critics who had called on him for moral ejaculations, who had begged for sermons, then became mightily indignant. "This man," they said, "has no imagination left, he does nothing but preach, his books are as dull as ditch water. After all, we liked 'Nana' better." Such was the result of Zola's change of manner, a result which might have been foreseen. After his departure from England in 1893, the present writer remained without news of him for some weeks; but in November he wrote that he had been ill and unable to attend to anything: the fact being that this was a critical time in connection with his domestic affairs. Nevertheless he gave some attention to an opera which his friend M. Alfred Bruneau based on "L'Attaque du Moulin," the libretto being partly the work of M. Louis Gallet and partly that of Zola himself. The first performance took place at the Opéra Comique, then under M. Carvalho's management, on November 23, with a result gratifying to all concerned; and Zola afterwards turned to the writing of his novel, "Lourdes," which he intended to make the first of three volumes to be called "Les Trois Villes," that is, Lourdes, Rome, and Paris. The writing of those works was inspired by the trend of French literature and also of opinion in France at that time. A few years previously, on being interviewed on the question whether Naturalism were an expiring school or not, Zola had laughingly answered in the negative.[8] Nevertheless he had observed the rise of the Symbolist, Occultist, and Décadent schools,--a wave of returning mysticism, as it were, which, as he had remarked in an address to the Paris students, was invading art as well as literature. No little balderdash was being written about the alleged bankruptcy of science, Rome was coquetting with the Republic, there was much talk of a new Catholicism adapted to the modern world, the clergy were showing extreme activity, and a good many _universitaires_ and _normaliens_, among whom the Voltairean spirit had formerly predominated, seemed won over to the Church's side and anxious to co-operate with it in securing the return of France to the fold, as if, indeed, agnosticism had been carried too far and must now be checked. The Lourdes and similar pilgrimages represented a notable phase of the agitation, and Zola, who had attended them two years running as a spectator, found in them some illustration of the first of the Christian virtues, Faith. It thereupon occurred to him that Rome would illustrate Hope, for it was in her and in her pontiff, Leo XIII, that all who desired to see the world reconquered by a rejuvenated Catholicism set their hopes. Finally Paris would afford abundant illustration of Charity in its various senses. Now the question whether religion might flourish anew in France depended, at least largely, on the practice of the aforesaid virtues and the light in which they were regarded by the community at large. Was the faith