The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-09-18

his first communion and, although it is
not true that he had ever been choir boy,
had walked in religious professions. A
little later, rejecting first one dogma and then
another, he had gradually freed himself
from all such bonds, merely clinging for a
time to such deism as Voltaire suggested
when he said or wrote: Isl Dieu n'e1istdh
pas, IL fdudrdh Finpenter." Eventually Zola
came to the conclusion that Voltaire would
not have used such words had he lived in
the nineteenth century, the age OF science.
For his own part in religion, as in litera-
ture and other matters, he had been unable
to tarry long in any halfway house. He
had at last largely embraced the positivism
which acknowledges only that which Is
manifest and which neither accepts nor
denies that which Is hypothesis only. Zola's
creed seems to have come to him less d.
rectly than indirectly filtered through the
philosophy Of Taine. In spite of the many
limits to the knowledge thus far acquired
by us, he held that science would some
day succeed in solving the whole riddle of
the universe. Nevertheless, though he
could not believe in the supernatural, as 1t
is expounded by Christian churches, he
fully understood that many persons would
cling to a belief in the supernatural from
their craving for certainty and consolation.
1t seemed to him monstrous, however, that
30 many ghostly superstitious practices
should have been grated upon the element
airy principles of Christianity and that
the Roman Catholic Church should be pri-
MARTY an engine Of political domination.
At the same time he held the opinion that
there was far more broadness of view among
T.A Al.n,, Dat to
Yet he conceded that the latter had one
good trait their minds might be narrower,
their self-rghteousness might be almost
repulsive, but their rgidity of principles
at least stimulated them to truthfulness,
whereof, said Zola, they had given con-
spicuous proofs during the Dreyfus case
The French Professionals were only hand
full but they possessed the courage of their
convictions; they had not hesitated to testify
to the truth, whatever risk they ran in
doing So n
Throughout the summer of 1902 the novel;
list remained at his country house in Nedan.
correctinglproofs Of "Verite" and making
few preparations for Justice which
was to have been the last of his four Evan
giles, In August he wrote half a dozen
times to his London publisher about the
forthcoming work, and on one occasion
mentioned that times are still very hard,
but one consoles ones self by working;
the reference being less to pecuniary mat
tiers than to the writer's position in France
generally, for he still remained under
cloud in consequence of his participation
in the dfdire. In the early part of Septem-
Der he once more wrote to Vizetelly, and
then came silence.
All at once, on Sept. 20, kilograms from
Paris brought the news that Emile lola had
been found dead in his bedroom, and that his
wife had narrowly escaped dying with him.
A r,lmor became current that the novelist
had committed suicide, but the inquest
showed that there was no foundation for
It, He was undoubtedly asphyXiated by
the coal gas with which, owing to defective
and INSTRUCTED chimney, his bedroom be-
came filled. There was no basis for the
statement, published in some newspapers,
that the fire which had such fatal result
had been made with artificial fuel. such as
compressed coal dust. AS matter Of fact
coal was employed, and the biographer
believes it to have been Welsh anthracite.
for Cola bought that combustible in con-
siderable quantities. That such coal would
not burn well in defective chimney is GER
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