'I may add that he is risking far more than his great predecessor risked in favour of Calas. Voltaire pleaded from his retirement on the Swiss frontier; Zola pleads the cause he has adopted on the very spot, on the very scene of all the agitation. Anonymous assassins threaten him with death in letters and postcards. Fanatical Jew-baiters march through the streets anxious for an opportunity to wreck his house and murder not only himself but his wife also in the sacred name of Patriotism.* Should their menaces be escaped there remains the Assize Court with a jury that will need to be brave indeed if it is to resist all the pressure of a deliberately organised "terror." At the end possibly lie imprisonment, fine, disgrace, ruin. How jubilantly some are already rubbing their hands in the bishops' palaces, the parsonages, the sacristies of France! Ah! no stone will be kept unturned to secure a conviction! But Emile Zola does not waver. It may be the truth, the whole truth will only be known to the world in some distant century; but he, anxious to hasten its advent and prevent the irreparable, courageously stakes all that he has, person, position, fame, affections, and friendships. . . . And this he does for no personal object whatsoever, but in the sole cause of truth and justice, ever repeating the cry common to both Goethe and himself: "Light, more light!" * There is not the slightest doubt that M. Zola incurred the greatest personal danger between January and April 1898. M. Ranc, the old and tried Republican, who knows what danger is, has lately pointed this out in forcible terms in the Paris journal _Le Matin_. 'Ah! to all the true hearts that have followed and loved him through years of mingled blame and praise, hard-earned victory and unmerited reviling, he is at this hour dearer even than he was before; for he has now put the seal upon his principles, and to the force of precept has added that of the most courageous personal example.'