. But
all at once a fainting fit came upon him, and he was too far from the
bedstead to use it as a support. His wife heard him gasp, then fall
upon the floor. She called him, but he did not answer. She wished to go
to his help, but again an oppressive stifling sensation suddenly came
upon her and she was unable to rise or even press the electric bell in
order to summon assistance. By a last despairing effort she managed to
sit up in bed, but immediately fell back again, losing consciousness.
That was all she was able to relate when she was subsequently
questioned; she could remember nothing more.
At eight o'clock in the morning the two workmen who were making repairs
in the house arrived, and Madame Monnier, the doorkeeper, set them
on some quiet little jobs in order that her employers might not be
disturbed. They, the Zolas, usually rose between eight and nine, but
that morning time went by and they gave no sign of life. About nine
o'clock Madame Monnier's husband, one of the two men-servants, knocked
repeatedly at the bedroom door but obtained no answer. He and his wife
then became alarmed, and with the help of one of the workmen burst
the door open. To their horror and amazement they saw Zola lying in
his nightgown on the floor, his feet just touching the rug beside the
bed. One of the party at once opened a window, while Madame Monnier
went to the bed where her mistress was lying unconscious. There was
a second bedstead in the room, a small iron one, and to this some of
the servants carried their master's body, then hurried in search of
a doctor. The first to arrive was Dr. Marc Berman, a practitioner
of Russian origin, who happened to be in a chemist's shop in the
vicinity. He at once examined Zola and found no signs of life, though
the body was still warm. Death had occurred little more than an hour
previously, in all likelihood shortly after eight o'clock. Turning
to Madame Zola, the doctor found her in an extremely weak state, but
some hope of saving her remained, and indeed at the expiration of some
twenty minutes the efforts to revive her to consciousness began to take
effect, though they had to be continued for fully another hour.
Dr. Berman had sent to the chemist's for oxygen, ether, and an
electrical battery; and in the hope that Zola might not be quite
dead every possible effort to stimulate life was made. Artificial
respiration, rhythmical tractoration of the tongue, injections
of ether, frictions, the application of hot-water bottles, the
electrisation of the diaphragm,--all the devices known to medical
science were put into practice and persevered with for three hours by
Dr. Berman and Drs. Lenormand and Main, who joined him. But nothing had
any effect: Zola was indeed dead.[4]
Meantime telegrams were despatched to the novelist's intimate friends
and his wife's relatives. The district Commissary of Police who had
been summoned, communicated with the Prefect, and an official inquiry
into the tragedy was at once ordered. Madame Laborde, a cousin of
the Zolas, was soon on the spot, followed by M. Charpentier, M.
Fasquelle, M. Desmoulin, and others; and late in the afternoon Madame
Zola was removed to Dr. Defaut's Maison de Santé in the Avenue du
Roule, Neuilly, in such wise that the investigations were pursued
in all freedom. The bedroom chimney proved to be both defective and
obstructed; and when a fire was lighted and some guinea-pigs were left
in the room for a night, the animals, though still alive on the morrow,
were then found in a hebetated state.[5] Meantime an examination of
Zola's remains was made, the doctors afterwards reporting that all the
vital organs were sound, though the blood was saturated with oxide of
carbon.[6] This, it may be mentioned, fixes on the globules of the
blood, whence it expels all oxygen, thereby producing drowsiness,
numbness, and at last a species of paralysis. Perhaps in Zola's case
the blood-poisoning may not have been the only cause of death, for it
is possible that he might have survived in spite of it, if, like his
wife, he had been able to relieve himself, and if he had not fallen on
the floor of the room, where the atmosphere, impregnated with carbonic
acid gas, may have been almost unbreathable. However, the experts
virtually agreed in ascribing the death to the poisoning of the blood
by carbonic oxide.
Madame Zola remained at Dr. Defaut's house for some days, regaining her
strength very slowly. At first her husband's death was concealed from
her, she believed that he was only ill like herself. But the sad truth
had to be told, and then, after a violent explosion of grief, realising
that she had duties to fulfil, she insisted on returning home in spite
of her weakness. It was a terrible home-coming. Her husband's body had
been embalmed with more or less success--for signs of decomposition
had set in directly after the post-mortem examination--and laid in its
coffin, which was placed in the study, where much of the novelist's
work had been done. And it was there that the unhappy widow found it.
But she gave proof of no little fortitude, and speedily signified her
wishes and those which she knew to have been her husband's, in order
that proper arrangements might be made in the dolorous circumstances
which had now arisen.