C'est . . . guerre : it may befair in war

Page 27. — 1. Ne . . . fait, i.e. he does not draw his characters front a close study of reality, but he créâtes his own reality, adapting it to his characters. Allusion to a saying of Vertot, a French historian of the seventeenth century, who, having to write about the siège of a famous city, made up the story without consulting the documents ; when he happened to read them, his book being already written, he simply exclaimed : " It is too late, my siège is made."

Page 28. — 1. Il manquait d'esprit: hewas lacking in wit. Zola is indeed a robust and powerful writer, but he certainly lacks that characteristic quality of most of the French writers, wit. His style is ponderous, without any sparkle or trace of humor.

a. Eugène Delacroix (1 799-1863). A very great painter of this century, the father of the Romantic school ; his first success, La Barque du Dante, was the starting-point of a new era in art.

Page 29. — 1. Je . . . distingué: I couldn't hoist myself up to so nice a judgment.

a. Et . . . crue : giving to everything the same sharp outlined relief or causing everything tojut out with the same glaring distinctness.

Page 30. — 1. Buffon. A great naturalist of the eighteenth century, the author of the Histoire naturelle, Histoire des Animaux domestiques, Histoire des Oiseaux, Histoire des Minéraux, and Epoques de la Nature, his masterpièce. A statue was erected to him before his death, the inscription of which was : Majestati naturae par ingenium.

a. Ce . . . originalité : this gift, with his other endowments, highly contributes to give him a robust originality.