We were alone in our compartment, and he looked first from one window and
then from the other. Next came a torrent of questions: Why were the
houses so small? Why were they all so ugly and so much alike? What
classes of people lived in them? Why were the roads so dusty? Why was
there such a litter of fragments of paper lying about everywhere? Where
those streets never watered? Was there no scavengers' service? And then a
remark: 'You see that house, it looks fairly clean and neat in front. But
there! Look at the back-yard--all rubbish and poverty! One notices that
again and again!'

We passed Clapham Junction, pursuing our journey through the cutting
which intersects Wandsworth Common. 'Well,' I said, 'you may take it
that, except as regards the postal and police services, you are now out
of London proper.'

Presently, indeed, we emerged from the cutting, and fields were seen on
either hand. One could breathe at last. But as we approached Earlsfield
Station all M. Zola's attention was given to a long row of low-lying
houses whose yards and gardens extend to the railway line. Now and again
a trim patch of ground was seen; here, too, there was a little
glass-house, there an attempt at an arbour. But litter and rubbish were
only too often apparent.

'This, I suppose,' said the novelist, 'is what you call a London slum
invading the country? You tell me that only a part of the bourgeoisie
cares for flats, and that among the lower middle class and the working
class each family prefers to rent its own little house. Is this for the
sake of privacy? If so, I see no privacy here. Leaving out the question
of being overlooked from passing trains, observe the open four-foot