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With Zola in England by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
page 43 of 146 (29%)
Amsterdam the other day, but he'd only take girls. I think the
Continental line's pretty nigh played out.'

He heaved a sigh and glanced in the direction of his empty glass. Then,
seeing that the novelist and Desmoulin were rising to join me, he
whispered hurriedly, _'I say, guv'nor, you haven't got a tanner you could
spare, have you?'_

I had foreseen the request; nevertheless I pressed a few coppers into his
hand and then hurried out after my wards.

Though it was still early we decided to start at once for Wimbledon. The
master, I thought, might like to see a little of the place pending
Wareham's arrival.

The journey through Lambeth, Vauxhall, and Queen's Road is not calculated
to give the intelligent foreigner a particularly favourable impression of
London. Still M. Zola did not at first find the surroundings very much
worse than those one observes on leaving Paris by the Northern or Eastern
lines. But as the train went on and on and much the same scene appeared
on either hand he began to wonder when it would all end.

On approaching Clapham Junction a sea of roofs is to be seen on the right
stretching away through Battersea to the Thames; while on the left a huge
wave of houses ascends the acclivity known, I believe, as Lavender Hill.
And at the sight of all the mean, dusty streets, lined with little houses
of uniform pattern, each close pressed to the other--at the frequently
recurring glimpses of squalor and shabby gentility--M. Zola exploded.

'It is awful!' he said.
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