Émile ZOLA. L.A.S., Paris March 10, 1885, [to Joseph Canqueteau]; 1 1/2 pages in-8. On his Rougon-Macquart novels. "Thank you [...] for your kind sympathy. It is indeed for young people that I write, and it is through them that I will be, if I am to be. The original idea for Germinal is already a long way off. When I wrote L'Assommoir, I had reserved that other face of the people, the suffering worker in the big industrial centers. All the novels in my series were completed at roughly the same time, and each one simply comes at its own time. I shall no doubt, as you may have guessed, now study the world of artists, taking up my Claude Lantier [L'Œuvre]. But the military novel, the one I intend to put Sedan in, is still a long way off, as it will hardly come for another six or seven years: it is the penultimate in the series [La Débâcle]"...