It was nearly a hundred and fifty years since Voltaire had made his fight in the Calas case; and here was “l’Infame” at the same old game of the “frame-up.” Zola came forward with a terrific challenge entitled “J’Accuse.” He was arrested, tried and convicted, and escaped from France. For years this Dreyfus case remained an international scandal, and finally it was proved that the documents used against Zola had been forged, and later on one of the guilty men committed suicide, and Dreyfus was released and reinstated. As I write this book the papers record that Premier Herriot has abolished the penal settlement on Devil’s Island, and so Zola’s task is completed. He had now become the leader of the French masses in the war against reaction; and his last novels were tracts written in this cause. In “Labor” he portrays his ideal of the free men and women of the revolutionary movement, living frugal and abstemious lives, and consecrating themselves to the cause of human emancipation. Another, called “Truth,” deals with the Dreyfus case. Another had been planned, “Justice,” but this he did not live to write. In all these works you notice that the old theories of materialistic science have been modified enough to permit men to fight for truth and freedom; and so Emile Zola shares with Walt Whitman the rôle of prophet of democracy. He served the masses even better than Whitman, because he achieved complete insight into the economic forces of modern times, and pointed out to the people the exact road they had to travel. More than any other artist of the nineteenth century he voiced and guided the movement of proletarian revolt, the mass action of the workers of factory and farm to whom the future belongs. CHAPTER LXXXIX THE SPORTIVE DEMON What would Zola and his naturalism have been without social vision and revolutionary hope? This question was answered for us by a disciple and friend of Zola, ten years his junior, who proceeded to make a laboratory test. Guy de Maupassant was a healthy young Norman animal, who came up to Paris to make his way as a journalist. He was a tremendous worker; in the course of his short life he wrote six novels and two hundred and twelve short stories. He made himself master of the latter form, and has had a dominating influence upon it. No one has been able to pack more meaning into a brief episode, to give you the whole life and import of a character in a couple of thousand words. Therefore all young writers of short stories go to school to him. What has he to give them--aside from the tricks of the trade?