'15th September 1928. Reading Zola today (Une Page D?Amour). A book surprisingly different from, and somehow weaker than ?La Terre?, but also one of the Rougon Macquard series. It seems to be only a sort of sketched-in incident, a bit of relief to the greater volumes. A great book, none the less, and a little less strained in the stressing of the hastily obvious. Zola is too inclined to describe to his readers certain habits of mankind, which they know quite as well as he. He does not seem to understand that it is just this fact that causes the less ?realist? author to leave them out.'