During Desmoulin’s absence the master remained virtually alone at Oatlands, and as he still cared nothing for newspapers I sent him a few books from my shelves, and, among others, Stendhal’s ’La Chartreuse de Parme.’  He wrote me afterwards; ’I am very grateful to you for the books you sent.  Now that I am utterly alone they enabled me to spend a pleasant day yesterday.  I am reading “La Chartreuse.”  I am without news from France.  If you hear of anything really serious pray let me know about it.’

By this time proper arrangements had been made with regard to M. Zola’s correspondence.  His exact whereabouts were kept absolutely secret even from his most intimate friends.  Everybody, his wife and Maitre Labori also, addressed their letters to Wareham’s office in Bishopsgate Street.  Here the correspondence was enclosed in a large envelope and redirected to Oatlands.  With regard to visitors Wareham and I had decided to give the master’s address to none.  Wareham intended to take their cards, ascertain their London address, and then refer the matter through me to M. Zola.  Later on, a regular supply of French newspapers was arranged, and those journals were re-transmitted to the master by Wareham or myself.

On the other hand, I usually addressed M. Zola’s letters for him to the house of a trusty friend in Paris.  This precaution was a necessary one, as M. Zola’s handwriting is so extremely characteristic and so well known in France.  And thus we were convinced that any letter arriving in Paris addressed by him would immediately be sent to the ‘Cabinet Noir,’ where all suspicious correspondence is opened by certain officials, who immediately report the contents to the Government.

It has been pretended that of recent years this secret service has been abolished; but such is by no means the case.  It flourishes to-day in the same way as it flourished under the Second Empire, when Napoleon III. made a point of acquainting himself with the private correspondence of his own relatives, his ministers, and his generals.  After the revolution of September 1870, hundreds of copies of more or less compromising letters, covert attacks on or criticisms of the Imperial Government, billets-doux also between Imperial princes and their mistresses, and so forth, were found at the Palace of the Tuilleries; and some of them were even published by a commission nominated by the Republican Government.

Much of the same kind of thing goes on to-day, and M. Zola, when in Paris during the earlier stages of the Dreyfus case, had made it a point to trust no letter of the slightest importance to the Postal Service.  On one occasion, a short time after his arrival in England, we had reason to fear that a letter addressed by me to Paris had gone astray, and all correspondence on M. Zola’s side was thereupon suspended for several days.  However, the missing letter turned up at last, and from that time till the conclusion of the master’s exile the arrangements devised between him, Wareham, and myself worked without a hitch.