In his present work M. Zola has, of course, not taken as his theme the actual history of either of the great establishments to which I have been referring. But from that history and from the history of other important _magasins de nouveautés_ he has borrowed a multitude of curious and interesting facts, which he has blended into a realistic whole. Curiously enough the site which he has chosen for "Au Bonheur des Dames" was really the site of a fairly large drapery emporium, which became the "Grands Magasins du 4 Septembre"; but perhaps that title, savouring as it did of revolution (the revolution of 1870), brought the establishment bad luck with women caring little or nothing for politics; for it failed to attain the success to which its central situation seemed to entitle it. The "Place Clichy," to which M. Zola will be found referring, still exists, and does a largely increasing business with all the north of Paris; whilst as for the "Four Seasons", which one of his characters, Bouthemont the silk-salesman, establishes near the grand opera-house, this is really the "Printemps," that white and blue and gilded palace which the Parisians owe to the commercial enterprise of M. Jules Jaluzot, by some people unkindly nicknamed "the man with the umbrella". I have often thought that, from the commercial point of view there is considerable resemblance between M. Jaluzot and M. Zola's hero, Octave Mouret. The latter figures at an earlier stage of his life in another of M. Zola's novels--"Pot-Bouille"--but he there appears as a graceless Don Juan without a redeeming quality; whereas, in the present work, one observes the development of his business capacities, and the gradual progress of his reformation, till his career culminates in a marriage which ought to prove a very happy one, if there be any truth in the old saw that a reformed rake makes the best of husbands. I have, however, no desire to institute the faintest comparison between the private life of Octave Mouret and that of M. Jaluzot; but in describing the former's commercial genius and boldness M. Zola has, I think, more than once thought of the latter's hardihood and talent in carving for himself a great industrial kingdom beside those of the "Bon Marché" and the "Louvre".