have allowed, in the present version, which will at the same time, I
think, give the reader unacquainted with the French language a general
idea of M. Zola's views on one of the great questions of the age, as well
as all the essential portions of a strongly conceived narrative.

E. A. V.

MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND: April, 1900.



FRUITFULNESS



I

THAT morning, in the little pavilion of Chantebled, on the verge of the
woods, where they had now been installed for nearly a month, Mathieu was
making all haste in order that he might catch the seven-o'clock train
which every day conveyed him from Janville to Paris. It was already
half-past six, and there were fully two thousand paces from the pavilion
to Janville. Afterwards came a railway journey of three-quarters of an
hour, and another journey of at least equal duration through Paris, from
the Northern Railway terminus to the Boulevard de Grenelle. He seldom
reached his office at the factory before half-past eight o'clock.

He had just kissed the children. Fortunately they were asleep; otherwise
they would have linked their arms about his neck, laughed and kissed him,
being ever unwilling to let him go. And as he hastily returned to the