souls, thoughts, deeds, finally by the run of their conversation, but not by verbal quotation of their swearings and most horrid words.  As in the choice of pictures, so in the choice of expression, exist certain measures, pointed at by reason and good taste.  Zola overstepped it to such a degree ("La Terre”) to which nobody yet dared to approach.  Monsters are killed because they are monsters.  A book which is the cause of disgust must be abandoned.  It is the natural order of things.  From old production as of universal literature survive the forgetfulness of the rough productions, destined to excite laughter (Aristophanes, Rabelais, etc.), or lascivious things, but written with an elegance (Boccaccio).  Not one book written in order to excite nausea outlived.  Zola, for the sake of the renown caused by his works, for the sake of the scandal produced by every one of his volumes, killed his future.  On account of that happened a strange thing:  it happened that he, a man writing according to a conceived plan, writing with deliberation, cold and possessing his subjects as very few writers are, created good things only when he had the least opportunity to realize his plans, doctrines, means,—­in a word, when he dominated the subject the least and was dominated by the subject most.

Such was the case in “Germinal” and “La Debacle.”  The immensity of socialism and the immensity of the war simply crushed Zola with all his mental apparatus.  His doctrines became very small in the presence of such dimensions, and hardly any one hears of them in the noise of the deluge, overflowing the mine and in the thundering of Prussian cannons; only talent remained.  Therefore in both those books there are pages worthy of Dante.  Quite a different thing happened with “Docteur Pascal.”  Being the last volume of the cycle, it was bound to be the last deduction, from the whole work the synthesis of the doctrine, the belfry of the whole building.  Consequently in this volume Zola speaks more about doctrine than in any other previous volume; as the doctrine is bad, wicked, and false, therefore “Docteur Pascal” is the worst and most tedious book of all the cycle of Rougon-Macquart.  It is a series of empty leaves on which tediousness is hand in hand with lack of moral sense, it is a pale picture full of falsehood—­such is “Le Docteur Pascal.”  Zola wishes to have him an honest man.  He is the outcast of the family Rougon-Macquart.  In heredity there happens such lucky degenerations; the doctor knows about it, he considers himself as a happy exception, and it is for him a source of continuous inward pleasure.  In the mean while, he loves people, serves them and sells them his medicine, which cures all possible disease.  He is a sweet sage, who studies life, therefore he gathers “human documents,” builds laboriously the genealogical tree of the family of Rougon-Macquart, whose descendant he is himself, and on the strength of his observations he comes to the same conclusion as Zola.  To which?  It is difficult to answer the question; but here it is more or less:  if any one is not well, usually he is sick and that heredity exists, but mothers and fathers who come from other families can bring into the blood of children new elements; in that way heredity can be modified to such a degree that strictly speaking it does not exist.