But I am forgetting the prefects and sub-prefects.  I mentioned them partly because M. Zola himself might have been one of them.  It is not generally known, I believe, that at the time of the Franco-German war he in some degree assisted one of the sub-prefects in the discharge of his duties, and (had he only so chosen) might even have become a sub-prefect himself.  He had been an opposition, a Republican journalist, before the fall of the Empire, and M. Gambetta, during his virtual dictatorship throughout the latter part of the Franco-German war, was very fond of appointing journalists of that description to office, both in the army and the Civil Service.  M. Zola, then, might have become a sub-prefect to begin with; and, later, a full-blown prefect.  Picture him in a cocked hat and a uniform bedizened with gold lace, and with a slender sword dangling by his side.  That, at all events, was how sub-prefects and prefects used to array themselves when ‘in the exercise of their functions.’

I doubt of M. Zola would ever have made a good functionary.  His character is too independent, and in all likelihood he would have resigned the very first time that he happened to have ‘a few words’ with his Minister.  But politics having caught him in their grasp he would doubtless (like the few functionaries of independent views who throw up their posts in France) have next come forward as a candidate for the Chamber or the Senate.  And then—­why not?  He might have been an Under-Secretary of State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic.  True, as he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators are not always the men who get on in France.  Thiers was a ready and fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart) twenty consecutive words.  Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy, and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure possessed were infinitesimal.  And so the idea of Emile Zola, President of the Republic, may not be so far-fetched after all, particularly when one remembers Zola’s great powers of observation, analysis, and foresight.

Had he taken to politics in his younger days he would at least have made his mark in the career thus chosen.  And it may be that, in some respects, French public life might then have been healthier than it has proved during the last quarter of a century.  Perchance, too, on the other hand, many old maids and young persons, not to mention ecclesiastics and vigilance societies, would have been spared manifold pious ejaculations and gasps of horror.  Again, my poor father—­imprisoned, ruined, and hounded to his death—­might still have been alive.