of inherited nature is the more manifest as he was of such tender years when his father died, and thus escaped the influence of companionship and example, which so often increase the resemblance of father and son. Ah, that poor contemned doctrine of heredity, as old as the world itself, how could Émile Zola fail to believe in it when he himself was a striking illustration of its workings?
François Zola's widow placed a modest slab upon her husband's grave in the cemetery of Aix, in which she herself was to be laid three and thirty years later. A cedar shades the tomb from the flaring sky poised over that glowing field of death, whence the view spreads to many a hill and mountain, clad in blue and purple. And on the slab, which is protected by iron chains dangling from granite billets, one reads: "François Zola, 1795–1847. Françoise Émilie Zola, née Aubert, 1819–1880." Aix, however, does not need the presence of that tomb to remind it of one of its most notable benefactors. Although François Zola died when his work was only in its first stage, although a little later his original scheme was foolishly cut down, in such wise as to necessitate other subsequent costly undertakings, and although thirty-one years elapsed before the water he had coveted at last entered Aix, the enterprise he planned has always been known popularly as the Zola Canal. Further, after its completion in 1868, the local municipality then in office, to efface in a measure the inconsiderate treatment of his widow and his son by previous municipalities, bestowed the name of Boulevard François Zola on a thoroughfare till then called the Boulevard du Chemin-neuf.[5]
The expression "inconsiderate treatment" is certainly not too severe a one to be applied to the action of some of the authorities of Aix in their dealings with Zola's widow, who, in her own name and her son's, inherited her husband's interest in the canal scheme. But she had to contend also with others associated with the work. It was virtually a repetition, or rather a variation, of the familiar story of the confiding inventor and the greedy capitalist. In this instance the inventor was dead, and only his heirs remained. He had fully disclosed his scheme, prepared his plans, and others were eager to profit by them. Thus his widow and his little boy were gradually regarded as incumbrances, nuisances. Why not set them aside? Why not rob them? Are not the widow and the orphan robbed every day? Besides, it is often easy to bamboozle a young and inexperienced woman in matters of law. Already at this time Madame Zola's parents had come to live with her at Aix; but her father was aged, and deficient, it would seem, in business capacity; while her mother, however bright, active, and thrifty, was not the woman to give unimpeachable advice on intricate legal questions. As for little Émile, now seven years old, he did not even know his letters; he spent happy, careless days in the sunshine, blissfully ignorant that trouble was assailing the home, and would some day destroy it. Yet it was he who, long years afterwards, avenged his father and his mother, in the only manner possibly in which they could be avenged. Perhaps it did not affect the despoilers personally; many of them, indeed, must have been dead at the time, and those who survived may have only sneered, for the gold was theirs. None the less the pictures of Aix and its society, traced in four or five volumes of the Rougon-Macquart novels, were instinct with retribution. Aix still raises ineffectual protests whenever it hears that name of Plassans which the novelist gave it, and which, though its origin was simple enough—for it was merely a modification of Plassans, the name of a village near Brignoles, southeast of Aix—acquired under Zola's caustic pen an element of opprobrium.
The displeasure of Aix in this respect has been the more marked as the city's past is not destitute of grandeur. One of the earliest stations of the Romans in Gaul, it became the metropolis of the Second Narbonensis, but its walls, porticoes, thermæ, arena, and temples were largely destroyed when the Saracens sacked it in the eighth century, and few memorials of its classic era now exist. As the capital of Provence in the days of "good King René," whose court was described by Scott in "Anne of Geierstein," Aix regained some lustre, followed half a century later by a period of trouble, many of its mediæval monuments being wrecked during the struggle between Francis I and Charles V, who was crowned King of Arles in the fane of St. Sauveur. Nevertheless, girdled by picturesque mountains, with its old town, new town, and faubourg, rich in stately edifices, pleasant promenades, and elegant fountains, Aix remains one of the notable cities of southern France. And if, administratively, as the French say, it is now only a sub-prefecture of the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône, it continues to be an archbishop's see, and retains its courts of justice and its faculties of theology, law, and letters. Its university is perhaps its greatest boast, though it is also proud of its museum and its splendid library, which is known to scholars all the world over. Thus Aix claims to be a city of enlightenment, not a town of Philistines, as it was largely pictured by Émile Zola; but one must remember that he described things as they were in his time, and that if a new and more active generation has arisen nowadays, it was preceded by others, somnolent and neglectful.
Aix has given several distinguished sons to France: the elder Vanloo; Vauvenargues, the moralist; Mignet, the historian; Brueys, the poet, and Brueys, the admiral who fell at the battle of the Nile; Michel Adanson and Piton de Tournefort, the eminent naturalists; François Granet, who translated Newton into French, and François Marius Granet, his nephew, who distinguished himself in art, and became one of the city's benefactors. Again, Portalis, the great jurisconsult, who prepared the Concordat which still binds France and the Papal See, was for a time one of the shining lights of the city, and Thiers, though born at Marseilles, completed his studies at Aix, took his degrees, and was called to the bar there. Curiously enough, the house where Thiers had lived in his student days was the first home of the Zolas at Aix. It stood at the end of a strip of road, a "no thoroughfare," called picturesquely the Impasse Sylvacanne. There was a large garden to the house, and in that garden little Émile disported himself as he listed.
His mother and grandmother spoilt him, as the saying goes. His father's death filled them with indulgence for his childish faults. He was a boy to be petted and humoured, for the greatest of misfortunes had fallen on him. Spending so much of his time in the open air, he was becoming quite a sturdy little fellow, sun-tanned, with soft, thoughtful eyes and a perky nose, and his incessant questions seemed to indicate the possession of an intelligent and eager mind. But, as yet, no attempt was made to educate him. His mother was already busy with her lawyers, striving to enforce her claims, and endeavouring also to obtain influential support. When Thiers came to Aix some four months after François Zola's death, the widow presented her little son to the great man in the hope of thereby arousing his sympathy. And Thiers certainly responded with fair words, though whether he went further is doubtful. At all events, lawsuits were started, and to the worry they entailed one must ascribe the comparative neglect in which young Émile remained a little longer.
At last, in the autumn of 1847, it was decided to send him to school. Some doubt as to the result of the lawsuits was already arising in the minds of Madame Zola and her parents, and they felt that they must at least provide for the boy's future by giving him a sound education. It was suggested that he should be sent immediately to the College of Aix—now called the Lycée Mignet; but as he did not even know his letters, Madame Aubert, his grandmother, sensibly decided to select a preparatory school. One was found near the Notre Dame gate, from which it derived its appellation of Pension Notre Dame. It was kept by a worthy and indulgent pedagogue, named Isoard, who after infinite trouble—for the boy was stubborn and bitterly regretted his careless life in the open air—contrived to teach him to read the Fables of La Fontaine. It was at this time that young Émile formed his earliest life-friendships; he became attached to two of his school-fellows, one of whom, Solari, a sculptor of distinguished talent, is still alive, while the other, Marius Roux, acquired a passing reputation as a "popular" novel writer.[6] These two were Zola's usual playmates at marbles, tops, and leap-frog, his first companions also in the rambles in which he began to indulge.
For some reason or other, Madame Zola and the Auberts moved from the Impasse Sylvacanne to the Pont-de-Beraud, in the open country, on the road to Toulon, and then young Émile had fields before him with a picturesque stream, the Torse, so called on account of its capricious windings—"a torrent in December, the most timid of rivulets in the fine weather," as he called it afterwards
