That same morning our own ‘Daily Chronicle’ announced M. Zola’s presence at a London hotel, and on the following day the ‘Morning Leader’ was in a position to state that the hotel in question was the Grosvenor.  Both ‘Chronicle’ and ‘Leader’ were right; but as I had received pressing instructions to contradict all rumours of M. Zola’s arrival in London, I did so in this instance through the medium of the Press Association.  I here frankly acknowledge that I thus deceived both the Press and the public.  I acted in this way, however, for weighty reasons, which will hereafter appear.

At this point I would simply say that M. Zola’s interests were, in my estimation, of far more consequence than the claims of public curiosity, however well meant and even flattering its nature.

One effect of the Press Association’s contradiction was to revive the Norway and Switzerland stories.  Several papers, while adhering to the statement that M. Zola had been in London, added that he had since left England with his wife, and that Hamburg was their immediate destination.  And thus the game went merrily on.  M. Zola’s arrival at Hamburg was duly reported.  Then he sailed on the ‘Capella’ for Bergen, where his advent was chronicled by Reuter.  Next he was setting out for Trondhiem, whence in a few days he would join his friend Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the novelist, at the latter’s estate of Aulestad in the Gudbrandsdalen.  Bjornson, as it happened, was then at Munich, in Germany, but this circumstance did not weigh for a moment with the newspapers.  The Norway story was so generally accepted that a report was spread to the effect that M. Zola had solicited an audience of the Emperor William, who was in Norway about that time, and that the Kaiser had peremptorily refused to see him, so great was the Imperial desire to do nothing of a nature to give umbrage to France.

As I have already mentioned, the only true reports (so far as London was concerned) were those of two English newspapers, but even they were inaccurate in several matters of detail.  For instance, the lady currently spoken of as Mme. Zola was my own wife, who, it so happens, is a Frenchwoman.  At a later stage the ‘Daily Mail’ hit the nail on the head by signalling M. Zola’s presence at the Oatlands Park Hotel; but so many reports having already proved erroneous, the ‘Mail’ was by no means certain of the accuracy of its information, and the dubitative form in which its statement was couched prevented the matter from going further.

At last a period of comparative quiet set in, and though gentlemen of the Press were still anxious to extract information from me, nothing further appeared in print as to M. Zola’s whereabouts until the ‘Times’ Paris correspondent, M. de Blowitz, contributed to his paper, early in the present year, a most detailed and amusing account of M. Zola’s flight from France and his subsequent movements in exile.  In this narrative one found Mme.