The script of his books was as a rule beautifully clear and open. On each slip he left a margin about two-thirds of an inch in width; his lines, on an average one and twenty per slip, were very straight and regular. The general character of his handwriting is shown by the fac-simile of a letter given in this volume, the concluding portion being more like his book "copy," for on the first page the script is rather smaller than usual. It will be noticed that the writing is of a distinctly personal character. On consulting a large number of autographs we have found little like it, but the disconnected letters and syllables recall the writing of Boileau, Chateaubriand, Michelet, Jules Janin, and Victor Hugo. Some specimens from Hugo's pen seem to indicate that if, instead of a sloping, he had written an upright hand, it might well have resembled Zola's. The latter, it may be remarked, never departed from his upright hand, whereas in autographs of some French authors--Dumas _père_ and George Sand, for instance--one finds now an upright and now a sloping writing, the former being used in formal letters, the latter in notes to intimate friends, when the writers were not _en représentation_, but allowed their feelings full play. In Zola's case the upright hand appears in the most intimate letters as well as in his "copy" for the press, and thus it would seem to have been with him a natural, not an artificial, writing. One may add, without asserting any particular faith in graphology, that on applying its rules, without prejudice, to Zola's writing, the latter will be found to indicate despotivity, stubbornness, insight, and orderliness, combined with poetry. Perhaps, then, there may be some truth in that alleged science.