Then Helene for the last time let her glance sweep over the unpitying city which also remained unknown to her.  She saw it once more, tranquil and with immortal beauty amidst the snow, the same as when she had left it, the same as it had been every day for three long years.  Paris to her was full of her past life.  In its presence she had loved, in its presence Jeanne had died.  But this companion of her every-day existence retained on its mighty face a wondrous serenity, unruffled by any emotion, as though it were but a mute witness of the laughter and the tears which the Seine seemed to roll in its flood.  She had, according to her mood, endowed it with monstrous cruelty or almighty goodness.  To-day she felt that she would be ever ignorant of it, in its indifference and immensity.  It spread before her; it was life.

However, Monsieur Rambaud now laid a light hand on her arm to lead her away.  His kindly face was troubled, and he whispered: 

“Do not give yourself pain.”

He divined her every thought, and this was all he could say.  Madame Rambaud looked at him, and her sorrow became appeased.  Her cheeks were flushed by the cold; her eyes sparkled.  Her memories were already far away.  Life was beginning again.

“I’m not quite certain whether I shut the big trunk properly,” she exclaimed.

Monsieur Rambaud promised that he would make sure.  Their train started at noon, and they had plenty of time.  Some gravel was being scattered on the streets; their cab would not take an hour.  But, all at once, he raised his voice: 

“I believe you’ve forgotten the fishing-rods!” said he.

“Oh, yes; quite!” she answered, surprised and vexed at her forgetfulness.  “We ought to have bought them yesterday!”

The rods in question were very handy ones, the like of which could not be purchased at Marseilles.  They there owned near the sea a small country house, where they purposed spending the summer.  Monsieur Rambaud looked at his watch.  On their way to the railway station they would still be able to buy the rods, and could tie them up with the umbrellas.  Then he led her from the place, tramping along, and taking short cuts between the graves.  The cemetery was empty; only the imprint of their feet now remained on the snow.  Jeanne, dead, lay alone, facing Paris, for ever and for ever.

AFTERWARD

There can be no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of “A Love Episode” the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola’s works, with perhaps one exception.  The masterly series of which this book is a part furnishes a well-stocked gallery of pictures by which posterity will receive vivid and adequate impressions of life in France during a certain period.  There was a strain of Greek blood in Zola’s veins.  It would almost seem that down through the ages with this blood there had come to him a touch of that old Greek fatalism, or belief in destiny or necessity.  The Greek tragedies are pervaded and permeated, steeped and dyed with this idea of relentless fate.  It is called heredity, in these modern days.  Heredity plus environment,—­in these we find the keynote of the great productions of the leader of the “naturalistic” school of fiction.