During the Dreyfus affair, in which he took a leading part as one of the founders of the Patrie Française League, I saw him less and less. Meeting him one morning in the gardens of the Luxembourg, I asked him why he neglected me.
"Ah! my friend," he said hesitatingly, "I'd love to call on you as in the past, but the trouble is there are too many Dreyfusards in your salon!"
By an amusing coincidence, Zola called that very day, but he only remained a little while.
"To my great regret, I must go, Madame." And he added in a low, confidential voice: "The fact is there are too many Anti-Dreyfusards here."
The author of the Roujon-Macquarts was manly and brave besides being an able if unsympathetic novelist, but he had, to my knowledge, one little failing: he disliked talent in others, and one weakness: he was a gourmet. Therefore on the two or three occasions when he dined with us, I arranged a menu which Brillat Savarin would have endorsed and took care not to invite any other writer.
Zola lacked in conversation what he lacked in his writing: delicacy, refinement, lightness. He was heavy, ponderous and rather aggressive.
I teased him one day: "How is the chase after human documents going on?" I asked.
"Quite well, Madame. I hunt my quarry everywhere, and all day long. Human documents, slices of life, searching character-studies, that is all there is in literature."
"But what of the writer's personality? Is that of no account whatever?"
"It shouldn't be. I try to eliminate my personality from my books...."
"I have the misfortune of being possessed of a temperament which I cannot altogether get rid of, alas!" came the pompous reply.
Another time, after re-reading "La Terre," I told him "You are a pessimist, M. Zola! You see only one side of life, the ugly and animal side; and but one kind of people... the bad kind. And to cap it all, you exaggerate. You believe yourself a 'realist,' but as a matter of fact, you are an idealist... with an ugly ideal!"
It was very evident that Zola was not pleased. Without relenting, however, I went on: "I have lived in the country for many, many years. I assure you that our peasants round Beaucourt and Belfort bear very little likeness to the brutes you describe. I have loved the peasants...."