the function of each of which would be to light with all due intensity one of its aspects.… Each of my "lamps" would be the light of a "single social occasion" in the history and intercourse of the characters concerned, and would bring out to the full the latent colour of the scene in question, and cause it to illustrate, to the last drop, its bearing on my theme.
The whole world knows Emile Zola's elaborate system of "documentation," the long and toilsome preparation that he went through before writing even the first paragraph of his opening chapter. If, for instance, he was going to write a novel on the life of the theatre, so he once told that indefatigable Italian traveller and story teller, Edmondo de Amicis, he would begin by jotting down all that he could remember of his own personal experience in regard to plays and playwrights, theatrical managers and actors; he would then secure all the books he could find that bore upon
[139]
