It has been said that art, in itself, should have no moral.  It has been further charged that the tendencies of some of Zola’s works are hurtful.  But, in the books of this master, the aberrations of vice are nowhere made attractive, or insidiously alluring.  The shadow of expiation, remorse, punishment, retribution is ever present, like a death’s-head at a feast.  The day of reckoning comes, and bitterly do the culprits realize that the tortuous game of vice is not worth the candle.  Casuistical theologians may attempt to explain away the notions of punishment in the life to come, of retribution beyond the grave.  But the shallowest thinker will not deny the realities of remorse.  To how many confessions, to how many suicides has it led?  Of how many reformed lives has it been the mainspring?  The great lecturer, John B. Gough, used to tell a story of a railway employee whose mind was overthrown by his disastrous error in misplacing a switch, and who spent his days in the mad-house repeating the phrase:  “If I only had, if I only had.”  His was not an intentional or wilful dereliction.  But in the hearts of how many repentant sinners does there not echo through life a similar mournful refrain.  This lesson has been taught by Zola in more than one of his romances.

In “A Love Episode” how poignant is this expiation!  In all literature there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene Grandjean.  Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type.  The old “neurosis,” seen in earlier branches of the family, reappears in these characters.  Readers of the series will know where it began.  Poor little Jeanne, most pathetic of creations, is a study in abnormal jealousy, a jealousy which seems to be clairvoyant, full of supernatural intuitions, turning everything to suspicion, a jealousy which blights and kills.  Could the memory of those weeks of anguish fade from Helene’s soul?  This dying of a broken heart is not merely the figment of a poet’s fancy.  It has happened in real life.  The coming of death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive.  Parents know what it is to sit with bated breath and despairing heart beside the bed of a sinking child.  Seconds seem hours, and hours weeks.  The impotency to succour, the powerlessness to save, the dumb despair, the overwhelming grief, all these are sorrowful realities.  How vividly are they pictured by Zola.  And, added to this keenness of grief in the case of Helene Grandjean, was the sense that her fault had contributed to the illness of her daughter.  Each sigh of pain was a reproach.  The pallid and ever-paling cheek was a whip of scorpions, lashing the mother’s naked soul.  Will ethical teachers say that there is no salutary moral lesson in this vivid picture?  To many it seems better than a cart-load of dull tracts or somnolent homilies.  Poor, pathetic little Jeanne, lying there in the cemetery of Passy—­where later was erected the real tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff, though dead she yet spoke a lesson of contrition to her mother.  And though the second marriage of Helene has been styled an anti-climax, yet it is true enough to life.  It does not remove the logical and artistic inference that the memory of Jeanne’s sufferings lingered with ever recurring poignancy in the mother’s heart.