_Nana_ dealt with the vast demimonde of Paris, and while it
was his greatest popular success, was in every sense his worst book. Of
no subject on which he wrote was Zola more ignorant than of this, and
the result is a laboured collection of scandals acquired at second-hand.
Mr. Arthur Symons, in his _Studies in Prose and Verse_, recounts how an
English paper 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 once lunched with an actress
of the Varietes. "The reply was generally taken for a joke," says
Mr. Symons, "but the lunch was a reality, and it was assuredly a rare
experience in the life of a solitary diligence to which we owe so
many impersonal studies in life." The sales of the book were, however,
enormous, and Zola's financial position was now assured.
Publication of the Rougon-Macquart series went steadily on.
_Pot-Bouille_ a story of middle-class life, was followed by its sequel
_Au Bonheur des Dames_, a study of life in one of the great emporiums
which were beginning to crush out the small shopkeepers of Paris.
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