It has been said that in his last works his imagination failed him, that it was quite spent, and that he could no longer have produced a work of art had he tried. That theory is wrong, based on ignorance of what was then in Zola's mind. If he had lived long enough to write the novel on the "Rat de l'Opéra,"[1] of which he talked so often to the present writer, the world would have seen that the powers of the novelist were undiminished. But in the great crisis through which France was passing Zola held that for a time, at all events, his duty lay in other work.
"Fécondité," of which some mention was made in the previous chapter, treated a subject which had long haunted him—in a measure for personal reasons—but it was, of course, from the national standpoint that he dealt with it in his book. The question of the decline in the birth rate and the mortality among infants had not only occupied the attention of French sociologists and scientists for several years, but various novels based upon it had already been written—novels indicating that the whole tendency of the times was to transform matrimony into legalised prostitution, in accordance with certain specious neo-Malthusian theories. Zola rightly held that unless that tendency were checked there could be no social regeneration at all. Thus he placed the subject in question at the head of his series. While he was preparing "Fécondité" in England the present writer was often able to glance at the documents, medical works, reports, letters from eminent scientists, and so forth, on which the novelist based his account of the noxious practices prevalent in various strata of French society, and he holds that far from "Fécondité" being an exaggerated picture it did not represent more than two-thirds of the actual truth. On the other hand, when Zola proceeded to sketch the healthy life which ought to replace the existing one, enthusiasm led him further than was necessary, though, after all, he did not go beyond the provisions of the "marriage-books" which the French authorities hand to every bridegroom at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony—books beginning with a signed and stamped certificate of the union just celebrated and continuing with enough blank forms to register the birth of twelve children—the number which Zola bestowed on his hero and heroine, Mathieu and Marianne.
Fruitfulness, said he, created the home, whence sprang the city; and from the idea of citizenship that of the fatherland proceeded. There could be no nation unless there were fruitfulness, which became, then, a first national duty. The second was work, which Zola considered under various aspects in his next novel, "Travail." He held that every man ought to work for his own support and that of his family, and he also regarded work as a panacea for many ills. But he turned more particularly to the consideration of the circumstances under which work was done in the modern world, to the condition of the toilers generally, the great capital and labour problem. In that connection he was greatly influenced by the state of France at the time he wrote, the onward march of Socialism, the innumerable strikes, the complaints, the demands rising on all sides. He felt that matters could not remain as they were. But though he was in the higher sense a great fighter he was the adversary of mere brute force; and dreading an armed collision between the classes, he tried to devise, to suggest, a pacific remedial evolution.
As he was unwilling to imprison himself or anybody else within the narrow and stringent bonds of certain forms of Socialism, it was to the broader and more generous ideas of Charles Fourier that he finally inclined, striving to adapt them to the needs of a new century. It is certain that some of his suggestions remained nebulous, that several were not strictly practical, but it should be remembered that at the outset of "Les Quatre Évangiles" he had announced that the series would form a kind of "poem in prose, divided into four chants." It would be unfair to neglect that statement, for it shows he did not intend "Fécondité" and "Travail" to be taken as severely practical works. They partook, as one has said, of a constructive character—-as opposed to Zola's earlier and purely destructive writings—but they were not intended to be the final plans of an architect or an engineer, or the ultimate provisions of a new code. They were the roughest of sketches, so to say, suggestions which here and there might be found useful by those who might have to solve the problems which they reviewed. And it must be at least admitted that their tendency was good. In "Fécondité" it was most healthful; in "Travail" it was most pacific and calming, Zola's manifest intention being to quiet the angry passions of the hour, to direct Labour towards peaceable courses in its quest for the fulfilment of its aspirations.
Such books cannot be judged as one would judge ordinary novels. They were, to a certain point, drafted in the form of novels in order that they might reach the great majority; but Zola, with superb disdain, now cast many of the rules and conventions of novel-writing aside. After the publication of "Travail," Vizetelly sent him word that the English translation had been regarded less as a work of fiction than as a combination of sermon and pamphlet, to which the reviewers and the public did not seem to take very kindly. Zola replied under date of May 8, 1901:
"I have never consulted the tastes of the public, and I am too old nowadays to modify my work in order to please it. I am writing these books with a certain purpose before me, a purpose in which the question of form is of secondary importance. I have no intention of trying to amuse people or thrill them with excitement. I am merely placing certain problems before them, and suggesting in some respects certain solutions, showing what I hold to be wrong and what I think would be right. When I have finished these 'Évangiles,' when 'Vérité' and 'Justice' are written, it is quite possible that I shall write shorter and livelier books. Personally I should have everything to gain by doing so, but for the present I am fulfilling a duty which the state of my country imposes on me."
Most of "Travail" was written in 1900, in December of which year it began to appear in "L'Aurore." In April, 1901, it was published as a volume.[2] A little later in the same year, the virulence of the Dreyfus agitation having subsided and public attention being turned to the Assumptionists and other religious orders, in connection with M. Waldeck-Rousseau's Association Bill, the director of the Opéra Comique in Paris thought the moment favourable for the production of a one-act lyrical drama, entitled "L'Ouragan," the prose libretto of which, set to music by M. Bruneau, had been written by Zola some years previously. "L'Ouragan" was not a particularly ambitious work and the moderate success it achieved was perhaps all that could have been expected for it.
After the production of that piece Zola began to consider the subject of his next book, "Vérité," which gave him no little trouble. It seems likely that when he first planned his series he had thought of showing in this particular volume that scientific truth, and not the assertions, delusions, and errors of religious systems, should be taken as the guiding principle of life. But the Dreyfus case, which had intruded into a few pages of "Travail," haunted him. He knew that it had supplied one of the most shocking exhibitions of mendacity that the world had ever witnessed; and it followed that "Vérité" ought not merely to inculcate a belief in scientific truth. It also ought to recall people to the practice of truthfulness in their every-day life. Thus Zola's subject expanded. He had always intended to show the evil effects of the training given to children in certain so-called religious schools, where, according to his view, their minds were perverted, deprived of all self-reliance by the intrusion of the supernatural. But the Dreyfus case had shown him there was more than that. The mendacity so current throughout the period of the Affair had come almost entirely from men trained by the Roman Church. Moreover that Church's share in the Affair, its hostility and its intrigues against the Republic under cover of the anti-Semitic agitation, were now every day more apparent. Zola had repeatedly declared that he would write no novel on the Dreyfus case, for he did not wish anybody to say that he had earned a single sou, directly or indirectly, by the Affair. But it was ever beside him, with its influence, its revelations, its lessons. And it seemed to him fit that everybody should understand that in one way and another such turmoil, frenzy, and mendacity would never have been possible if it had not been for the Roman Church. The case haunting him more and more, he gradually yielded to the obsession, resolving, however, to cast the military men on one side, for after all they had only been agents, in some degree the victims of their training. In lieu of them he would depict those whom he regarded as the real culprits. It had been settled that the book should deal with school life; and it would be easy to adapt a kind of Dreyfus case to such surroundings. A Jewish schoolmaster might be substituted for a Jewish officer, while as for the crime which it would be necessary to impute to him, there had been a terrible affair at Lille, not long previously, the murder of a little boy, in which a certain Brother Flamidien—who was spirited away by his colleagues—had been implicated. Some such brother would represent Esterhazy in Zola's work, Dreyfus being represented by Simon, the Jewish schoolmaster.
That Zola repeatedly hesitated with respect to this pastiche of the Dreyfus case is certain. In the summer of 1901 he wrote to Vizetelly that he was preparing "Vérité," but that none of it would be ready for several months, for he was still doubtful whether he would introduce certain elements into the work or not. Finally, as the only means, perhaps, of relieving his mind, he took the plunge, resolving upon an adaptation of the Affair on the lines one has indicated. Yet he again paused more than once, as he mentioned in another letter. That was written on September 12, when he further stated that he would have nothing ready until the ensuing month of January, 1902, when he wrote to Vizetelly:
"Thanks for your good wishes for the New Year, and pray accept ours for yourself and all your family. I find I shall not have 'Vérité' ready for publication as a book until next October, and that the feuilleton will not begin to appear until the early days of June. As you would like to have a few chapters in advance, however, I think I may be able to send the first ones about the end of next month.... I wish you good health, good work, and am very cordially yours,
"ÉMILE ZOLA."