matter.

The Paris markets form such a world of their own, and teem at certain
hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life, that it was
only natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M.
Zola, who, to use his own words, delights "in any subject in which vast
masses of people can be shown in motion." Mr. Sherard tells us[*] that
the idea of "Le Ventre de Paris" first occurred to M. Zola in 1872, when
he used continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a ramble through
the Halles. I have in my possession, however, an article written by
M. Zola some five or six years before that time, and in this one can
already detect the germ of the present work; just as the motif of
another of M. Zola's novels, "La Joie de Vivre," can be traced to a
short story written for a Russian review.

[*] _Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study_, by Robert
Harborough Sherard, pp. 103, 104. London, Chatto & Windus, 1893.

Similar instances are frequently to be found in the writings of English
as well as French novelists, and are, of course, easily explained. A
young man unknown to fame, and unable to procure the publication of a
long novel, often contents himself with embodying some particular idea
in a short sketch or story, which finds its way into one or another
periodical, where it lies buried and forgotten by everybody--excepting
its author. Time goes by, however, the writer achieves some measure of
success, and one day it occurs to him to elaborate and perfect that old
idea of his, only a faint _apercu_ of which, for lack of opportunity, he
had been able to give in the past. With a little research, no doubt, an
interesting essay might be written on these literary resuscitations; but
if one except certain novelists who are so deficient in ideas that they