can scarce say I was afraid; only I felt it had to be stopped ere
he could work himself up by dancing to some craziness. Our house
boys protested they were not afraid; all I know is they were all
watching him round the back door, and did not follow me till I
had the axe. As for the out-boys, who were working with Fanny in
the native house, they thought it a bad business, and made no
secret of their fears."

But indeed all the book is manly, with the manliness of Scott's
_Journal_ or of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_. "To the English-speaking
world," concludes Mr. Colvin, "he has left behind a treasure which it
would be vain as yet to attempt to estimate; to the profession of
letters one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of examples; and
to his friends an image of memory more vivid and more dear than are
the presences of almost any of the living." Very few men of our time
have been followed out of this world with the same regret. None have
repined less at their own fate--

"This be the verse you grave for me:--
'Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.'"




M. ZOLA


Sept. 23, 1892. La Débâcle.