Neither Wareham nor
myself was much troubled at this period; there was a lull even in the
periodical visits which gentlemen of the Press kindly favoured me.
Still we had taken our precautions by admitting a mutual friend, Mr. A.
W. Pamplin, into our confidence. If M. Zola's communications with Paris,
through Wareham and myself, should be threatened, Mr. Pamplin was to take
upon himself the duty of re-establishing them.
At M. Zola's house there was, so far as I am aware, but one brief
_alerte_. This occurred one afternoon, when a servant came to my daughter
with the tidings that there was a French hunchback at the door. Violette
impulsively rushed off to tell M. Zola of it; but when in her turn she
went to the door to see who the person might be, she found that he was an
Englishman, a traveller for some county directory, who had merely
performed his legitimate work in requesting to know the name of the
occupier of the house. Of course the only name given was that of the
owner, then absent at the seaside.
Thus the hot days sped by peacefully enough.
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