About the middle of October he had told Vizetelly, who was then with him at Médan, that he had some hope the Pope would receive him, and that he certainly intended to apply for an audience. Vizetelly gave publicity to this statement, which was quoted on all sides. But almost immediately afterwards, Vizetelly having returned to England, Zola on talking the matter over with some friends found that no audience with the Pope was possible. The reason was simple enough. "Lourdes," "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret," and several other volumes of his writings—just like the novels of Dumas père, that "accursed Garibaldian"—were in the "Index," and accordingly, before even applying for an audience, he would have to withdraw and annihilate those books so far as lay in his power, and make a full submission to Holy Church.
Such were the facts. A little investigation of the subject showed peremptorily that the popes made it an inflexible rule to receive no authors whose writings figured among the prohibited books unless and until those authors had withdrawn their writings and submitted. Abbé Alfred Loisy, the author of "La Question Biblique" and "L'Évangile et l'Église," has of more recent times discovered the procédure to be such as is here stated. He, like Zola's Abbé Pierre Froment, repaired to Rome to plead his cause, but though cardinals may have received him, he was not allowed to approach the Pope. Zola, in his "Rome," used a novelist's license when he brought Abbé Pierre face to face with Leo XIII; and all readers of the book are aware that the interview is pictured as a secret one, obtained by surreptitious means, such as Zola could never have employed. Had he asked for an audience he must have done so through the usual channel, that of the French embassy to the Vatican; and we have before us that embassy's express statement that no such application was ever made. Thus, contrary to the assertions which went the round of the world's press, Zola did not ask to see the Pope, and the Pope did not have occasion to refuse him.
Leaving Paris at the end of October, he remained in Rome till December 15. He applied for an audience at the Quirinal, and was received with a gracious cordiality by King Umberto. Both the French ambassador to the Italian court and the ambassador to the Vatican placed themselves at his disposal, and furnished him either personally or through their attachés with a quantity of information. Some of the Italian ministers took a similar course. He was welcomed, too, in several drawing-rooms. M. Hébert, the great French painter, accompanied him on his visits to the Palatine, the Sistine Chapel, the stanze of Raffaelle, and the Vatican Museum. Signor Bernabei, director-general of the excavations, accompanied him on other occasions, and supplied him with a quantity of notes. As for the foolish tale that he bribed Vatican servants for information, a tale which went the round of the press, it was purely imaginative. With two ambassadors, half a dozen attachés, and a score of prominent Italian officials at his disposal, Zola had no need to apply to any servants whatever.
On quitting Rome he betook himself to Venice and Brescia with the object of visiting the Italian members of his family, the Venetian Petrapolis and Frattas, and particularly his cousin, Carlo Zola, then a judge of the Brescian Appeal Court. Venice gave him a public reception, and at Brescia his cousin greeted him with open arms. Unfortunately, though the novelist, assisted by his knowledge of Latin and Provençal, was able to read Italian fairly accurately, he could not speak it; and as on the other hand the judge knew no French, an interpreter had to be provided. In spite of this drawback the intercourse was very pleasant, and when after a sojourn of some days at Brescia Zola set out on his journey to Paris, he repeatedly promised to return. He was never able to do so, but his wife, who revisited Italy on more than one occasion subsequently, took care to keep up the family intercourse which had been renewed after the lapse of so many years.
While Zola was visiting Rome the French military authorities had been busy with the case of Captain Dreyfus, but the latter's court-martial did not begin till December 19, that is, about the time of the novelist's return to Paris; the degradation of the unfortunate officer following on January 5, 1895. Zola, however, was now busy classifying all the materials he had brought from Rome and revolving in his mind the tremendous task which lay before him. Thus, once again, he gave comparatively little attention to the proceedings against Dreyfus. Moreover there was nothing in the newspapers to indicate any probability of a miscarriage of justice. Like everybody else,—except the members of the Dreyfus family, whom he did not know,—Zola assumed that the convicted officer was guilty, and thereupon dismissed the matter from his mind.
Writing to Vizetelly on January 11, he said that he hoped to make "Rome" a work of European interest, and if possible he should include in it some account of the wonderful progress which the Catholic Church claimed to be effecting in Great Britain and the United States of America. He hoped the book would be shorter than "Lourdes," and he intended to keep it "absolutely chaste, though very passionné, for while Abbé Froment would be the central figure, a very tragic drame passionnel would be unfolded beside him." However, the historic, descriptive, and controversial parts of the work expanded in Zola's hands, and far from "Rome" proving shorter than "Lourdes," it exceeded that book in length by a hundred and fifty pages. The drame passionnel which was to have been so prominent a feature, became nearly lost among the surrounding matter, so that by the time the work was finished little suggested that it was intended to be a novel. At the same time it was certainly one of the books on which Zola expended most time and study He had begun to examine his subject in the summer of 1894, and his proofs were not finally passed for press till the end of February, 1896. It may be said that he gave the whole of 1895 to the writing of "Rome." As he had not been able to remain very long in the Eternal City, Madame Zola returned thither to collect further information on various points, and a perfect mountain of documents at last encompassed the struggling novelist, who had no little difficulty in shaping his course. In December, 1895, the work began to appear as a feuilleton in "Le Journal," the organ of Zola's friend, M. Fernand Xau, and about the same time an English translation was issued by various provincial and colonial journals, Vizetelly having to perform a tour de force in order to ensure this early publication. In the case of "Lourdes" he had been assisted by his personal knowledge of the spot, and a similar knowledge helped him with "Rome," the actual translation of which had to be made in about nine weeks in order to meet commercial requirements. That little fact will serve to illustrate the remarks made in a previous chapter concerning the imperfection of the translations issued under the conditions which nowadays prevail in the publishing world.
When "Rome" appeared as a volume early in the spring of 1896,[11] M. Gaston Deschamps, writing in "Le Temps," roundly accused Zola of plagiarism, and it is certain that here and there "Rome" contained sentences taken from Firmin Didot's publication, "Le Vatican," and Gaston Boissier's "Promenades archéologiques." Zola, on being accused, replied in "Le Figaro" to the effect that when he was writing a book he invariably consulted every available work bearing on his subject. He passed several of his former novels in review, mentioning the books by others which had been useful to him, and also naming the politicians, merchants, scientists, lawyers, architects, and others who had provided him with detailed memoranda on various points. For instance Jules Ferry had given him some information about the Haussmannization of Paris for "La Curée," M. Chauchard, the director of the "Grands Magasins du Louvre," had largely assisted him with "Au Bonheur des Dames," M. Edmond Perrier, the scientist, had helped him with the passages about seaweed and bromide of potassium in "La Joie de Vivre," M. Frantz-Jourdain, the eminent architect, had constantly befriended him in architectural matters, M. Henri Céard had supplied him with notes on music, and M. Thyébaut with consultations on points of law, while the theory of an "elixir of life," embodied in "Le Docteur Pascal," had been built for him by his friend Dr. Maurice de Fleury. Indeed Zola claimed that he had never discussed a scientific question or written about an illness in his books without first taking the opinion of scientists and medical men. But he claimed that he had assimilated, adapted, and in a sense transmuted all the information he had derived from persons and books. As for "Rome" he was charged with having borrowed some sentences from two or three well-known works, but, in fact, he had consulted some scores of volumes, the titles of many of which he gave. Briefly, he pictured himself as an architect or a sculptor, and his materials as building stones or modelling clay; suggesting also the example of those masters of the Renaissance who employed a swarm of workers to prepare their paints, their "grounds," and so forth. And he contended that what he had done was perfectly legitimate, the only question being whether he had so used his materials as to produce a substantial, harmonious result, and had infused into it the spirit of life. "If it were usual," he added, "to indicate one's authorities in a novel, I would willingly stud the bottom of my pages with foot-notes. And if a line from a fellow-writer remains intact in one of my pages, this simply proves that I am not hypocrite enough to hide my borrowing, which it would be so easy to conceal"
In spite of that last remark there is reason to believe that, in the case of "Rome," Zola had a difficulty in wrestling with his mountain of "notes," and that when confronted by some memorandum made many months previously, he sometimes imagined its phraseology to be his own and not the actual language of one of his authorities. It seems quite likely that if the latter had been patent to him he would have paraphrased the memorandum. With respect to the actual principle for which he contended it is obvious that the novelist possessed of any conscientiousness ought often to read up certain subjects and consult a variety of authorities. It is indeed a pity that the practice is not followed more generally, for one would then be spared the thousands of blunders in elementary questions of law, science, history, precedence, titles, etc., which appear in so much contemporary fiction.
