It follows that Edmond de Goncourt's estimate of Zola's democratic tendencies was arrant nonsense. Paris had been the young writer's home for several years now; he knew what to think of the Empire, and was against, not with, it. However, he placed literature before politics, particularly as all he saw of the political _cuisine_ of the times inclined him to regard many professional politicians with contempt. And his Republicanism was not so intense as to restrict him exclusively to Republican society. He admired the Goncourts and Flaubert--to whom the former introduced him in 1869--as literary masters, and associated with them freely. Again, he saw no reason why he should not contribute stories to "L'Artiste" and "L'Illustration," even if their editors did not think politically as he did. With respect to "Le Rappel," though his contributions were at times political they more frequently dealt with literary subjects; and the independence of his character was illustrated by the boldness with which he praised Balzac in a journal patronised and in some degree financed by Victor Hugo, who held that Balzac was fated to early and absolute oblivion, because he could not even write French. The result of Zola's championship of Balzac in "Le Rappel" was the severance of his connection with that journal. This, however, did not take place till the last months of the Empire, when much of the paper's purpose was already accomplished.
In the summer of 1869, after signing his contract with Lacroix for the first Rougon-Macquart volumes, Zola felt that he might at last venture to marry, and in July Mademoiselle Mesley, to whom reference has been made already,[20] became his wife. As he afterwards explained, apart from the question of love, he held "the married state to be an indispensable condition for the accomplishment of all good and substantial work. The theory which pictured woman as a destructive creature, one who killed an artist, pounded his heart, and fed upon his brain--was a romantic idea which facts controverted. For his own part, he needed an affection that would guarantee him tranquillity, a loving home, where he might shut himself up, so as to devote his life to the great series of books which he dreamt of. Everything, said he, depended upon a man's choice, and he believed he had found what he needed,--an orphan, the daughter of tradespeople, without a penny, but handsome and intelligent."[21]