In 1880, after the publication of "Nana," Zola wrote several short stories. He had published one, "Naïs Micoulin," in a paper called "La Réforme," towards the close of the previous year; and he now gave "La Fête à Coqueville," "L'Inondation," and "Nantas," to "Le Voltaire," to which journal he also contributed some papers on Théophile Gautier, Ste.-Beuve, and others. But a better known publication in which he was interested appeared during the spring. This was the collection of stories called "Les Soirées de Médan,"[25] to which Zola contributed his well-known tale, "L'Attaque du Moulin," which he had previously published in Russia, and which subsequently provided his friend M. Alfred Bruneau with the subject for an opera. Nowadays in its form as a story "L'Attaque du Moulin" has become a reading book in many French and English schools. As mentioned in a previous chapter, five younger writers, Alexis, Huysmans, Maupassant, Céard, and Hennique, had gathered round Zola, whose literary views they largely shared.[26] Each of them contributed to the so-called "Soirées de Médan," the preface of which stated: "The following stories have been published previously, some in France, others abroad. It has seemed to us that they have sprung from one and the same idea, that their philosophy is identical. We therefore unite them. We are prepared for all the attacks, the bad faith, and the ignorance of which current criticism has already given us so many examples. Our only concern has been to affirm publicly what are really our friendships and our literary tendencies."