As to the political outlook, your anxieties are, perhaps, greater than they need be. We must hope that our great national historian will close, for a time, the era of revolutions. May we see the doors of the temple of Janus shut forever! That is the desire of my heart, as a friend of the arts and of innocent gaiety.
Ah, if all men, fleeing the pomp of courts and the agitations of the Forum, would listen to the simple voice of nature, there would be only happiness here below, the dances of shepherds, fond embraces beneath the trees on one side and another—here, there, everywhere! But my ideas run away with me.
Will Madame your mother devote herself always to the occupations of Thalia? Very well! She proposes to face the public in the house of Molière. I comprehend that, but I believe it would be better (in the interest of her dramatic lucubration) if I myself should take this fruit of her muse to the director of that establishment. Then, as soon as I should arrive in the capital, I should make my toilet, call my servant and command him to go and find a coach for me in the public square; I should enter the vehicle, drive through the streets, arrive at the Théâtre Française, and finish by finding our man. All this would be for me only the affair of a moment!
In declaring myself, Madame, your unworthy slave, I depose
PRUD’ HOMME.
TO EMILE ZOLA.
Croisset, near Rouen, June 3, 1874.
I have read it—La Conquête de Plassans—read it all at one breath, as one swallows a glass of good wine; then I ruminated over it, and now, my dear friend, I can talk sensibly about it. I feared, after the Ventre de Paris, that you would bury yourself in the “system” in your resolution. But no! You are a good fellow! And your latest book is a fine, swaggering production!
Perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having a central scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhaps also there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters. There! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects I discover. But what power of observation! what depth! what a masterly hand!
That which struck me most forcibly in the general tone of the work was the ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. That is very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained.