From the first gossip at Madame Meurice's it had been arranged that Zola should belong to the staff of the proposed journal, the principal contributors to which were Charles and François Hugo, the great man's sons; Louis Blanc the historian; Auguste Vacquerie, perhaps the ablest and most fervent of all the _Hugolâtres;_[16] Paul Meurice, of whom one has already spoken; Rochefort, who reprinted portions of his "Lanternes" in "Le Rappel"; Édouard Lockroy, who subsequently married Charles Hugo's widow, and since those days has been a member of more than one Republican Chamber and Ministry; Laferrière, who under the Republic became President of the Council of State, and later Governor-general of Algeria; and finally Zola. It has already been shown that the latter was by no means a frantic partisan of Victor Hugo, but he was drawn towards the great man's band by circumstances, by an admiration for the poet, which if tempered by his critical sense was within its limits perfectly sincere, and also by a genuine sympathy with the object which the projected newspaper was to further. In one of his earliest contributions to the press, one dealing with Napoleon III's "Life of Cæsar," he had shown that he in no wise admired the Man of Destiny. Other early writings, even passages of "Les Contes à Ninon," breathed a spirit incompatible with Bonapartist imperialism. Further, life in the Quartier Latin had helped to republicanise Zola, and when he took to journalism for a livelihood, it was to the popular opposition press that he naturally turned. Even if "L'Événement" and "Le Figaro" were originally non-political, their tendencies at any rate were against the Empire. Again, "Le Salut Public," of Lyons, was not a government journal, nor was "Le Gaulois," to which Zola contributed several articles on social subjects, literature, and literary men soon after its establishment by Edmond Tarbé. Then, too, "La Tribune," a weekly journal for which he wrote regularly, was certainly most democratic, if rather eccentric in some of its views.[17] Nevertheless, a few years after the invasion and revolution, Edmond de Goncourt, lunching one day with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, did not hesitate to declare that the Empire might have secured Zola's services had it chosen. "He was penniless, he had a mother and a wife to keep. At the outset he had no public opinions. You could have had him on your side like many others, had you chosen. He could only find democratic newspapers to take his copy. Living among all those folk, he became a democrat. It was quite natural." And Goncourt added that the Princess Mathilde had disarmed many hatreds and angers by her friendship, graciousness, and attentions, winning over such men as himself, his brother, and Flaubert to the Empire which, otherwise, they also would have attacked.[18]