M. ZOLA HONOURED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8300, 3 June 1907, Page 5

M. ZOLA HONOURED.

TO BE BURIED IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME. (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) .Per Press Association.! (Received June 3rd, 8.38 a.m.) PARIS, June 2. The French Cabinet has decided to translate the body of the late Emile Zola to the Pantheon in July. • This high honour indicates a great change of feeling towards the great novelist, whose monumental work entitles him to a high place in French i literature. He went strongly against the popular sympathies in connectio with the Dreyfus case. Zola took the view that Dreyfus was innocent, and on the Ist December, 1897, declared in the Figaro that the attempt made by the military authori- j ties to prevent the re-opening of the i case was a crime. In his letter of j January, 1898, to the Aurore, en- ! tilled "J'Accuse," M. Zola denounced Colonel Du Paty du Clam, a member of the War Office staff, as being at the bottom of the Dreyfus prosecution, describing th e"incriminating document" as an impudent swindle, and accused the War Office of having endeavoured to screen rather than admit its mistake in condemning Dreyfus, and of having ordered the acquittal of Esterhazy, although it knew he was guiltv F:>r writing this letter M. Zola was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of 3000 francs. He fled to England, where he took up his residence in a village, subsequently returning to France. The Pantheon, where the remains of the late Emile Zola are to be placed, was begun as a church, but converted by the Constituent. Assembly of Republican France into a temple dedicated to the great men of the nation; next restored to the Church by Napoelon 111., and rededicated to St. Genevieve, but once more, on the occasion of the funeral of Victor Hugo (1885), reconverted into a monument, with the old inscription "Aux grande hommes la patrie recconaissante." The Pantheon has been spoken of as rivalling St._ Peter's at Rome, and St. Paul's in London. The frescoes of the interior are very fine. In the crypt are the tombs of Voltaire, Rouleau, and Victor Hugo