ABSTRACT
Now that he was approaching fifty, another storm was raging inside of Zola, a tempest of old and new doubts, hopes, fears, regrets, aspirations. He was tired, restless. The days when he had enjoyed battling on behalf of his fellow naturalists were long gone. 'I have cooled off considerably,' he wrote Van Santen Kolff on January 22, 1888. 'From now on, I shall fight just for myself.' He longed to be young again, to experience once more the joys of love. In late 1887, he decided to lose weight. He gave up wine and starchy foods and by March, 1888, had gone down from 212 to 163 lbs. Goncourt, who had not seen him since the publication of the Manifeste des cinq, was astonished. His paunch had melted away. He seemed taller and more taut. The delicately molded features that had for years been lost and buried in his fat, round face had reappeared, so that he once more looked like his Manet portrait, except for what struck Goncourt as 'a hint of wickedness' in his expression.
