La Fortune des Rougon was not particularly successful on its publication, but in view of the fact that the war with Germany was barely concluded no surprise need be experienced.  Zola’s financial position was, however, by the arrangement with his publisher now more secure, and he felt justified in marrying.  This he did, and settled down into the quiet bourgeois existence in which his life was spent.

The next book was La Curee, a study of the mushroom society of the Second Empire.  The subject—­the story of Phaedra adapted to modern environment—­is unpleasant and the treatment is daring; but despite a slight succes de scandale, its reception by the public was no more favorable than that of La Fortune des Rougon.

La Curee was followed by Le Ventre de Paris, which reached a second edition.  It contained some excellent descriptive writing, but was severely attacked by certain critics, who denounced it as the apotheosis of gluttony, while they resented the transference of a pork butcher’s shop to literature and took particular exceptions to a certain “symphony of cheeses.”

Next came La Conquete de Plassans, an excellent story, to be followed by La Faute de l’Abbe Mouret, one of Zola’s most romantic books, and the first to attain any considerable success.  He next wrote Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, in which he dealt with the political side of the Second Empire and sketched the life of the Imperial Court at Compiegne.  For this task he was not particularly well equipped, and the book was only moderately successful.  Then came L’Assommoir, and with it fame and fortune for the writer.  It is a terrible story of working-class life in Paris, a study of the ravages wrought by drink.  Again to quote Mr. Andrew Lang, “It is a dreadful but not an immoral book.  It is the most powerful temperance tract that ever was written.  As M. Zola saw much of the life of the poor in his early years, as he once lived, when a boy, in one of the huge lodging-houses he describes, one may fear that L’Assommoir is a not untruthful picture of the lives of many men and women in Paris.”

In order to heighten the effect, Zola deliberately wrote the whole of L’Assommoir in the argot of the streets, sparing nothing of its coarseness and nothing of its force.  For this alone he was attacked by many critics, and from its publication onwards an unexampled controversy arose regarding the author and his methods.  Looking backwards it is difficult to see why such an outcry should have arisen about such a masterpiece of literature, but water has flowed beneath many bridges since 1877, and, largely by the influence of Zola’s own work, the limits of convention have been widely extended.  At the time, however, the work was savagely attacked, and to the author the basest motives were assigned, while libels on his own personal character were freely circulated.  Zola replied to these attacks in a