Émile ZOLA. L.A.S., Médan October 11, 1890, [to David Dautresme]; 2pages in-8. About La Bête humaine. "You have asked me for a letter to publish as a preface to La Bête humaine, which will appear in Le Petit Rouennais. In truth, the work is now so well known that it's difficult for me to talk about it. The preface I didn't see fit to put at the head of the volume is even more useless today. Let your readers simply take the work as a drama that I have tried to make as gruesome as possible; and, if any human truth emerges, they will discover it for themselves. An author should never explain himself, because that would be to admit that his book is obscure. You want to know why I chose the line from Paris to Le Havre as the setting for my action. It's quite simply because it's the shortest, the most complete and the most typical of all the lines in France. I had everything I needed at hand; and, what's more, I've been studying it for ten years, seeing and hearing, every day and every night, its two hundred trains pass under the windows of my beloved Médan retreat"...