_A quoi bon?_ Such is the question coming by itself. A book is also an
activity, forming human souls. If at least the reader would find
in Zola's book the bad and good side of human life in an equal
proportion, or at least in such as one can find it in reality! Vain
hope! One must climb high in order to get colors from a rainbow or
sunset--but everybody has saliva in his mouth and it is easy to paint
with it. This naturalist prefers cheap effects more than others do; he
prefers mildew to perfumes, _la bête humaine_ to _l'âme humaine!_

If we could bring an inhabitant of Venus or Mars to the earth and ask
him to judge of life on the earth from Zola's novels, he would say
most assuredly: "This life is sometimes quite pure, like 'Le Rève,'
but in general it is a thing which smells bad, is slippery, moist,
dreadful." And even if the theories on which Zola has based his works
were, as they are not, acknowledged truths, what a lack of pity to
represent life in such a way to the people, who must live just the
same! Does he do it in order to ruin, to disgust, to poison every
action, to paralyze every energy, to discourage all thinking? In the
presence of that, we are even sorry that he has a talent. It would
have been better for him, for France, that he had not had it. And one
wonders that he is not frightened, that when a fear seizes even those
who did not lead to corruption, he alone with such a tranquillity
finishes his Rougon-Macquart as if he had strengthened the capacity
for life of the French people instead of having destroyed it. How is
it possible that he cannot understand that people brought up on such
corrupted bread and drinking, such bad water, not only will be unable
to resist the storm, but even they will not have an inclination to do
so! Musset has written in his time this famous verse: "We had already
your German Rhine." Zola brings up his society in such a way that, if