I am aware that the tone of the above paragraph is pontifical and its
substance a trifle obvious, and am eager to apologize for both.
Speaking as an impressionist, I can only say that _La Débâcle_ stifles
me. And this is the effect produced by all his later books. Each has
the exclusiveness of a dream; its subject--be it drink or war or
money--possesses the reader as a nightmare possesses the dreamer. For
the time this place of wide prospect, the world, puts up its shutters;
and life becomes all drink, all war, all money, while M. Zola
(adaptable Bacchanal!) surrenders his brain to the intoxication of his
latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary
surgery, or railway technicalities--everything by turns and everything
long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of
late he almost ceased to add even a dash of human interest.

Mr. George Moore, reviewing _La Débâcle_ in the _Fortnightly_ last
month, laments this. He reminds us of the splendid opportunity M. Zola
has flung away in his latest work.

"Jean and Maurice," says Mr. Moore, "have fought side by side;
they have alternately saved each other's lives; war has united
them in a bond of inseparable friendship; they have grasped each
other's hands, and looked in each other's eyes, overpowered with
a love that exceeds the love that woman ever gave to man; now
they are ranged on different sides, armed one against the other.
The idea is a fine one, and it is to be deeply regretted that M.
Zola did not throw history to the winds and develop the beautiful
human story of the division of friends in civil war. Never would
history have tempted Balzac away from the human passion of such a
subject...."