No little interest, to the practical student of literature, attaches to the fact that in “L’Inondation” M. Zola is really re-writing, in a more elaborate form, the fourth section of his “Jean Gourdon.” Here, as there, a farmer who has lived in the greatest prosperity, close to a great river, is stripped of everything--of his house, his wealth, and his family--by a sudden rising of the waters. It is unusual for an author thus to re-edit a work, or tell the same tale a second time at fuller length, but the sequences of incidents will be found to be closely identical, although the later is by far the larger and the more populous story. It is not uninteresting to the technical student to compare the two pieces, the composition of which was separated by about ten years. V. Finally, in 1884, M. Zola published a fourth collection, named, after the first of the series, _Naïs Micoulin_. This volume contained in all six stories, each of considerable extent. I do not propose to dwell at any length on the contents of this book, partly because they belong to the finished period of naturalism, and seem more like castaway fragments of the _Rougon-Macquart_ epos than like independent creations, but also because they clash with the picture I have sought to draw of an optimistic and romantic Zola returning from time to time to the short story as a shelter from his theories. Of these tales, one or two are trifling and passably insipid; the Parisian sketches called “Nantas” and “Madame Neigon” have little to be said in favour of their existence. Here M. Zola seems desirous to prove to us that he could write as good Octave Feuillet, if he chose, as the author of _Monsieur de Camors_ himself. In “Les Coquillages de M. Chabre,” which I confess I read when it first appeared, and have now re-read, with amusement, we see the heavy M. Zola endeavouring to sport as gracefully as M. de Maupassant, and in the same style. The impression of buoyant Atlantic seas and hollow caverns is well rendered in this most unedifying story. “Naïs Micoulin,” which gives its name to the book, is a disagreeable tale of seduction and revenge in Provence, narrated with the usual ponderous conscientiousness. In each of the last mentioned the background of landscape is so vivid that we half forgive the faults of the narrative.