[Footnote 7: “Mes souvenirs,” he told a psychological interviewer,
“ont une puissance, un relief extraordinaire; ma mémoire est énorme,
prodigieuse, elle me gêne; quand j’évoque les objets que j’ai vus, je
les revois tels qu’ils sont réellement avec leurs lignes, leurs formes,
leurs couleurs, leurs odeurs, leurs sons; _c’est une matérialisation
à outrance_; le soleil qui les éclaire m’éblouit presque; l’odeur
me suffoque, les détails s’accrochent à moi et m’empêchent de voir
l’ensemble. Aussi pour le ressaisir me faut-il attendre un certain
temps. Cette possibilité d’évocation ne dure pas très longtemps; le
relief de l’image est d’une exactitude, d’une intensité inouïes,
puis l’image s’efface, disparaît, cela s’en va.” This description
suggests myopia, and it is a fact that Zola has been short-sighted from
youth; he first realised it at sixteen. His other senses, especially
smell, are very keen--largely, however, as an outcome of attention
or practice. Thus while his tactile sensibility and sensibility to
pain are acute, his olfactory keenness is rather qualitative than
quantitative; that is to say that it mainly consists in a marked
memory for odours, a tendency to be emotionally impressed by them,
and an ability to distinguish them in which he resembles professional
perfumers. All these and many other facts have been very precisely
ascertained by means of the full psychological and anthropological
study of M. Zola which has been carried out by experts under the
superintendence of Dr. Toulouse.]