And the book ends in no pessimist strain.
Whatever may be thought of the writer's views on religion, most readers will, I imagine, agree with his opinion that, despite much social injustice, much crime, vice, cupidity and baseness, we are ever marching on to better things.
In the making of the coming, though still far-away, era of truth and justice, Paris, he thinks, will play the leading part, for whatever the stains upon her, they are but surface-deep; her heart remains good and sound; she has genius and courage and energy and wit and fancy.

She can be generous, too, when she chooses, and more than once her ideas have irradiated the world.

Thus M.Zola hopes much from her, and who will gainsay him?
Not I, who can apply to her the words which Byron addressed to the home of my own and M.Zola's forefathers:-- "I loved her from my boyhood; she to me Was as a fairy city of the heart." Thus I can but hope that Paris, where I learnt the little I know, where I struggled and found love and happiness, whose every woe and disaster and triumph I have shared for over thirty years, may, however dark the clouds that still pass over her, some day fully justify M.Zola's confidence, and bring to pass his splendid dream of perfect truth and perfect justice.
E.A.V.
MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND, Feb.

5, 1898.
I.THE PRIEST AND THE POOR THAT morning, one towards the end of January, Abbe Pierre Froment, who had a mass to say at the Sacred Heart at Montmartre, was on the height, in front of the basilica, already at eight o'clock.

And before going in he gazed for a moment upon the immensity of Paris spread out below him.
After two months of bitter cold, ice and snow, the city was steeped in a mournful, quivering thaw.