Yet it was not his style which prevailed and became that of the next generation of writers. It was not Mérimée but Gautier, who, as a stylist, was the founder of a school. And I am not of the number of those who regret that a more luxuriant and sensuous style was victorious, and that later French authors have aimed, not merely at making their periods distinct and faultlessly correct, but also at imparting to them, when possible, melody, colour, fragrance. The treatment of language introduced by Gautier, continued by Flaubert and the Goncourt brothers, and transmitted by them to Zola and Daudet, has undoubtedly its weak side; and this the most prominent recent master of the descriptive style has not been slow to recognise and acknowledge. Zola himself writes: "The worst of it is, that I have arrived at the conviction that the jargon of our period, that part of our style which is merely fashionable and must become antiquated, will be known as one of the most atrocious jargons of the French language. It is possible to predict this with almost mathematical certainty. What is most liable to become antiquated is imagery. As long as it is new, the metaphor or simile charms. When it has been employed by one or two generations it becomes a commonplace, a disgrace to the author who employs it. Look at Voltaire, with his dry style, his vigorous period, destitute of adjectives, which relates and does not paint; he remains eternally young. Look at Rousseau, who is our father--look at his imagery, his passionate rhetoric; he has written pages which are perfectly intolerable.... A cheerful fate awaits us who have outbidden Rousseau, us, who on the top of literature pile all the other arts--paint and sing our periods, chisel them as if they were blocks of marble, and require of words to reproduce the perfume of things. All this titillates our nerves: we think it exquisite, perfect. But what will our great-grandchildren say to it? Their ideas will undoubtedly be different, and I am convinced that certain of our works will fill them with astonishment; almost everything in them will be antiquated."