"Je désire simplement toucher au sujet dans mon livre, pour le besoin du petit drame commercial qui me sert de fable."

Autograph letter signed by Emile Zola - apparently unpublished - addressed to Léon Carbonnaux, written in black ink on a double sheet. Folds inherent to mailing. Envelope included.
Important testimony to the colossal documentation work and the capital role of Emile Zola's informants in depicting his immense natural and social fresco.
This letter was sent to Léon Carbonnaux, department head at Bon Marché who transmitted precious information to Emile Zola for the creation of the eleventh volume of the Rougon-Macquart series: Au Bonheur des Dames.
Only two letters from Léon Carbonnaux to Emile Zola are known: they can be consulted in the digitization of the preparatory file for Bonheur des Dames made available online by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. However, we know thanks to this same file, which contains a long section entitled "Notes Carbonnaux," that this department head at Bon Marché provided a significant amount of information to Zola, particularly about employee customs and their remuneration. The two men undoubtedly met when Emile Zola, eager for information about the functioning of department stores, conducted field research in February and March 1882. This response would therefore be the very first that the writer addressed to the department head, in reply to his letter of June 19, 1882. Far from imagining the keen success that this new novel would achieve, Zola even seems to take it lightly: "Je désire simplement toucher au sujet dans mon livre, pour le besoin du petit drame commercial qui me sert de fable. Vos notes sont excellentes. [...] Enfin, me voilà au travail. Le sujet est à la fois bien vaste - et bien ingrat pour un roman. On devra me tolérer un peu de fiction, car il faut bien que je passionne la matière. Mais je tâche de m'en tenir le plus strictement possible à mes notes." ["I simply wish to touch on the subject in my book, for the needs of the little commercial drama that serves as my fable. Your notes are excellent. [...] Finally, here I am at work. The subject is both very vast - and very thankless for a novel. One will have to tolerate a bit of fiction from me, for I must make the material passionate. But I try to stick as strictly as possible to my notes."]
It must be said that Carbonnaux takes his role as informant very much to heart and, having no doubt about the book's success, he writes: "Dans le bâtiment chez nous d'ailleurs, partout on attend votre livre. Les lecteurs ne vous manqueront pas. Soyez-en sûr. Vous n'en êtes plus à compter les succès celui-là s'annonce comme devant dépasser les autres." (letter of June 19, 1882) For another work, on the same subject, has just appeared: "J'ai lu le volume de Pierre Giffard. Il me paraît comme vous injuste et même faux dans plusieurs parties. C'est bâclé. Il aurait fallu, pour un pareil ouvrage de documents purs, une entière exactitude. Moi qui écris une œuvre d'imagination, je ne me permettrai pas de tels écarts." ["I have read Pierre Giffard's volume. It seems to me, like you, unjust and even false in several parts. It is hastily done. For such a work of pure documents, complete accuracy would have been necessary. I, who write a work of imagination, would not allow myself such deviations."]It was Carbonnaux who had pointed out the work to Zola: "Pierre Giffard du Figaro vient de faire paraître chez Havard un vol de 300 pages intitulé « Les Grands bazars de Paris ». [...] On sait que le Figaro est inféodé au Louvre [magasin concurrent au Bon Marché] & on peut assurer que ce livre a été commandé et bâclé dès que votre intention de traiter le même sujet a été connue. [...] Il fallait déguiser un peu la réclame pour le Louvre." (letter of June 19, 1882)
We can clearly see here how much department stores fascinate and we understand the immense success that this novel by Zola describing their advent and supremacy would achieve.