daring novel as "Hachette's little book," one of the members of the firm
sent for M. Zola, and addressed him thus:

"Look here, M. Zola, you are earning eight pounds a month with us, which
is ridiculous for a man of your talent. Why don't you go into literature
altogether? It will bring you wealth and glory."

Zola had no choice but to take this broad hint, and send in his
resignation, which was at once accepted. The Hachettes did not require
the services of writers of risky, or, for that matter, any other novels,
as clerks; and, besides, as Zola has told us himself, in an interview
with my old friend and employer,[*] the late M. Fernand Xau, Editor of
the Paris "Journal," they thought "La Confession de Claude" a trifle
stiff, and objected to their clerks writing books in time which they
considered theirs, as they paid for it.

[*] He sent me to Hamburg for ten days in 1892 to report on
the appalling outbreak of cholera in that city, with the
emoluments of ten pounds a day, besides printing several
articles from my pen on Parisian topics.--E. V.

Zola, cast, so to say, adrift, with "Les Contes a Ninon" and "La
Confession de Claude" as scant literary baggage, buckled to, and set
about "Les Mysteres de Marseille" and "Therese Raquin," while at the
same time contributing art criticisms to the "Evenement"--a series of
articles which raised such a storm that painters and sculptors were in
the habit of purchasing copies of the paper and tearing it up in the
faces of Zola and De Villemessant, the owner, whenever they chanced to
meet them. Nevertheless it was these articles that first drew attention
to Manet, who had hitherto been regarded as a painter of no account, and