A FRENCH NOVELIST’S VICISSITUDES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1788, 11 September 1888, Page 4

A FRENCH NOVELIST’S VICISSITUDES.

The distinguished French novelist who calls herself Henri ©reville told an American correspondent some interesting facts respecting Emile Zola’s early life. Zola left the Lycce St Louis without a degree, and sought his fortune in Paris. He wrote verses, stories, anything that would help him to get bread, and sometimes had nothing to eat for days together. For the greater part of one winter he lived on bread and oil, the latter being sent to him from home, Sometimes he had to pawn bis clothes to buy bread, and was once obliged to stay in bed for a week because his clothes were in pawn and he could not redeem them. . fter two years of this kind of existence he secured a situation at flachette’s the publisher’s, his salary being small, but just enough to keep him from want. “ The dreadful experience of tdese two years,” says Henri Greville, ,f has coloured or rather discoloured, Zola’s

whole life; the sin, misery, and degradation with which he was then brought in contact have darkened his views of the world and made him a misanthrope.”