years. His original scheme was a series of twelve novels to be written
at the rate of two a year, and he entered into a contract with a
publisher named Lacroix, who was to pay him five hundred francs a month
as an advance. M. Lacroix would, however, only bind himself to publish
four out of the twelve novels. The arrangement could not be carried out,
and at the end of three years only two volumes of the Rougon-Macquart
series had been published, while Zola found that he had become indebted
to the publisher for a very considerable sum.

The first novel of the series was begun in 1869, but was not published
till the winter of 1871, delay having occurred on account of the war
with Germany. Zola was never a rapid writer, and seems to have regulated
his literary production with machinelike uniformity. As his friend and
biographer Paul Alexis writes: "Only four pages, but four pages every
day, every day without exception, the action of the drop of water always
falling on the same place, and in the end wearing out the hardest
stone. It seems nothing, but in course of time chapters follow chapters,
volumes follow upon volumes, and a whole life's work sprouts, multiplies
its branches, extends its foliage like a lofty oak, destined to
rise high into the air and to remain standing in the forest of human
productions."

His literary creed at the time he began the Rougon-Macquart series may
be conveniently summed up in a few words from an article which he had
only a month before written in the _Gaulois_: "If I kept a school of
morals," he says, "I would hasten to place in the hands of my pupils
_Madame Bovary_ or _Germinie Lacerteux_, persuaded that truth alone can
instruct and fortify generous souls."

In _La Fortune des Rougon_, then, Zola set out to plant the roots of