I contradict no reports,
I work on, and I rely on time, and on the good faith of the public, to
discover me at last under the accumulation of nonsense that has been
heaped upon me." This statement is absolutely in accordance with fact,
and when it is realized that the writer of the Rougon-Macquart novels
was merely a hard-working, earnest man, filled with a determination to
complete the vast task which he had planned, and not to be turned
from his ideas by praise or blame, it will go far to promote a better
understanding of his aims and methods. It is necessary too, as has
already been said, that the various novels forming the Rougon-Macquart
series be considered not as separate entities, but as chapters of one
vast whole.
_L'Assommoir_ was an immediate success with the public, and the sales
were unusually large for the time, while now (1912) they amount to one
hundred and sixty-two thousand copies in the original French alone.
In 1878 Zola published _Une Page d'Amour_, the next volume of the
series, a simple love story containing some very beautiful and romantic
descriptions of Paris. Then followed _Nana_, to which _L'Assommoir_ was
the prelude.
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