"I did not wish to show you that, but it cannot last any longer--the time has come. Give me the genealogical tree of Rougon-Macquart." Yes! The genealogical tree of Rougon-Macquart! The reading of it begins: There was one Adelaïde Fouqué, who married Rougon-Macquart's friend. Rougon had Eugene Rougon, also Pascal Rougon, also Aristides, also Sidonie, also Martha. Aristides had Maxyme, Clotilde, Victor, and Maxyme had Charles, and so on to the end; but Sidonie had a daughter Angelle, and Martha, who married Mouret, who was from Macquart's family, had three children, etc. The night passes, pales, but the reading continues. After Rougons come Macquarts, then the generations of both families. One name follows another. They appear bad, good, indifferent, all classes, from ministers, bankers, great merchants, to simple soldiers or rascals without any professions--finally the doctor stops reading--and looking with his eyes of savant at his niece, asks: "Well, what now?" And beautiful Clotilde throws herself into his arms, crying: "_Vicisti! Vicisti!_" And her God, her church, her flight toward ideals, her spiritual needs disappeared, turned into ashes. Why? On the ground of what final conclusion? For what good reason? What could there be in the tree that convinced her? How could it produce any other impression than that of tediousness? Why did she not ask the question, which surely must have come to the lips of the reader: "And what then?"--it is unknown! I never noticed that any other author could deduct from such a trifling and insignificant cause such great and immediate consequences. It is as much of an astonishment as if Zola should order Clotilde's faith and principles to be turned into ashes after the doctor has read to her an almanac, time-table, bill of fare, or catalogue of some museum. The freedom surpasses here all possible limits and becomes absolutely incomprehensible. The reader asks whether the author deceives himself or if he wishes to throw some dust into the eyes of the public? And this climax of the novel is at the same time the downfall of all doctrine. Clotilde ought to have answered as follows: