It is the boast of Zola that he has taken up art at the point where Flaubert left it, and that he has developed that art in its logical sequence. But the art of Flaubert, itself a development from Balzac, had carried realism, if not in _Madame Bovary,_ at all events in _L'Education Sentimentale,_ as far as realism can well go without ceasing to be art. In the grey and somewhat sordid history of Frédéric Moreau there is not à touch of romanticism, not so much as a concession to style, a momentary escape of the imprisoned lyrical tendency. Everything is observed, everything is taken straight from life: realism sincere, direct, implacable, reigns from end to end of the book. But with what consummate art all this mass of observation is disintegrated, arranged, composed! with what infinite delicacy it is manipulated in the service of an unerring sense of construction! And Flaubert has no theory, has no prejudices, has only a certain impatience with human imbecility. Zola, too, gathers his documents, heaps up his mass of observation, and then, in this unhappy "development" of the principles of art which produced _L'Education Sentimentale,_ flings everything pell-mell into one overflowing _pot-au-feu._ The probabilities of nature and the delicacies of art are alike drowned beneath a flood of turbid observation, and in the end one does not even feel convinced that Zola really knows his subject. I remember once hearing M. Huysmans, with his look and tone of subtle, ironical malice, describe how Zola, when he was writing _La Terre,_ took a drive into the country in a victoria, to see the peasants. The English papers once reported an interview in which the author of _Nana,_ indiscreetly questioned as to the amount of personal observation he had put into the book, replied that he had lunched with an actress of the Variétés. The reply was generally taken for a joke, but the lunch was a reality, and it was assuredly a rare experience in the life of solitary diligence to which we owe so many impersonal studies in life. Nor did Zola, as he sat silent by the side of Mlle. X., seem to be making much use of the opportunity. The language of the miners in _Germinal,_ how much of local colour is there in that? The interminable additions and divisions, the extracts from a financial gazette, in _L'Argent,_ how much of the real temper and idiosyncrasy of the financier do they give us? In his description of places, in his _mise-en-scène,_ Zola puts down what he sees with his own eyes, and, though it is often done at utterly disproportionate length, it is at all events done with exactitude. But in the far more important observation of men and women, he is content with second-hand knowledge, the knowledge of a man who sees the world through a formula. Zola sees in humanity _la bête humaine._ He sees the beast in all its transformations, but he sees only the beast. He has never looked at life impartially, he has never seen it as it is.