the first instance generally appeared as feuilletons in Paris newspapers, were "Eugénie Lamour," "Francis et Mariette," "Les Mariages Jaunes," and "Evariste Planchu, Mœurs vraies du Quartier Latin," the last named being perhaps his best book.
[7] "Palmarès du Collège d'Aix," 1853 et seq.
[8] P. Alexis, l. c., p. 21.
[9] An accessit is a distinction conferred, in French colleges, on the three pupils who come nearest to a prize winner.
[10] Zola's "L'Œuvre," Chap. II.
[11] "If it is good King René whom you seek, you will find him at this time walking in his chimney … the narrow parapet yonder; it extends between these two towers, has an exposure to the south, and is sheltered in every other direction. Yonder it is his pleasure to walk and enjoy the beams of the sun on such cool mornings as the present. It nurses, he says, his poetical vein."—Scott's "Anne of Geierstein," Chap. XXIX.
[12] Zola's "Le Docteur Pascal."
[13] "Le Docteur Pascal."
[14] Ibid.
[15] "The Athenæum," No. 3686, June 18, 1898, p. 785.
[16] "Le Docteur Pascal."
[17] Zola's "Documents Littéraires," p. 88 (abbreviated).
[18] Zola's "L'Aérienne" (1860) in Alexis, l. c., p. 265 et seq.
[19] Zola's "Nos Auteurs Dramatiques," p. 42.
[20] "Documents Littéraires," p. 90.
[21] "L'Œuvre," Chap. II.
[22] Zola's Verses, "À mes Amis" (Lycée St. Louis, 1858).
[23] Zola's first book, inspired largely by memories of Provence, and issued in Paris in 1864.
[24] Zola's "Nina," 1859. Readers of "La Fortune des Rougon" (which Zola wrote some ten years later) will remember that the old tombstone figures also in that work, in which the inscription is given as "Here lieth … Marie … died … ," the finger of time having effaced the rest. There is, however, an evident connection between the names Nina and Ninon, and perhaps they suggested Nana.
[25] From the mediæval Latin, barrium (Ducange).
[26] See ante, p. 27.
[27] Alexis, l. c., pp. 40, 41.
[28] It seems probable that he had already spent his Easter holidays there that year; for some of his verses, "Ce que je veux," are dated Aix, May, 1859. See Alexis, l. c., p. 297.
III
BOHEMIA—DRUDGERY—FIRST BOOKS
1860–1866
A clerkship at the Docks Napoléon—Peregrinations through the Quartier Latin—Zola joined there by Cézanne—He lives in a glass cage—"L'Amoureuse Comédie"—Poetry and poverty—"Genesis"—Spring rambles—The Quartier Latin in 1860—Love in a garret—"La Confession de Claude," and the den in the Rue Soufflot—The fairy of one's twentieth year—Terrible straits—"Playing the Arab"—"Good for nothing"—Help from Dr. Boudet—Zola is engaged by M. Hachette and emerges from Bohemia—Hachette's authors and Zola—Fresh Peregrinations—Short stories—Zola's "band"—His correspondence with Antony Valabrègue—"Contes à Ninon"—Zola weaned from idyl and fable—"Madame Bovary"—Duality of Zola's nature—His improved circumstances—Newspaper articles—The lesson of "Henriette Maréchal—"La Confession de Claude" published—Zola's opinion of it—Barbey d'Aurévilly's attack and a threatened prosecution—Zola quits Hachette's, and refuses to pander to fools.
After choosing a scientific career, and then aspiring to poetic fame as great as that of Hugo or Musset, to sink even momentarily to a junior clerkship, worth sixty francs a month,[1] at the "Docks" in the Rue de la Douane, was hard indeed. Yet such became Zola's fate. Some who have written of the episode have fallen into various errors. An American account says that the young man became a dock labourer; an English biographer has referred to his place of employment as a business house. But on consulting any plan of Paris as it was in 1860 or thereabouts, it will be seen that a great entrepôt, with offices for the collection of the state customs and the municipal dues, then adjoined the "Docks Napoléon," where goods, coming into Paris by the St. Martin Canal, were landed. The establishment of this entrepôt and its adjuncts was carried out between 1833 and 1840;[2] the adjoining Rue de la Douane took its name from the enterprise, and it was there, then, that Zola, after failing at his examinations, secured employment as a clerk, the situation being found for him by his father's friend, Maître Labot, the advocate.
But the salary was the barest pittance. How could a young man of twenty live, in Paris, on two francs a day? Moreover, there was no prospect whatever of any "rise." At the expiration, therefore, of two months—after trudging a couple of miles twice a day between the "Docks" and the Quartier Latin, passing on the road the great Central Markets, whose wondrous life he now began to observe—Zola threw up this employment; and from the beginning of March, 1860, till the end of that year, then all through 1861, and the first three months of 1862, he led a life of dire Bohemian poverty. On arriving in Paris in February, 1858, he had lived with his mother at 63, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. Thence, in January, 1859, they had moved to 241, Rue St. Jacques, a narrow and ancient thoroughfare, long one of the main arteries of Paris, intimately associated, too, with the student history of the original Quartier Latin. But in April, 1860, at the time when Zola quitted the "Docks," he and his mother found a cheaper lodging at 35, Rue St. Victor, another old street, on the slope of the "Montagne Ste. Geneviève," towards the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes.
Here Zola's room was one of a few lightly built garrets, raised over the house-roof proper, and constituting a seventh "floor"; the leads in front forming a terrace whence the view embraced nearly all Paris. While Zola was lodging
