'Yes,' he said, 'since that day the thought of death is always lurking in our minds. We now invariably keep a light burning in our bedroom, and very often, when I look at my wife before she falls asleep, I feel that she is thinking of it even as I am. And we remain like that, a certain feeling of delicacy preventing us from making any allusion to what we are both thinking of. Oh! the thought is terrible! There are nights when I suddenly spring out of bed on both feet, and remain for a moment in a state of indescribable fright.'"[45] And this, it will be observed, was the leading French novelist of the time, a man in the prime of life, whose name was already known all over the world, who had risen from poverty to affluence, and who, if attacked by some, was also envied by thousands! A few days after telling his friends how he suffered at the thought of death, Zola gave a _diner fin_ at his Paris residence. There was great display, and Goncourt tells us that the _menu_ included _potage au blé vert_, reindeers' tongues, mullet _à la Provençale_, and truffled guineafowl.[46] But Zola was still out of sorts. Success had no charms for him, he said, and, in his estimation, literature was a mere dog's trade. Less than a month afterwards, on April 6, the day when "Pot-Bouille" was published, and when the first orders seemed to indicate a large demand for the book, Goncourt met Zola again and found him as morose as ever. The truth would appear to be that he resented some of the criticisms already levelled at his work. He kept on growling, and finally exclaimed that it was not so necessary to have had actual experience of things as some folk imagined; and as for incessant reading, well, he had not the time for it. "Society?" he added, "why, what does a drawing-room reveal of life? It shows one nothing at all! I have five and twenty men now working at Médan who teach me a hundred times more than any drawing-room would teach me."