‘Sleep!’ he replied.  ’Oh, there is no sleep for me to-night.  From this moment I shall be counting the hours, the very minutes.’

‘It will make a change for you, Vizetelly,’ said M. Fasquelle, as he, Mme. Fasquelle, and myself walked towards the railway station.  ’You will be missing him now.’

This was true.  All the routine, all the alertes, the meetings, the missions of those eleven months were about to cease abruptly.  What had at first seemed to me novel had with time become confirmed habit, and for the first few days after M. Zola’s departure I felt my occupation gone.

That departure took place, as arranged, on Sunday evening, June 4.  It was the day when President Loubet was cowardly assailed at a race-meeting by the friends and partisans of the foolish Duke of Orleans; but of all that we remained (pro tem.) in blissful ignorance.  The Fasquelles went down to Norwood and brought M. Zola to Victoria.  I was busy during the day preparing for the ‘Westminster Gazette’ an English epitome of the declaration which ‘L’Aurore’ was to publish on the morrow.  That work accomplished, I met the others on their arrival in town.  Wareham had been warned of the change in the programme on the previous night, and came up from Wimbledon with my wife.  There was a hasty scramble of a dinner at a restaurant near Victoria.  We were served, I remember, by a very amusing and familiar waiter, who, addressing M. Zola by preference (I wonder if he recognised him?), kept on repeating that he was a ’citizen of the most noble Helvetian Confederation,’ and assured us that potatoes for two would be ample, and that chicken for three would be as much as we should care to eat.  ‘Take this,’ said he, ’it’s to-day’s.  Don’t have that, it was cooked yesterday.’  And all this made us extremely merry.  ’It seems to me more than ever that I am living in a dream,’ said M. Zola after a final laugh.  ‘That waiter has given the finishing touch to my illusion.’

The train started at nine P.M., and we had a full quarter of an hour at our disposal for our leave-takings in the dimly-lighted station.  There were few passengers travelling that night, and few loiterers about.  We made M. Zola take his seat in a compartment, and stood on guard before it talking to him.  Only one gentleman, a short dapper individual with mutton-chop whiskers (Wareham suggested that he looked like a barrister), paid any attention to the master, and, it may be, recognised him.  For the rest, all went well.  There were au revoirs and handshakes all round, and messages, too, for one and another.  And M. Zola would have his little joke.  ‘If you should come across Esterhazy,’ he said to me, ’tell him that I’ve gone back, and ask him when he’s coming.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ’he will probably want another safe-conduct before answering that question.’

’Do you think that a safe-conduct to take Dreyfus’s place would suit him?’ was M. Zola’s retort.