admirable and even delightful pages. Among the English reviewers were two
well-known lady writers, Madame Darmesteter (formerly Miss Mary
Robinson), and Miss Hannah Lynch. And the former remarked in one part of
her critique: "Even this short review reveals how honest, how moral, how
human and comely is the fable of _Fecondite_,"* while the latter
expressed the view that the work was "eminently, pugnaciously virtuous in
M. Zola's strictly material conception of virtue." And again: "The pages
that tell the story of Mathieu and Marianne, it must be admitted, are as
charming as possible. They have a bloom, a beauty, a fragrance we never
expected to find in M. Zola's work. The tale is a simple one: the
cheerful conquest of fortune and the continual birth of offspring."**

* _Manchester Guardian_, October 27, 1899.

** _Fortnightly Review_, January 1900.

Of course, these lady critics did not favor certain features of the
original, and one of them, indeed, referred to the evil denounced by M.
Zola as a mere evil of the hour, whereas it has been growing and
spreading for half a century, gradually sapping all the vitality of
France. But beside that evil, beside the downfall of the families it
attacks, M. Zola portrays the triumph of rectitude, the triumph which
follows faith in the powers of life, and observance of the law of
universal labor. "Fruitfulness" contains charming pictures of homely
married life, delightful glimpses of childhood and youth: the first
smile, the first step, the first word, followed by the playfulness and
the flirtations of boyhood, and the happiness which waits on the
espousals of those who truly love. And the punishment of the guilty is
awful, and the triumph of the righteous is the greatest that can be
conceived. All those features have been retained, so far as my abilities