THE COUKJER
poor little hamlet. A young shepherdess named Bernadette declared
that the Virgin had appeared to her there. She was believed. A
sanctuary was raised by tho side ot the grotto where the apparition
waa seen. This same grotto soon passed for miraculous. Pilgrim
ages were formed, and the reputation of Lourdcs became European
and even universal in the Christian world.
It is this manifestation of faith, extraordinary in our century of
science, that M. Zola wished to study. lie brings us in "Louries"
into the presence of one of those organized pilgrimages which occur
there every year through the efforts of the priests of the Assumption
and which bring from Paris by special trains pilgrims of all classes
that come from all the corners of France.
" It is in one of these trains that he introduces his personages. They
are first Mile Mario de Guersaint and her father, the latter a ruined
architect, having always in view chemical inventions destined to re
establish his fortune, a childish mind in the body of a well matured
man. They are accompanied by a friend from childhood of Marie,
the Abbe Pierre Froment, a sincere, priest who is tormented by the
painful feeling caused by the shattering of his faith by the assaults
of modern thought. Mile, de Guersaint is suffering from a nervous
ataxy, and the plot of the book is the is the story of her cure through
the shock which tho approach to the sanctuary gave her in the
midst of the Catholic ceremonies, bo well adapted to excite, even to
frenzy, the nervous system and the artistic 6cnse, gross though it
be, of the crowd.
Around them are personages that symbolize in M. Sabathier, a
former Lyceum professor the intellectual invalid whose despair of
of all normal cure has turned into a believer, in Mme. Vincent, the
mother, that a profound grief brings back to faith, in Mme. Maze,
the women that a poorly recompensed love for her husband drives
to religion, and in Elsie'Ronquct, ignorance and naive faith.
Then comes the Sisters of Charity and the ecclesiastics.
But the real hero here, as in all the great romances of Zola is the
crowd, because no one better than he can make it a living thing,
and none more than he is able to comprehend its complicated and
artless soul.
The hero, therefore, is the ignorant and credulous crowd, the
suffering crowd, the crowd anxious for life at any cost, and that in
sists upon being happy even though it be deceived.
But let us hear Abbe Pierre:
"Yes, it was true. A breath passed that way. the sob of grief, the
inextinguishable aspiration toward the infinite in hope. If the
dream of a suffering child was sufficient to move the people, to rain
down millions, and bring up from the soil another city, was it not
because that dream came to appease in a small degree the hunger,
the insatiable need of poor humanity, to be forever deceived and
consoled? The child had opened up the unknown, no doubt, at a
favorable social and historical' moment, and the crowds rushed there
to tae refuge in mystery when reality seemed so hard, and to lean
upon the miraculous since cruel nature seemed a long injustice.
But it is vain to organize the unknown, to reduce it to dogmas, and
convert it into revealed religions; all that we have after all is the
appeal ot the suffering, that wail of life calling for health and joy,
the fraternal happiness, even to the point of being willing to accept
it in another world, if it cannot be found on this earth."
Close to the crowd M. Zola introduces us by short sketches to
those who live by it, those for whom the miracle is a source of com
mercial profit, priests and merchants of piety "who sell God at
wholesale and retail.'
M. Zola was recently interviewed by a newspaper correspondent
in Paris:
"The anarchists!" said he. "Well. I think that society is perfect
ly right in defending itself against them. We must give our police
men and our magistrates something to do. But,' added M. Zola,
after a moment's silence, "we must admit that this repression will
be absolutely fruitless. The anarchists are a product of our social
condition. What is necessary is, not to pull up the tare, that would
be impossible; but to plow up tho soil, so that the tare can no longer
grow."
"You mean tho anarchists in Paris?
"Yes, certaiuly, and I have long ago commenced collecting docu
ments, I have all the reports of their trials, including that of Case
rio." "And what do you think of the support which the young litera
ture seems to give to the anarchistic doctrines?' (The question
seems to surprise M Zola.)
"Why do you ask me that question?" said he in a somewhat
anxions tone.
I continued:
"Doej it not appear to you strange that the literary men who for
so many years seemed to despise politics, have suddenly found it
sufficiently interesting to meddle with it in an an active manner and
to make it one of the principal literary preoccupations?'
"No, no that does not astonish me. Their predecessors sustained
the theory of art for art's sake. It is quite natural that they should
sustain the reverse. They have an instinctive need of doing the re
verse of their elders. The search for originality, so necessary to suc
cess,drives tbem to struggle against their predecessors; that is easily
explained. Literature is to-day a closed career. Everything has
been written. The ground has been ploughed over and over again
in every direction. What, for example, can a man do in a romance
after Balzac and so many others, and after us? It is,moreover,the re
sult of a certain cadence of ideas, a certain balance whicn makes the
young always combat the old; and to a realistic epoch there will
succeed always an idealistic epoch And then with all that the ca
reer is blocked up, the works of the young are not sold. Success has
become almost impossible. From this come bitterness and discon
tent. They try to be original, and they writhe in order to succeed.
"And yet a man of genius, even under such circumstances, I be
lieve, will obtain a hearing.
"And then,'-' sys M. Zola, continuing his former remarks, "there
are reasons still more profound. The young writers come socially
discontented in the world. They have suffered. Their works are
the product of stunted ideas. What did we not expect from the re
public when we were under the empire? 'Ah when we hav the re
public?" Well, the republic came and failed in all its promises, and
in all the ideas that engendered t. And now the people no longer
believe in anything. The young literary men are disgusted, and
some of them possess unquestionable talent; but they have drifted
to skepticism.
"But this love of one's self; this excessive individualism, this egot
ism, in a word
"Egotism, oh no! Say rather that there is in it a great deal of
humanity.
I mentioned the name of Jean Grave, former shoemaker and anar
chistic theorist convicted for his book, "Dying Society and Anarchy,"
and acquitted a few days ago at the Assizes Court of the Seine for
association with an 'unlawful assembly of evil-doers, together with
Sebastian Faure, the anarchist lecturer, and a considerable number
of others, to whom the Court wanted to apply the strange new laws
voted by the Chamber with the scandalous haste of which we are
aware.
"Jean 'Grave.' said M. Zola. "I have read his 'Dying Society and
Anarchy.' He is certainly a man of remarkable talent. He is the
son of his works, but he has also ail the defects of the workman who
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