of wasting a few inches of longcloth, and thus if the ordinary ready-made shirt on sale at shops of the average class is dressy-looking enough, it is also often supremely uncomfortable to those who like their ease.  Such, at least, was the master’s experience; and in certain respects, said he, the English shirt was not only uncomfortable, but indecorous as well.  This astonished him with a nation which claimed to show so much regard for the proprieties.

The desire to clothe himself according to his wont became so keen that M. Desmoulin decided to make an expedition to Paris.  All this time Mme. Zola had remained alone at the house in the Rue de Bruxelles, outside which, as at Medan (where the Zolas have their country residence), detectives were permanently stationed.  Mme. Zola was shadowed wherever she went, the idea, of course, being that she would promptly follow her husband abroad.  She had, however, ample duties to discharge in Paris.  At the same time she much wished to send her husband a trunkful of clothes as well as the materials for a new book he had planned, in order that he might have some occupation in his sorrow and loneliness.

Most people are by this time aware that M. Zola’s gospel is work.  In diligent study and composition he finds some measure of solace for every trouble.  At times it is hard for him to take up the pen, but he forces himself to do so, and an hour later he has largely banished sorrow and anxiety, and at times has even dulled physical pain.  He himself, heavy hearted as he was when the first novelty of his strolls around Oatlands had worn off, felt that he must have something to do, and was therefore well pleased at the prospect of receiving the materials for his new book, ‘Fecondite.’

At that date he certainly did not imagine that the whole of this work would be written in England, that his exile would drag on month after month till winter would come and spring return, followed once more by summer.  In those days we used to say:  ’It will all be over in a fortnight, or three weeks, or a month at the latest;’ and again and again did our hopes alternately collapse and revive.  Thus the few chapters of ‘Fecondite,’ which he thought he might be able to pen in England, multiplied and multiplied till they at last became thirty—­the entire work.

It was M. Desmoulin who brought the necessary materials—­memoranda, cuttings, and a score of scientific works—­from Paris.  And at the same time he had a trunk with him full of clothes which had been smuggled in small parcels out of M. Zola’s house, carried to the residence of a friend, and there properly packed.  Desmoulin also brought a hand camera, which likewise proved very acceptable to the master, and enabled him to take many little photographs—­almost a complete pictorial record of his English experiences.