Vizetelly replied by sending him a memorandum, running to perhaps a thousand words, and Zola was further primed with information by others, some London correspondents of the French press, and also M. Petilleau, who took a prominent part in the proceedings. Writing again to Vizetelly on August 27, Zola said: "A thousand thanks for your excellent notes, they will enable me to write something interesting." In the same letter he gave some information respecting "Lourdes" which he was then preparing, and he again referred to that work in a note dated August 30, when he said: "I shall try every effort to make it one-fifth shorter than 'La Débâcle,' for such long novels are disastrous in France." Those efforts, however, were hardly successful, for when "Lourdes" was finished it proved to be only forty pages shorter than the novel on the war. Though Vizetelly now had plenty of work before him--for besides completing the edition of "The Heptameron" on which he had been engaged in 1889, he was helping his father with his reminiscences,--he was anxious to make early arrangements with respect to "Lourdes" in the hope of profiting by any reaction in Zola's favour which the forthcoming visit to London might promote. In that respect, while he observed with pleasure that English newspaper men seemed to be recovering from their former aberration, he thought it hardly right to leave Zola entirely in the hands of a profession, many of whose members, only a few years previously, had covered him with unmitigated abuse. In these circumstances he communicated with Mr. afterwards Sir Walter Besant, whom he knew to be well informed respecting Zola and his works,[25] and who had also shown great personal kindness at the time of the Vizetelly prosecution. Besant took the hint immediately, but was almost at a loss what to suggest, for in all probability in the latter part of September, when Zola would arrive in London, few English authors of note would be there. However, he saw Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, chairman of the Authors' Club, and Mr. Crawfurd, a man of broad views like Besant himself, took up the matter with alacrity. During the interval which ensued, Mr. Besant wrote several times to Ernest Vizetelly, going so far, on one occasion, as to say, "A dinner will be given at the club to M. Zola and yourself on any day to be named--as quickly as possible--by yourself." But Vizetelly, while accepting the invitation on Zola's behalf, and also quite willing to attend the dinner, felt that he must not attempt to take any prominent part in the proceedings. If he had foreseen that his father, who was still living in retirement near Tilford, would be dead some three months later, he might have adopted quite another course, in order to procure some personal satisfaction for the poor old man who had been pelted with mud, ruined, and sent to prison. But he thought it premature to bring his father forward at that juncture, and therefore he said nothing