fortunate. The subject is unpleasant, and its treatment lacks the force
which made _Therese Raquin_ convincing.

Up to this time Zola's life had been a steady struggle against poverty.
He was terribly in earnest, and was determined to create for himself
a place in literature; to accomplish this end he counted no labour
too arduous, no sacrifice too great. His habits were Spartan in their
simplicity; he was a slave to work and method, good equipment for the
vast task he was next to undertake. He had long been an earnest student
of Balzac, and there is no doubt that it was the example of the great
_Comedie Humaine_ which inspired his scheme for a series of novels
dealing with the life history of a family during a particular period;
as he described it himself, "the history natural and social of a family
under the Second Empire." It is possible that he was also influenced
by the financial success of the series of historical novels written by
Erckmann-Chatrian, known as the _Romans Nationaux_. It was not, however,
the past about which he proposed to write; no period was more suitable
for his purpose than that in which he lived, that Second Empire whose
regime began in blood and continued in corruption. He had there,
under his own eyes and within his personal knowledge, a suitable
_mise-en-scene_ wherein to further develop those theories of hereditary
influence which had already attracted his attention while he was writing
_Madeleine Ferat_. The scheme was further attractive in as much as it
lent itself readily to the system of treatment to which he had applied
the term _naturalisme_, to distinguish it from the crudities of the
realistic school. The scientific tendency of the period was to rely not
on previously accepted propositions, but on observation and experience,
or on facts and documents. To Zola the voice of science conveyed the
word of ultimate truth, and with desperate earnestness he set out to
apply its methods to literary production. His position was that the