ABSTRACT
Emile Zola's ambition to root his twenty-volume history of a family under the Second Empire in scientific observation inevitably involved him in a comparison with La Comedie humaine. For Zola, the hero of the novel is the notary Chesnel, who symbolizes the recognition by the People of their strength. The novel, he argues, clearly illustrates that the People are destined to 'lay their hands on the country's wealth, dignity, and sovereignty'. In the decade that followed the publication of his article in La Tribune, Zola was to return to Balzac as a subject for his journalism on a number of occasions. Zola's concern in his article is to show the shallowness of Janin's view that Balzac was over-rated as a novelist. Zola's subsequent volume of essays Les Romanciers naturalistes opens with a lengthy essay on Balzac that not unnaturally arouses expectations.
