Otherwise the latter might well be doubled.

Nor is account taken of the many serial issues which have brought M.Zola's views to the knowledge of the masses of all Europe.
It is, of course, the celebrity attaching to certain of M.Zola's literary efforts that has stimulated the demand for his other writings.
Among those which are well worthy of being read for their own sakes, I would assign a prominent place to the present volume.

Much of the story element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M.Zola as a genuine satirist and humorist.

The Rougons' yellow drawing-room and its habitues, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicite, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold.

The whole account, indeed, of the town of Plassans, its customs and its notabilities, is satire of the most effective kind, because it is satire true to life, and never degenerates into mere caricature.
It is a rather curious coincidence that, at the time when M.Zola was thus portraying the life of Provence, his great contemporary, bosom friend, and rival for literary fame, the late Alphonse Daudet, should have been producing, under the title of "The Provencal Don Quixote," that unrivalled presentment of the foibles of the French Southerner, with everyone nowadays knows as "Tartarin of Tarascon." It is possible that M.Zola, while writing his book, may have read the instalments of "Le Don Quichotte Provencal" published in the Paris "Figaro," and it may be that this perusal imparted that fillip to his pen to which we owe the many amusing particulars that he gives us of the town of Plassans.
Plassans, I may mention, is really the Provencal Aix, which M.Zola's father provided with water by means of a canal still bearing his name.
M.Zola himself, though born in Paris, spent the greater part of his childhood there.