P R E F A C E  
  
 
IN the fevered days and nights under the Empire that 
perished in the struggle of 1870, that whirling tumult of 
pleasure, scheming, success, and despair, the minds of 
men had a trying ordeal to pass through.  In Zola’s “ La 
Curee ” we see how such ordinary and natural characters 
as those of Saccard, Maxime, and the incestuous heroine, 
were twisted and distorted from their normal sanity, 
and sent whirling into the jaws of a hell far more 
affrayant than the mere cheap and nasty brimstone 
Sheol which is a Shibboleth for the dissenter, and 
with which all classes of religious humbug, from the 
Pope to the Salvation ranter, from the Mormon and 
the Jesuit to that mongrel mixture of the worst features 
of both, the Plymouth Brother, have scared their 
illiterate, since hypocrisy was born, with Abel, and 
spiritual tyranny, with Jehovah !  Society, in the long