the question naturally arises as to whether there daily, and the second largest paper, La Petite Re- i?5 are connections between the political and aesthetic publique, sold 196,372.) The publishers of Notes ideologies of a newspaper. The conditions under UEvenement had ambitions to make it into "le to Page which journalists were operating in 1878 tended Figaro de gauche," a mass circulation republican 83 to blur the clearer relations of earlier years be- paper (Figaro was the conservative daily with the tween ideas about art and ideas about politics. The largest circulation, 104,924). Because of the dis- Parisian press had been subject to the caprices of cordant opinions of Gervex's work published in government censorship from the time of the provi- the same paper, it is hard to see any hard and fast sional declaration of the Republic in 1870. This connections between the paper's cultural and po- state of affairs continued — with periodic ups and litical reporting. The second publisher of WeilPs downs — until the passage of the liberal, relaxed letter, Le Courrier du soir, was also a republican press law in July 1881. Because government cen- paper, but a very small one. It originated in Febru- sorship throughout the 18705 focused relentlessly ary 1878, and by 1880 it had the lowest circulation on the press of the extreme left, there was no tren- of any of the Parisian dailies. chantly critical paper on that side during the de- Le Petit Parisien, publisher of Balsamo's positive cade, with the exception of La Lanterne, the only review, was a popular republican paper (selling successful radical paper of the period (which did for only one sou) that became slowly more radical not review Gervex's picture). The years of Presi- beginning in 1878. Its circulation of 39,419 in dent McMahon's septennat, 1873—1879, were 1880 placed it eleventh among the daily papers. hard ones for the press, but government restric- Le Soleil, which published Emile Garden's positive tions on the press generally lessened beginning in evaluation, was a powerful newspaper: "le premier 1876 (in spite of the crackdown on the press dur- grand journal politique a un sou," it espoused a ing the 1877 elections). Owing to Republican suc- conservative center-right position in politics (es- cesses in the elections of 1876 and 1877, the crisis sentially monarchist in orientation, it nevertheless of May 16, 1877, and the press amnesty of Febru- preached a "ralliement a la Republique") and ary 1878, the press operated with relative freedom maintained a large circulation (45,190, which in the spring of 1878. Of overarching importance, made it ninth of the sixty dailies in 1880). however, is this: as the press of the Third Repub- Le Temps, which published an anonymous con- lic became less and less subject to censorship, it demnation of Rolla, was a conservative republi- generally became less and less political. (See can paper, strongly opposed to radicals allied with Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Censorship of the Leon Gambetta. With a circulation of 22,764 in Arts and the Press in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1880, it was twelfth of the thirty-four republi- Houndmills, Eng., 1989, which appeared just as can dailies. The Gazette des Beaux-Arts, another these notes were being completed.) source of condemnation of Rolla, lacked an ex- Paris-Plaisir, Liber's paper, was made up of plicit political viewpoint because it reported only social tidbits, theater and fashion news, sports, on art, although it was known for its hidebound "chroniques de la semaine," and "varietes" and conservatism in cultural matters. featured Huysmans's "Croquis Parisiens." The Le Bien Public, home to Paul Sebillot's defense paper published only seven issues, appearing of Rolla, was a generally conservative paper; since seven Sundays in a row during March and April of 1874, it had been a Protestant, anticlerical repub- 1878. It offered ten-franc photographs of Rolla lican paper. It became Le Voltaire in July 1878 (a under the heading "Prime a nos lecteurs" in the daily circulation of 10,451 established its rank of issues of April 21 and 28. thirty-first in 1880). Le Bien Public and then Le UEvenement, which published both Le Sphinx's Voltaire had a long-standing relationship with defense of Rolla and Weill's denunciation of it, Zola, which reminds us again of the difficulty of was a republican paper of medium size: in 1880 directly correlating political and aesthetic ideas in its circulation was 14,085, making it twenty-fifth the press in these years. Zola published feuilletons among the sixty Parisian dailies and eighteenth of L'Assommoir, Nana, and Unepage d'amourm among exclusively republican papers. (To provide these papers and had also written theater and lit- some context for these circulation figures, Le Petit erary criticism for Le Bien Public from 1876 to Journal, the giant of its day, sold 583,820 copies 1878. (He broke with Le Voltaire late in 1880.)