spent in the topmost rooms.  After bringing the master up from the country, I took him one morning down to Norwood, and he cordially approved of the arrangements which had been made for him.  There was only one thing amiss.  Wareham and I had been promised that he should have a waiter speaking French to attend on him; and the one provided knew perhaps just a few words of that language.  However, he was very intelligent, very discreet, very willing to oblige—­a pattern waiter of the good old English school.  And when I had explained to him exactly what would be required, he took due note of everything, and for many months the arrangements that were made worked virtually without a hitch.

If M. Zola’s surroundings had altered, the routine of his life remained the same as formerly.  With regard to his novel ‘Fecondite’ he had, as the saying goes, ‘warmed to his work,’ which he pursued at the Queen’s Hotel with unflagging energy.

Knowing his habits I never (unless under exceptional circumstances) visited him till he had finished his daily quantum of ‘copy,’ that was about the luncheon hour.  Then we would talk business, communicate to one another such news as might be necessary, and at times exchange impressions with regard to the incidents of the day.

Among other matters often discussed were the English birth-rate and the rearing of English children, points which deeply interested M. Zola, as they were germane to the subject of ‘Fecondite.’  I could at first only give him general information, but the Rev. R. Ussher, vicar of Westbury, Bucks, the able author of ‘Neo-Malthusianism,’ very kindly sent me a copy of his exhaustive work, which contained many particulars on the points that principally interested M. Zola.  Moreover, Mr. George P. Brett, the President of the Macmillan Company of New York (M.  Zola’s American publishers), supplied him with some interesting information respecting the United States.

With regard to England, M. Zola had been much struck by certain proceedings instituted during his exile against medical men, midwives, and others, proceedings which seemed to point to the existence in this country of a state of affairs much akin to that prevailing in France.  The affair of the brothers Chrimes, who first sold bogus medicines and then proceeded to blackmail the women who had purchased them, was, in Zola’s estimation, particularly significant, for here were hundreds and hundreds of Englishwomen applying to those men for the means of accomplishing the greatest crime against Nature there could be.

On that point M. Zola spoke in no uncertain language.  He understood well enough that the authorities could not justly single out a few of those hundreds of women for prosecution and punishment:  but he censured the women quite as much as he censured the convicted men, who were, after all, but common scoundrels.

And he was amazed to find that so few English newspapers ventured to speak out on the matter.  There were plenty of leaderettes on the cunning shown by the men, but the alacrity of the women to purchase the bogus medicines was, as a rule, lightly passed over; and great as is M. Zola’s admiration for the English Press in many respects, he could but regard its attitude towards the Chrimes case as lamentably inadequate and lacking in moral courage.