This was chiefly to save the self-love of his publishers, who did not care
to admit that the idol of a capricious populace had fallen off its
pedestal. The vast fiction was created that Zola sold as well as ever! One
Paris firm, the "Société du Mercure de France," which in the domain of
pure letters has probably issued in the last dozen years more good books
than any other house in the world, has, with astounding courage, adopted
the practice of numbering every copy of a book. Thus my copy of its
"L'Esprit de Barbey d'Aurévilly" (an exceedingly diverting volume) is
numbered 1424. I prefer this to advertisements of "second large edition,"
etc. One knows where one is. But I fear the example of the Mercure de
France is not likely to be honestly imitated.

* * * * *

If Anatole France's "editions" consist of five hundred copies I am glad.
For an immediate sale of nine thousand copies is fairly remarkable when
the article sold consists of nothing more solid than irony. But I am
inclined to think that they do not consist of five hundred copies. There
is less enthusiasm--that is to say, less genuine enthusiasm--for Anatole
France than there used to be. The majority, of course, could never
appreciate him, and would only buy him under the threat of being disdained
by the minority, whose sole weapon is scorn. And the minority has been
seriously thinking about Anatole France, and coming to the conclusion
that, though a genius, he is not the only genius that ever existed.
(Stendhal is at present the god of the minority of the race which the
_Westminister Gazette_ will persist in referring to as "our French
neighbours." In some circles it is now a lapse from taste to read anything
but Stendhal.) Anatole France's last two works of imagination did not
brilliantly impose themselves on the intellect of his country. "L'Histoire
Comique" showed once again his complete inability to construct a novel,