Tols toº.
Zola vs.
Fecundity" vs. “The Kreutzer Sonata
By Hannah Lynch
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Zola vs. Tolstoi:
OR,
“Fecundity” vs. “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
By
Hannah Lynch
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ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.”
M. Zola's new book, “Fécondité, '' offers us a liberal dis-
play of the qualities and defects of the author’s strange tem-
perament. Morbid uncleanliness and exuberant optimism
are revealed in an extraordinary union. He turns from hymn-
ing nature and natural law with a splendid fervor and a
touching sincerity to revel in odious details, in every kind of
physical horror, in a nightmare conception of city life and
city evils. M. Zola understands fiction as the art of devel-
oping a single idea through an intolerable intricacy of move-
ment and characters, one apparently as unessential as the
other, but all tending with the writer's inexorable delibera-
tion to the triumph of the theory of the hour. His novels are
sermons of an interminable prolixity, in which humanity is
treated with a grotesque unfairness and made to comport itself
with all the extravagance, the excess, and lack of intelligence
and soul the author needs as fitting arguments in pointing his
crude and uncomplex morals.
In writing of M. Zola's last book it is hardly necessary to
say anything of the style, for the reason that that which does
not exist cannot command attention. “ Fécondité” resembles
its predecessors by a perfect absence of style, and startles,
like all the rest of M. Zola's powerful and unpleasing novels,
by its immensity of plan, wealth of incongruities, reckless-
ness of imagination, and nauseous abundance of obscenities
quite alien to the purpose of the novel, uncurbed eloquence, a
display of superficial pedantry, length of phrase, boldness of
spirit, and an ever-surprising poverty of soul. But where it
differs from the rest is in the unexpected revelation of a
freshness and an animal simplicity, a sunshine and gaiety we
welcome as something new in M. Zola's works. Was it in his
exile in England that this terrible naturalist fell in love with
simple family life, and began to understand how clean and
*Originally printed in the “Fortnightly Review.”
3

4. ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
healthy and enjoyable a thing existence may be if you only let
in a little pure air upon it, and brighten it with the laughter
of children and the charm and gaiety of untainted youth 2
Like all M. Zola's convictions, this new conviction of his,
that salvation lies in large families, has taken hold of him
with deadly seriousness. He is not a man of half-faiths, of
dim ideals, of vague conclusions. What he believes, he
believes with the earnestness of an apostle, and, when he
strives to impart his faith to us, he does so with all the pas-
sion of a dogmatist. Here is his latest confession of faith,
which forms the thesis of this long, long book :
The most life possible for the greatest possible happiness. Such is the
act of faith in life, the act of hope in its good and just work. Victorious fe-
cundity remained the unquestioned force, the sovereign power which alone
wrought the future. It was the great revolutionary, the incessant worker of
progress, the mother of all civilizations, recreating ceaselessly the army of
her innumerable strugglers, casting along the course of centuries millions of
poor, of hungry, of insurgent, towards the conquest of truth and justice.
There has not been made in history a single step in advance without the for-
ward impetus of humanity coming from its number. To-morrow, as yester-
day, will be conquered by the pullulation of the crowds in the quest of happi-
ness. And it will mean the benefits expected of our age—economical equality
at length obtained as political equality has been obtained; the just distribution
of wealth rendered henceforward easy; compulsory labor re-established in its
glorious necessity. It is not true that it has been imposed upon man in pun-
ishment of his sins; it is, on the contrary, an honor, a nobility, the most
precious of goods, the joy, the health, the strength, the very soul of the world,
which is ever in labor, in creation of the future. Childbirth is travail. Our
life lived normally, without imbecile perversion, is travail, the very rhythm of
the great daily labor which carries the world onward to the eternity of its
destiny. And poverty, that abominable social crime, will disappear in the
glorification of work, in the distribution amongst all of the universal task, each
one having accepted his legitimate share of duties and rights. And let the
children swarm, they will prove but instruments of wealth, the increase of
human capital, of free and happy existence, without turning the children of
one-half into flesh for labor, for butchery and prostitution for the egoism of
the children of the other. And it will be life still that shall conquer, the
renascence of life honored, adored; of the religion of life, crushed beneath
the long, the execrable nightmare of Catholicism, of which twice already—in
the fifteenth and in the eighteenth century—nations have striven violently to
free themselves, and which they will stamp out at last in the future, when the
fruitful earth, the fruitful woman, shall become once more the worship, the
all-powerful and all-sovereign beauty.
There is scarce a chapter in the book that has not some such
pages addressed in passionate emphasis to humanity at large.

ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI. 5
Resist, subdue. In order to resist and subdue, increase and multiply. In
the immortality of your stock, forget or accept the transcience of your souls.
Worship life; give life; life in all its forms. Be the parents of numerous
children; make also two blades of grass grow where one grew before. En-
large your hearts; enlarge your families; enlarge the sphere of your action.
Have children, but not as the poor man who lets his offspring wither and
blight in the gutter. Have children, and work to breed them fortunately in
that large, free, adventurous, strong-willed, and strong-fibred liberty, which
already, distinct on the horizon, is the ideal of to-morrow.
Some years ago another writer, a man of genius he, Leo
Tolstoi, wrote an extraordinary book, as much and as passion-
ately in the form of a gospel as this one. It was as brief as
“Fécondité" is long, as lugubrious as “ Fécondité '' is sunny
in its best and brightest parts, as intense in its conviction,
written like “Fécondité" with a purpose. But, while Zola
carries us forward with perfervid eloquence upon the mighty
and impetuous stream of life, Tolstoi, in the “ Kreutzer
Sonata,” retreats backward into mediaeval asceticism, and
condemns all sensual relations with the bitterness and scorn of
an anchorite. On the one hand we have M. Zola preaching the
not unfamiliar doctrine that physical love, on the sole con-
dition that it results in multiplication of the species, is the
highest ideal we can or ought to attain. He proclaims it to
be the purport for which man himself was created, and for him
the prosperity and happiness of mankind will increase with
an increased affinity between mankind and the beasts. The
beasts have no higher aspiration than that of producing and
feeding their young, and so he argues that this should content
normal and healthy man. Turn, now, to the doctrine of
Count Tolstoi as preached with a no less unpleasant insistence
in the “ Kreutzer Sonata.” This is how he speaks of love,
which the poets and romancers of all ages have ever taught us
to reverence and desire :
What is peculiarly revolting about all this (the bickerings and hostilities of
early married life) is that, whereas, in theory, love is described as an ideal
state, a sublime sentiment, in practice it is a thing which cannot be mentioned
or called to mind without a feeling of disgust. It was not without cause that
nature made it so. But, if it be revolting, let it be proclaimed so without any
disguise. Instead of that, however, people go about preaching and teaching
that it is something splendid and sublime.

6 ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
Again, in speaking of woman’s sexual servitude to man, he
exclaims bitterly:
In the face of this they prate about freedom, about woman's rights. Why,
the cannibals might just as well boast that they were solicitous for the rights
and liberty of the prisoners of war whom they feed and fatten for food.
Like M. Zola, Tolstoi, in his haughty fashion, feels some
concern for man’s offspring, though he would restrain its
birth.
Brute beasts seem to be instinctively aware that their progeny serves to per-
petuate the race, and they observe a certain law in this connection. Man
alone does not know this, and does not want to know it. He wrecks and ruins
one-half of the human race; he transforms all women, who should be active
coadjutors, aiding humanity to move onwards towards truth and happiness,
into enemies of progress and development.
Both prophets have the same goal in view, happiness and
progress. And both choose paths diametrically opposed one to
the other. M. Zola would have every woman married at seven-
teen, and the mother of no less than twelve or fourteen chil-
dren. That is his panacea for every ill upon earth. Inces-
sant maternity for woman; unceasing labor for man. Behold
a society remodelled, improved, made virtuous, happy, and
prosperous. This is what Count Tolstoi thinks of marriage
and maternity under the existing laws of civilization:
Woman's serfdom consists in the circumstance that she is looked upon and
sought after as an instrument of pleasure, and that this view is considered the
right one. And then woman is solemnly enfranchised, is invested with exten-
sive rights, equal to those exercised by men, but people continue to regard her
as an instrument of pleasure, continue to educate her accordingly, instilling
those views into her mind, and, later on, by means of public opinion. And so
she remains what she was, a degraded, demoralized serf, as man remains
what he was, a demoralized slave-owner. We enfranchise woman in high
schools and hospital wards, and yet continue to look upon her as before.
Train her as she is trained in Russia, to regard herself in that light, and she
will remain forever a being of a lower order. Gymnasiums and high schools
are powerless to change this; it can only be altered by a change in men's
views of women, and women's views of themselves. It can only be sup-
planted by a better state of things when woman considers that the highest con-
dition to which she, as woman, can attain is that of maidenhood—a state
which she now regards as one of shame and disgrace. Until this change of
idea takes place, the ideal of every girl, whatever her education may be, will
necessarily remain what it now is to attract as many men as possible, in
order to secure for herself the possibility of choosing; and the circumstance

ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI. 7
that one girl knows more mathematics, or another can play the harp, does not
change one iota. A woman is happy, and attains all that she desires, when
she captivates a man; hence the great object of her life is to master the art
of captivating men. So it has ever been and so it will be. In the life of a
young girl in our sphere this tendency is clearly observable, and she carries it
with her into the married state. To the maiden it is indispensable, in order
that she may have an extensive choice; to the married woman, that she may
strengthen her ascendancy over her husband.
The one delightful feature of “Fécondité '' is the irresis-
tible joy M. Zola takes in children. The reader feels to the
full the exquisite pleasure he imparts through his descriptions
of the intimate details of Marianne's nursery. He lingers so
joyously over the children’s cots, notes the flush, the fever,
the soft placidity and quaint attitudes of infantine slumber,
contemplates with such naive rapture the repasts of babies,
whether at the breast or at table, takes such active part in
their romps out-of-doors, that it seems to us incredible that
his imagination should leap from those dewy altitudes into the
grimy horrors of obscenity. Could anything be more pure and
charming than such a little picture of family life as this?
Marianne is in bed, and a knocking against the wall is
heard.
“Ah, the scamps,” cried Mathieu, gaily. “They’re awake. Well, well,
it's Sunday, so let them come.” -
In the next room for the past minute there was quite a noise of an aviary
humming. You could hear a chatter, a shrill twitter, broken by cascades of
laughter. Then there were dull thuds, no doubt pillows and bolsters flying,
while two little fists continued to drum against the wall.
“Yes, yes,” said the mother, smiling and uneasy; "tell them to come in;
they'll break everything.”
The father in turn rapped loudly. This, on the other side of the wall, was
a signal for an explosion of victory, shrieks of triumphant joy. And the
father had barely time to open the door when in the passage was heard a
patter and a rush. There was all the flock, and it was a magnificent invasion.
The four were in their long nightdresses, which fell to their little naked feet,
and they trotted and they laughed. Their soft brown hair flying, their visages
so rosy, their eyes shining with such a candid joy that they shed light around.
Ambroise, though he was the second-born, hardly five, walked first, being the
most enterprising, the boldest. Behind came the twins, Blaise and Denis,
proud of their seven years, more thoughtful; above all the second, who was
teaching the others to read, whereas the first, always timid, somewhat of a
coward, remained the dreamer of the band. And each held a hand of Made-
moiselle Rose, as lovely as a little angel, dragging her now to the right, now
to the left, in the midst of shouts of laughter, but whose two years and two
months held their own gallantly, and stood afoot.

8 ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
“Ah, you know, mamma,” cried Ambroise, “I’m not warm, not a bit.
Make a wee place for me.”
With a bound he sprang upon the bed and dived under the quilt, shivering
up against his mother, so that only the little laughing head, with its fine curly
hair, could be seen. At this sight the twins uttered a loud war-cry, and,
springing up in turn, invaded the besieged town.
“Make room for me; make a wee little place, mamma! There at your
back, mamma, near your shoulder.”
Only Rose remained on the floor, beside herself, furious. In vain did she
attempt the assault; she inevitably fell down. “And me, mamma; and me,”
she cried.
The father had to help her as she crawled up and balanced herself with her
two fists, and the mother caught her in her arms, and it was she who had the
best place. At first the father trembled, fearing this band of invading con-
querors would hurt their poor mamma. But she reassured him, laughing
loudly with them. No, no; they would not hurt her; they only brought her
happy caresses. And he stood marvelling, so amusing, of such a gay and
adorable beauty was the picture. Ah, the beautiful and goodly Mother
Gigogne, as she laughingly called herself at times, with Rose on her breast,
Ambroise half hidden against her side, Blaise and Denis behind her shoul-
ders! It was quite a brood, little pink beaks lifted on all sides, soft ruffled
hair like feathers, while she herself, with the whiteness and freshness of
milk, triumphed gloriously in her fecundity, vibrant with the life she was
ready to bestow again.
Such a picture as that, written with such genuine enthusi-
asm and conviction, is enough to make the gruffest old bach-
elor in love with marriage. It is all laughter and sunshine;
little pink faces and fluffy soft hair and pattering feet, and
shrill cries of joy about an enchanted mother, with, for spec-
tator, an enraptured father, in the early morning light.
There is nothing common or sordid about the intimate scene,
still less is it overdrawn or idealized. It is as pure and as
lovely as dew, as fragrant as honeysuckle, as sweet-toned as
the lilt of water or the song of birds. It is just an exquisite
idyll, in which mere life and motherhood are revealed to us
with freshness and charm. Turn now to Tolstoi upon the same
subject. Joy in children is a joy he does not understand.
Consider what lying goes on concerning children. Children are a blessing
from God-children are a joy. Now all this is a lie. Children are a torment,
and nothing more. . . . . Under the most favorable circumstances—that
is, when in thriving health-children are a torment; but, when they fall ill,
life is positively not worth living, it is simply a hell on earth. . . . . word
would suddenly be brought that Vasa was taken sick, that Mary had a bowel
complaint, that a rash had broken out on Andy's body or face, and from that
moment began our martyrdom anew. To what part of the city should we

ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI. 9
rush off, which doctor should we send for, in what room should we isolate the
sick child? And then began the endless series of injections, measurings of
temperatures, mixtures, potions, and doctors. And, before this came to an
end, something else would crop up unexpectedly, and so on without end. As
I said before, it was one continual escape from fancied and from real dangers.
And the same thing goes on still in the majority of families. In our family
it was painfully palpable. My wife loved her children dearly, and was credu-
lous; so that the presence of children, far from contributing to better our life,
only poisoned it. Moreover, the children were for us a new pretext for
quarrelling. Each of us specially favored one child, which was our pet in-
strument in the quarrel . . . and, as they grew up, they gradually became
our allies, whom we sought to enlist on our side by every means at our
disposal.
This is a picture of fatherhood as bitter and sombre as
Zola's is radiant and fervent. The hesitating bachelor lured
to consider favorably the thought of marriage by the latter’s
sunny page is here invited to hug his celibacy as a blessing.
All that Zola admires in marriage with extravagant passion
Tolstoi condemns, but, while the latter degrades marriage with
his ascetic contempt, Zola bestializes it with Pagan devotion.
I do not use the word ‘‘ bestialize '' with the conventional im-
plication: I mean that Zola reduces man and woman to the
mere state of animal. He eliminates mind and soul; heart
with him is interpreted as health; and virtue is the continu-
ous production of the species. For this new book of his,
untranslatable as it is, unclean and depressing in its exag-
gerated and ruthless exposure of an evil of the hour, is emi-
nently, pugnaciously virtuous in Zola's strictly material con-
ception of virtue. The patriarch’s ideal of conduct in a
desert is the only ideal of conduct he preaches. All higher
law escapes him. The state of maidenhood he regards as a
scandal and a crime. His abhorrence of sterility amounts to
monomania, and “‘Fécondité" is in parts a hideous sermon
on the vice of restricted families, in seven hundred and fifty
closely-printed pages. The subject has taken hold of him
with the clutch of disease, and he spares us none of the horrors
with which his imagination is beset. For there can be no
doubt that Zola's mind is irremediably tainted. It is not
possible to regard as a creature of perfect mental health a
writer with so pronounced a taste as his for all the unspeakable
foulnesses of existence. How does he manage to get through

10 ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
with his unsavory task? Surely there are times when he is
forced to hold his nose and shut his eyes to shut out the
abominable visions he conjures up for us? If all this is to do
us good and to improve the world, then it must be admitted
there never was a more disinterested philanthropist. It is
like condemning oneself to live with the lepers in order to
arrest the progress of leprosy. One risks one’s skin without.
any sensible diminution of leprosy. M. Zola has fallen the
victim of his own exasperated indignation. He set out with a
lamp to penetrate all the vilest recesses of Paris in a diligent
and futile search for the ignoble, and the result is that he has
come to see the ignoble everywhere. Another fault to be
reproached M. Zola, besides his grossness, is his intolerable
vulgarity of form and view. It is already a prodigious eat
for a Frenchman to have given us so many volumes without a
single flash of wit, without half a page even of bright or
intelligent dialogue, a single paragraph of graceful or pointed
prose, a single figure delicately drawn. Until he wrote “La
Fête de Coqueville,” we did not as much as suspect he could
laugh.
The same vices mark every book of his with fatiguing iter-
ation; his plan is always marred by an incorrigible defect of
execution. Of a superb sincerity and a passionate earnest-
ness, he can never convince us of the reality of his characters
and scenes. Where Tolstoi excels with the supremacy of
genius, Zola stumbles with the grandiloquence of the uncon-
scious charlatan. Place Mathieu and Marianne beside Kitty
and Levine in “Anna Karenina,” and how living are the
latter to us, while Zola's colossal figures have the same resem-
blances to life that the masterpieces of the London pavements
have to the portraits of the National Gallery. As a novelist
M. Zola may be compared with a painter who cannot draw,
or a musician with a defective ear. And his lack of style is
the more evident by reason of his lack of taste and wit, his º
appalling indifference to the reader's patience and to the most
rudimentary laws of literary expression. And yet, in spite
of all this, there can be no doubt that Zola is capable of
building up a scene with surprising verve and vigor. The

zoLA versus Tolstol. 11
scaffolding is always a little obvious, but the general effect,
massed in memory, is effective, may even at times be said to
reach grandeur, and he not infrequently attains a grave and
lofty eloquence. If only his characters were less mechanical
and more diverse! Physical action and cheap science are the
sole things they seem to understand, and their scientific
notions, of the crudest kind, are so clearly the undigested
contents of popular treatises. Their actions, their impulses,
their speech, are what might be expected of a humanity manu-
factured in a laboratory, warranted all to go wrong at stated
periods, to exhibit the same vices and develop the same per-
versities. Their creator conceived them all with distinct
views, and never for one moment may they depart from the
line of conduct he has traced out for them before they were
born. They must daily and hourly be just as mechanically
vicious and base as he means them to be, without any chance
of complexity or yearning for a better state of things. They
must all talk indecently, because indecent conversation is
apparently the method best suited to the special state of mind
M. Zola desires to familiarize us with for our good; and
hence the aristocrat, the wealthy bourgeois, the famous doctor,
the enlightened lawyer, the banker, the clerk, the tradesman,
and valet, all talk the same language of undisguised natural-
ism. The cook and the baroness express themselves with a
like brutality, and the preoccupations of all are of the most
bestial and abominable kind. Not one of his characters is
modified by his condition. The baroness might just as well
be the cook; there would be nothing to alter in her in remov-
ing her from her rank; as a cook she could not well be more
vulgar or more obscene. And, if you turned M. Zola's fash-
ionable and brilliant novelist into a clerk, you could not possi-
bly make him a greater imbecile. There is more variety and
individuality to be found among the beasts of the fields than
among the characters, male and female, of Emile Zola.
As an evidence of industry, “Fécondité '' is an alarming
achievement. One hesitates to attack so voluminous a novel,
and, if we did not owe M. Zola an immense admiration in a
far more important field than literature, many of us would

12 ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
gladly have shirked the task. The pages that tell the story of
Mathieu and Marianne, it must be admitted, are as charming
as possible. They have a bloom, a beauty, a fragrance we
never expected to find in M. Zola's work. The tale is a sim-
ple one: the cheerful conquest of fortune, and the continual
birth of offspring; but, after each excursion under the guidance
of M. Zola into the purlieus of Paris, to squalid midwives’ dens
and surgical homes, to bourgeois centres of inexplicable base-
ness and unprovoked misconduct, from talk of the most aston-
ishing grossness and loaded cynicism, we are glad to get back
to Mathieu and Marianne in their peaceful country home,
where a swarm of happy children are romping in the fields or
shouting through the house. True, each time we go back we
are sure to find Marianne enceinte and to learn that Mathieu
has added another acre to his land. Each chapter recording
these monotonous facts begins with precisely the same words.
Still, we are so grateful to the writer for his unaccustomed
taste and tact in sparing us all obstetrical-details in connection
with those numerous confinements, that, upon such conditions,
we allow Marianne to put as many children as she wishes into
the world. She has four already when the book opens, and
the reader assists in a discreet intimacy at the birth of ten, I
think. But, as I have said, it is quite tolerable, and between
whiles there is a great deal of play and laughter of children,
and the pure country air blows in through the windows. Of
course, it is all very sensual if quite moral happiness, for M.
Zola understands none other. This is where his gospel dif-
fers so widely from Tolstoi’s, and where the weariness he
creates begins. We cannot accept that man was only born for
physical sensation. We need to find something else in the
earth we tread, in the woods and meadows, along the scented
lanes of summer, under the flush of dawn, and in the radiance
of the star-lit heavens, besides this besetment of sex which
rides Zola's imagination. He cannot consider a flower with-
out stopping to harangue us on fecundity. In the silence of
night, when a delicate wind breathes, we are told that
“Mathieu heard the great, prolonged, indistinct murmur
come from the soft spring night, which was but the shudder of

ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI. 13
eternal fecundity.” Every step along the road of life that
Mathieu takes evokes some suggestion of fecundity to his one-
idead mind. All land and sea, and star and moon and sun,
convey solely ideas of sex to the terrible M. Zola.
But, once away from the prolific couple, the novel becomes
impossible and nauseous. It is incoherent and monomaniac.
The distribution of compensation and chastisement is such as
the most lurid melodrama has never indulged in. All the
wicked parents of only children are pursued by an immitigable
destiny. Such evils and horrors happen to them as never yet
happened to the worst criminals of popular drama. They are
made to talk with a shamelessness that would justify their
expulsion from any decent country—this being apparently one
of the charming results of prudent and semi-sterile marriages.
Apes are described as obscene animals. Well, it is no exag-
geration to say that, if the gift of speech were conferred on
apes, they could hardly make a more ignoble use of it than
these wealthy bourgeois of M. Zola. They have committed no
actual crime, but their creator decides that they must be
scourged and rendered hateful because they have not baptized
a child every year. He has no indulgence for them, and
scorns them more vindictively than Tolstoi, in the “ Kreutzer
Sonata,” scorns the average married couple. He will not
allow them a redeeming virtue, nor grant them a generous or
delicate trait. Men and women alike, without the shadow of
temptation or a feint of resistance, drift into the blackest
infamy, into every kind of dishonor, and then, when he is
satisfied that he has made them base enough, he sends them
off to frightful midwives’ dens, and murders them with impu-
nity. The surgeons are disgraceful brutes, mere assassins,
according to M. Zola, who loves doctors as little as Tolstoi;
the midwives are their avowed accomplices, if possible,
a degree blacker and more infamous, -and the nurses who
undertake to nurse other people’s babies are the crowning
horror of humanity. In his fierce desire that all mothers shall
nurse their own children, he has not hesitated to paint us such
nurses as so greatly exceed the sum of common wickedness as
to be unfit for the convict society of New Caledonia. I cannot

14 ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI.
accept M. Zola's word for it that baby-farming and baby-
murder are practised with impunity in Normandy on such a
scale. It out-Herod's Herod. He paints us a town living
and thriving exclusively upon the murder of infants. “We
have no right to deny the existence of evils we were not aware
of; but evil upon such a gigantic scale as the operations M.
Zola wars against, and the wholesale massacre of infants in
France, would long since have attracted public attention.
Colossal accusations like these wear the hues of hallucination.
Morbid, too, is his conception of a wicked baroness. It
struck him that the legend of Messalina might be utilized
with modern additions in the way of perversion. Under his
coarse handling, the baroness becomes quite unnecessarily
loathsome. It is something of a surprise to learn that women
of her rank talk as she talks. We had imagined the speech of
polite sinners to be of a very different quality. For her sins
the author drives her to ether and madness. It would have
been more logical to start with the madness, instead of allow-
ing silly middle-class parents, dazzled by her wealth and title,
to confide to the care of such a monster their only child, a
beautiful slip of a girl. This child, the result of a prudent
marriage, must, of course, go wrong for the gratification it
affords her creator to murder her in an infamous surgical den.
A little while earlier he had killed off her unfortunate mother
in the same way, in just such another den, and, when it comes
to Reine's turn, he repeats the entire passage in which he
destroyed her mother, without altering a line or a word.
And yet am I reluctant to condemn ‘‘Fécondité,” because
of its evident good-will and sincerity, because of its fine ani-
mal morality. Since marriage must be, and the race must
continue until some luckier colleague of Professor Falb has
discovered the real moment when we are all to blow up sim-
ultaneously (not at all an unpleasing prospect for those who
shrink from the thought of the solitary voyage), it is better
and wiser assuredly to preach the gospel of “Fécondité '' than
the gospel of the “ Kreutzer Sonata.” And there is this to
be said in favor of the amiable parts of M. Zola's book—they
abound in good humor and are written with a gracious gaiety,

ZOL.A. VERSUS TOLSTOI. 15
whereas the note of Tolstoi’s sermon is that of the worst possi-
ble humor, and its lack of taste is no less remarkable than the
absence of this quality in Zola's coarser work. The conven-
tions of fiction are fixed the world over by a like etiquette,
which races may modify or enlarge but cannot do away with.
Marriage is one of the things in fiction about which it is
agreed upon to be a little insincere. Whatever it may be in
reality, it is necessary to make it appear an ideal state to the
young; else how shall we persuade our young people to aspire
to it? While it is doubtful if any one has felt the better for
reading the “ Kreutzer Sonata,” there can be no hesitation in
saying that the lesson of “Fécondité,” if this idyll of
Mathieu and Marianne were printed separately, is one of
courage, of fidelity in married love, of moral health and su-
preme contentment in work. It is essentially a brave and
honest lesson, and one which youth in its purest stage might
study and learn with advantage. A very charming little book
might be made out of this huge volume, which would reveal
M. Zola in his new Biblical and patriarchal mood. For the
book ends quite after the manner of Genesis, with Mathieu and
Marianne at ninety surrounded by their immense and prolific
progeny, having more than three hundred descendants living in
four generations. Even an unknown grandson unexpectedly
turns up in the last chapter from Africa, the father of a nu-
merous offspring, and this is how the different introductions
are made: ‘‘ Rose was the daughter of Angeline, who was the
daughter of Berthe, who was the daughter of Charlotte, wife of
Blaise, the eldest son of Mathieu and Marianne.”