Claude's Confession and Other Early Novels of Émile Zola. Эмиль Золя

      DEDICATION.

      Table of Contents

      To my Friends, P. Cézanne and J. B. Baille.

      You knew, my friends, the wretched youth whose letters I now publish. That youth is no more. He wished to become a man amid the wreck and oblivion of his early days.

      I have long hesitated about giving the following pages to the public. I doubted my right to lay bare a body and a heart; I questioned myself, asking if it was allowable to divulge the secret of a confession. Then, when I re-read the panting and feverish letters, hanging together by a mere thread, I was discouraged; I said to myself that readers would, doubtless, accord but a cold reception to such a delirious and excited publication. Grief has but one cry: the work is an incessant complaint. I hesitated as a man and as a writer.

      At last, I thought, one day, that our age has need of lessons and that I had, perhaps, in my hands, the means of curing a few wounded hearts. People wish poets and novelists to moralize. I knew not how to mount the pulpit, but I possessed the work of blood and tears of a poor soul — I could, in my turn, instruct and console. Claude’s avowals had the supreme precept of sobs, the high and pure moral of the fall and the redemption.

      I then saw that these letters were such as they should be. I have no idea how the public will accept them, but I have faith in their frankness, even in their fury. They are human.

      Hence, my friends, I resolved to publish this book. I took my decision in the name of truth and the general good. Besides, looking above the masses, I thought of you: it would please me to relate to you again the terrible story, which has already filled your eyes with tears.

      This story is bare and true even to crudity. The delicate may not like it, but

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