But in this matter of forbidden subjects Zola is regarded by the present generation as a trifle old-fashioned. When alive he was grouped with Aretino and the Marquis de Sade, or with Restif de la Bretonne. To-day Paris has not only Paul Margueritte, who when writing in conjunction with his brother Victor gave much promise, but also Octave Mirbeau. With Zola, the newer men assert that their work makes for morality, exposing as it does public and private abuses, an excuse as classic as Aristophanes.
In 1893 the figures for the principal novels of Zola stood thus: Nana, 160,000; L'Assommoir, 127,000; La Débâcle, 143,000; Germinal, 88,000; La Terre, 100,000; La Bête Humaine, 83,000; the same number for Le Rêve; Pot-Bouille, 82,000; whereas L'Œuvre only counted 55,000; La Conquête de Plassans, 25,000; La Curée, 36,000, and La Joie de Vivre, 44,000. La Terre, then, the most unmentionable story of them all, has jumped since 1893 to the end of 1911 from 100,000 to 215,000, whereas L'Œuvre moved only from 55,000 to 71,000 in fourteen years. But a Vulgarian can understand La Terre while L'Œuvre would be absolutely undecipherable to him.
Zola always knew his market; even knew it after Dreyfus had intervened. Of the series called Les Trois Villes, Rome is the best seller, 121,000; and it is as profound a vilification of the Eternal City as was La Terre of the French peasants, as Pot-Bouille of the French bourgeois. Indeed, all Zola reads like the frenzied attack of a pessimist to whom his native land is a hideous nightmare and its inhabitants criminals or mad folk. His influence on a younger generation of writers, especially in America, has been baneful, and he has done much with his exuberant, rhapsodical style to further the moon-madness of socialism; of a belief in a coming earthly paradise, where no one will labour (except the captive millionaires) and from whose skies roasted pigeons will fall straightway into the mouths of its foolish inhabitants.
Zola as a money-maker need not be considered now; his gains were enormous; suffice to say that he was paid large sums for the serial rights. Nana, in Voltaire, brought 20,000 francs; Pot-Bouille, in Gaulois, 30,000 francs; Bonheur des Dames, La Joie de Vivre, Germinal, L'Œuvre, La Terre, in Gil Blas, each 20,000 francs; L'Argent, in the same journal, 30,000 francs; Le Rêve, in the Revue Illustrée, 25,000 francs; La Bête Humaine, in Vie Populaire, 25,000 francs; La Débâcle, in the same, 30,000 francs, and Docteur Pascal in Revue Hebdomadaire, 35,000 francs. That amounts to about 300,000 francs. Each novel cost from 20,000 to 25,000 francs for rights of reproduction, and to all this must be added about 500,000 francs for the theatrical works, making a total of 1,600,000 francs. And it was in 1894 that these figures were compiled by Antoine Laporte in his book on Naturalism, which contains a savage attack on Zolaism. Truly, then, Zola may be fairly called one of the best sellers among all authors, dead or living.
XVI
A STUDY OF DE MAUPASSANT
In 1881 Turgenieff gave Tolstoy a book by a young Frenchman, telling him that he would find it amusing. This book was La Maison Tellier. Tolstoy revolted at the theme, but could not deny the freshness and power of the author. He found Maupassant "deficient in the moral sense"; yet he was interested and followed the progress of Flaubert's pupil. When Une Vie appeared, the Russian novelist pronounced it incomparably the best work of its author—perhaps the best French novel since Hugo's Les Misérables. He wrote this in an article entitled Guy de Maupassant and the Art of Fiction. It was doubtless the Norman's clear, robust vision that appealed to Tolstoy, who, at that period was undergoing a change of heart; else how could he call Les Misérables the greatest novel of France, he the writer of Anna Karenina—the antipodes of that windy apotheosis of vapid humanitarianism, the characteristic trait of Hugo's epic of pity and unreality.
But Maupassant affected Tolstoy as he had affected Turgenieff. Guy has told us of his first meeting with the latter, an artist superior to Tolstoy. "The first time I saw Turgenieff was at Gustave Flaubert's—a door opened; a giant came in, a giant with a silver head, as they would say in a fairy tale." This must have been in 1876, for in a letter dated January 24, 1877, Turgenieff writes: "Poor Maupassant is losing all his hair. He came to see me. He is as nice as ever, but very ugly just at present." In 1880 the young man published a volume of poetry, Des Vers. He was thirty years old (born August 5, 1850).