And now on the Rue de la Victoria stands the abandoned house, "The Accursed House," whose history I have told you. Dust thickens upon the closed slats, grass grows in the court. No tenant ever presents himself now; and in the quarter, where stands this Accursed House, so funereal is its reputation that even the neighboring houses on either side of it have also depreciated in value.
Lower one's rents!! Who would think of such a thing!!!
THE FÊTE AT COQUEVILLE
BY ÉMILE ZOLA
"Jacques Damour" is the greatest of Zola's short stories, but its length precludes its use here.
"Zola," says Edmund Gosse, "has rarely displayed the quality of humor, but it is present in the story called 'The Fête at Coqueville.'"
This scientific collector of "human documents" is probably the most widely read of modern French authors. He was born at Paris in 1840, the son of an Italian engineer. In 1871 he began that long series for which he has been so much censured, the twenty volumes of "Rougon-Macquart," the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire. Zola died by asphyxiation in 1902.
Though Zola has a predilection for the ugly side of life, he offends only against taste and not against morals. It was a splendid act of heroism, that manifesto of his called "J'Accuse" in which he defended Dreyfus in 1898, and for which he was imprisoned and fined.
