is unsurpassed, even by the studies which Count Lyof Tolstoi has made in a similar direction. It is unsurpassed, because it is essentially without prejudice. It admits the discomfort, the horrible vexation and shame of war, and it tears aside the conventional purple and tinsel of it; but at the same time it admits, not without a sigh, that even this clumsy artifice may be the only one available for the cleansing of the people. [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 31] IV. In 1883, M. Zola published a third volume of short stories, under the title of the opening one, Le Capitaine Burle. This collection contains the delicate series of brief semi-autobiographical essays called “Aux Champs,” little studies of past impression, touched with a charm which is almost kindred to that of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s memories. With this exception, the volume consists of four short stories, and of a set of little death-bed anecdotes, called “Comment on Meurt.” This latter is hardly in the writer’s best style, and suffers by suggesting the immeasurably finer and deeper studies of the same kind which the genius of Tolstoi has elaborated. Of these little sketches of death, one alone, that of Madame Rousseau,[Pg 32] the stationer’s wife, is quite of the best class. This is an excellent episode from the sort of Parisian life which M. Zola seems to understand best, the lower middle class, the small and active shopkeeper, who just contrives to be respectable and no more. The others seem to be invented rather than observed. [Pg 32] The four stories which make up the bulk of this book are almost typical examples of M. Zola’s mature style. They are worked out with extreme care, they display in every turn the skill of the practised narrator, they are solid and yet buoyant in style, and the construction of each may be said to be faultless. It is faultless to a fault; in other words, the error of the author is to be mechanically and inevitably correct. It is difficult to define wherein the over-elaboration shows itself, but in every case the close of the story leaves us sceptical and cold. The dénouement is[Pg 33] too brilliant and conclusive, the threads are drawn together with too much evidence of preoccupation. The impression is not so much of a true tale told as of an extraordinary situation frigidly written up to and accounted for. In each case a certain social condition is described at the beginning, and a
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