The Franco-German war interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no interest in anything.

No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an ambitious work of fiction could have been found.

Some two or three years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of literature and of public interest in literature took place.

Thus, M.
Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made many another man recoil.

"The Fortune of the Rougons," and two or three subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree of attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of "L'Assommoir" that he awoke, like Byron, to find himself famous.
As previously mentioned, the Rougon-Macquart series forms twenty volumes.