A ZOLA ROMANCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 304, 19 December 1908, Page 3

A ZOLA ROMANCE

'Jlhk' was a curious and pathetic mtle ceremony in Paris recently a has us chief interest i,i the fact that it is part of u lt . Romance-one might al- '"""'■.;■'>■ the real Uug,. ; |,—there was in the life of Ma. One, somehow or other has the ridiculous idea that those who invent romances never have romances ol their own; and yet, as a matter of l'»'i, t.icre arc very lew u f the great masters of fiction, in the history of letters, who didn't-aiive their own little tragedies. Zola, certainly had an episode in his life as romantic as any in the long list of his romances; just as Ins death was as gruesome as anythin" that ever occurred even to his some" wlia t morbid imagination. As everybody knows, Zola, when lie came t» Paris from his native Provence went through the awful wretchedness of the poverty common, in every great city; once he lived in a glass ca»e on the top of the roof-it was said to"have been the refuge of ilernnrdin St.-Pierre, author of "Paul and Virginia," during the Iteigu of Terror—could not pay the rent for that; and had to take refuge in a garret in one of those foul little hotels of tire Latin Quarter which give asylum to the starving student, to the thief, and even to the -basest aymphs of the pavement. There it was that he dreamed and sobbed and starved; passing, as he ascended his staircase', the confirmed sot with his absintheladen breath; the poor streof-walkor, with her painted cheek and h muted I look, and all the rest of the outlawed and the fallen. There is n,i bitterer -passage or more pathetic in a ll his books than that which says: "Provence, the broad, sunlit countryside, the tears, the ! laughter, the hopes, the dreams, the j innocence and pride of the past had all departed; only Paris .with its mire, a garret, aud its misery remained." And yet there were fine momentsgleams of sunshine—even in all this i black night of Zola's youth. There h a (beautiful passage in one of his earliest works in w-liioh he describes a walk iu the country outside Paris with " the good.fairy of my twentieth year," as ne called her:. > ~

'Spring time was budding into birth, the path was bordered by large fields of violets. . . She leant on my arm, languishing with love from the sweet odour of the ilowore. Deep silence fell from the .heavens, and so faint was the souud of our kisses that not a bird in all the hedges showed sign of fear. , . . We ascended to the woods of Verrieres, and there, in the grass, under the soft, fresh foliage, discovered some tiny violets. . . . Directly I found a fresh one 1 carried it to her. She bought it oil' me, and the price I exacted was a kiss. , . , And now, amid the hubbub of the Paris markets, 1 thought of all these tilings of past happiness. . . I remembered my good fairy now dead and gone, and the little bouquet of dry violets which I still preserve in a drawer. When I returned home I 1 counted their withered stems; there were twenty, and over my lips there passed the gentle warmth of my loved one's twenty kisses,

When Zola began to get reputation and a little money, he left all this squalor behincli him; married a woman, "tail, dark-haired, very charming, very intelligent, with a gift of that prudent thrift which makes so many Frenchwomen the most desirable of companions for men who have to fight for position and fame" —so she is described in Vizetelly's biography, It remained an ideal marriage during nearly thirty years; Zola, at the moment when he was being denounced as the most filthy and immoral of writers, was leading a life of bourgeoise simplicity and fidelity. A crisis came when he was fifty. His wife had no children; and children always wade an immense appeal to Zola, His readers will remember that nearly all his books—at least, his late ones—when they have told their story of human vice and human degradation and human despair, wind up with the cry of some new-born child, and the final note is of hope in the ever-fresh generations of man. It possibly was this feeling, as well as the feeling that, with his parents dead and no relative living, there was the end of his race; whatever the reason, at fifty Zola, for the first time, thought, of another woman, and there followed a violent and poignant love affair. The liaison almost broke Madame Zola's heart and Zola's Jiome. There were two children of this adventure—a boy and a girl.

When Zola died, his widow took advantage of a humane provision of the French law which enables children to be legitimised. The mother of the children and Madame Zola became their guardians; a"d in October last the two women sent out. in their joint names an invitation to the marriage of the girl—Denise Emil-Zola, as she is called—to M. Maurice IjC Blond, one of M. Clemeneeau's secretaries. The boy is eighteen and at school. For the young 'wife of his old friend M. C'lemenceau has done his share; he has given her husband a subprefectorship, which is a beginning, of official life. And so Zola's dream of children and grandchildren will probable be realised.