"His [Sandoz's, otherwise Zola's] drawing-room was becoming crowded with old furniture, old tapestry, nick-nacks of all countries and all times--an overflowing torrent of things which had begun at Batignolles with an old pot of Rouen ware, which Henriette [Madame Zola] had given her husband on one of his fête days. They ran about the curiosity shops together; they felt a joyful passion for buying; and he now satisfied the old longings of his youth, the romanticist aspirations which the first books he had read had engendered. Thus this writer, who was so fiercely modern, lived amid the worm-eaten middle ages which he had dreamt of when he was a lad of fifteen. As an excuse, he laughingly declared that handsome modern furniture cost too much, whereas with old things, even common ones, you immediately obtained some effect and colour. _There was nothing of the collector about him_, his one concern was decoration, broad effects; and to tell the truth, the drawing-room, lighted by two lamps of old Delft ware, derived quite a soft, warm tone from the dull gold of the dalmaticas used for upholstering the seats, the yellowish incrustations of the Italian cabinets and Dutch show-cases, the faded hues of the Oriental door-hangings, the hundred little notes of the ivory, the crockery and the enamel work, pale with age, which showed against the dull red hangings."[15] No doubt, among the great quantity of tapestry, carved wood, old furniture, pottery, church embroideries, and so forth, which Zola thus gathered together, there were occasionally things which did not suggest the best taste or the greatest accuracy of judgment. But the statement quoted above shows that he disclaimed collecting in the ordinary sense, and made purchases solely for decorative purposes. And, in any case, even if he bought a few things whose only recommendation was their quaintness, or accepted an object as genuine when an expert would have known it to be spurious, his transgressions in those matters were of no importance to the world at large, and one is surprised that some of his "candid friends" should have thought it worth while to expatiate on them.