It may be said of Zola's first volume that it was gracefully, prettily written; that more than one of the tales contained in it was a poem in prose. Brimful of the author's early life in Provence, his youthful fancies and aspirations, those "Contes à Ninon" gave no warning of what was to follow from his pen. And yet at the very time of writing most of them he was being weaned from romance and fable and idyl. Not only had he taken considerable interest in About's "Madelon," but he had been studying Balzac, and particularly Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," the perusal of which had quite stirred him. A man had come, axe in hand, into the huge and often tangled forest which Balzac had left behind him; and the formula of the modern novel now appeared in a blaze of light. When "Madame Bovary" was issued in 1860, the average Parisian, the average literary man even, regarded it merely as a _succès de scandale_. Many of those who praised the book failed to understand its real import; and when Flaubert was satirised in the popular theatrical _révue_, "Ohé! les petits Agneaux," half Paris, by way of deriding him, hummed the trivial lines sung by the actress who impersonated "Madame Bovary": "Qu'importe! c'est officiel, Ou vit quatre éditeurs me suivre: Oui, Paul, Mathieu, Pierre, et Michel Voulurent imprimer mon livre!... Craignant mes excentricités Mathieu ne vit pas mon mérite; Paul ne vit pas mes qualités, Pierre ne vit pas mes beautés, Mais Michel les vit Mais Michel les vit[14] Tout de suite!" [Illustration: Émile Zola's Home, Impasse Sylvacanne, Aix-in-Provence --Photo by C. Martinet] Zola, however, did not laugh or jeer at "Madame Bovary"; he felt that a literary evolution might be at hand, as is shown by his subsequent correspondence with Valabrègue. The struggle which was to last all his life, one between his reason and his imagination, was beginning, if indeed it had not begun previously; for the oscillation which one observes in his writings between romanticism and realism--or naturalism as the latter became in its advanced stage--would indeed seem to be only a continuation of what had happened in his school days, when, in spite of proficiency in literary subjects, he had elected to follow a scientific course of study, in the midst of which, however, his literary bent had still and ever asserted itself. Novalis has said: "Every person who consists of more than one person is a person of the second power--or a genius." If that be true, then Zola was certainly a genius; for there were always two men in him. And, in any case, those who desire to understand him aright should never lose sight of the duality of his nature.