"Poor old mamma!" said I, taking him by the hand. "You can always find comfort in the thought that you have done a noble action."
"It was a pretty good scheme," replied Zola. "A million pounds sterling paid to your best advertising mediums couldn't have brought in a quarter the same amount of fame or notoriety; and then, you see, it places me on a par with Hugo, who was exiled. That's really what I wanted, Miss Witherup. Hugo was a poseur, however, and if he hadn't had the kick to be born before me—"
"Ah," said I, interrupting, for I have rather liked Hugo. "And where do you wish to go?"
"To America," he replied, dramatically. "To America. It is the only country in the world where realism is not artificial. You are a simple, unaffected, outspoken people, who can hate without hating, can love without marrying, can fight without fighting. I love you."
"Sir—or rather mamma!" said I, somewhat indignantly, for as a married man Zola had no right to make a declaration like that, even if he is a Frenchman.
"Not you as you," he hastened to say, "but you as an American I love. Ah, who is your best publisher, Miss Witherup?"
I shall not tell you what I told Zola, but they may get his next book.
"M. Zola," said I, placing great emphasis on the M, "tell me, what interested you in Dreyfus—humanity—or literature?"
"Both," he replied; "they are the same. Literature that is not humanity is not literature. Humanity that does not provide literary people with opportunity is not broad humanity, but special and selfish, and therefore is not humanity at all."