"Now the author of 'L'Assommoir' had not insulted them. He had never called them squallers or cowards, nor, in particular, had he threatened to track them to their lairs.... He was less severe: he pitied them.... Leave the literary men in peace then, you political gentlemen, you majestic humbugs, who prate with your tongues in your cheeks, and yet wish to be respected! You can see now how shameful it was to heap insults upon a peaceable writer whose one concern was truth, to hunt him down as if he had been a common malefactor, and this solely by way of electoral advertisement; for directly an obstacle is offered to your own ambition, you rush upon the masses to suppress them, whereas the novelist only spoke of curing them.... And you, good people, go and vote for all those humbugs who, so long as you work for their benefit, promise to give you jam! You are great, you are noble, and if a passer-by ventures to advise you to work, those humbugs declare it to be sacrilege, and hasten to immolate him before you, to prove to you that you are indeed perfect. But on the day when you refuse to be duped any longer, when you claim the jam they have so often promised, they turn round on you and insult you, call you drunken slaves, and threaten to have you shot down in your lairs! With a fine show of indignation they formerly denied that My-Boots existed; but, all at once, if they are to be credited, it is actually My-Boots who reigns as King over a Belleville of brawlers and toss-pots."[32] The foregoing extracts will give some idea of the passionate vigour which Zola occasionally displayed in controversy. To some readers it may seem beside the mark to dwell at length upon a series of newspaper articles like "Une Campagne," but it is in such writings, more than in the majority of his novels, that one finds the real Zola with his superb confidence in himself, his disregard for conventionalities, and his glowing passion for truth and rectitude. His pen was certainly not always so virulent as in the passages one has quoted, but it was almost invariably incisive, and when treating sociological subjects it showed that, however impersonal his novels might be, his heart really bled at the thought of the degradation he described in them. Looking back, it seems extraordinary that for so many years his critics, and particularly foreign ones, and among them notably those of England and America, should have persisted in the ridiculous assertion that if he pictured filth, it was solely in order to pander to readers of gross instincts. His articles, his declarations, his explanations, were all before the world, and easily accessible; but through carelessness, or laziness, or ignorance, the great majority of English and American critics never turned to them, and the legend of the filthy Zola, whose favourite habitat was the muck heap or the cess-pool, spread upon all sides.