“Certainly, until I get a seat. There is no reason why I should be excluded from that body, and if I abstain from presenting my candidature, it might be construed as an admission on my part that I considered justified the action of the academicians against me.”
“When is your novel about ‘Lourdes’ going to appear?”
“Later than you think. I am working at present at Dr. Pascal, which closes my series of the Rougon Macquart novels.”
“Would it be indiscreet to ask you what subject you intend treating this time?”
“No. It will be a philosophical and scientific defence of the principal work of my life—the twenty volumes of the Rougon Macquarts. You see I attach the greatest importance to this, and therefore give special attention to my work, which is meant to be a justification of my theories and hardiesses. After this I’ll take ‘Lourdes’ in hand. ‘Lourdes’ will be followed by ‘Rome,’ and then by ‘Paris.’ They will form a triptych.”
emile zola.
“Namely?”
“Well, in the first I shall try to prove that the great scientific development of our time has inspired hopes in the mind of all classes, hopes which it has not realised to the satisfaction of the most impressionable, therefore the most exacting and unreasonable minds. How such minds have returned with greater conviction to the belief in the existence of something more powerful than science, a something which can alleviate the evils from which they suffer, or imagine they do.
“Among these there may even be social philanthropists, who may think that divine intercession is more efficacious to cure the suffering of the people than anarchist theories. In my ‘Rome’ I shall treat of the Neo-Catholicism, with its ambitions, its struggle, etc., as distinct from the pure religious sentiment of the pilgrims of ‘Lourdes.’