[ Zola / A Love Episode ]
This is a story of a love affair that never quite happens; the young widow Helene falls in love with the married Doctor Deberle, who is caring for Helene's terminally ill daughter. Despite a strong attraction to each other, Helene and the Doctor go their separate ways after Helene's daughter succumbs to tuberculosis.
The novel's only reference to Newfoundlands occurs in Chapter 16 when one of the minor characters, a man who is rumored to have given swimming lessons to the wife of the doctor (a rumor which generates a suggestion of impropriety on the part of the doctor's wife, and a rumor which is quite false) enters a gathering and greets the doctor's wife.
"Oh, it's you!" she exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody. "It seems you go in for swimming now."
He did not guess her meaning, but nevertheless replied, by way of a joke:
"Certainly; I once saved a Newfoundland dog from drowning."
The ladies thought this extremely funny, and even Madame Deberle seemed disarmed.
"Well, I'll allow you to save Newfoundlands," she answered, "but you know very well I did not bathe once at Trouville."
"Oh! you're speaking of the lesson I gave you!" he exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you one night in your dining-room how to move your feet and hands about?"
All the ladies were convulsed with mirth — he was delightful!
A few lines further on, the same character, in order to mask a private conversation by pretending the conversation is innocuous, loudly declares to the young woman he is whispering with "Oh! you don't believe the story about my Newfoundland! Yet I received a medal for it, and I'll show it to you."
There are no other references to Newfoundlands in this novel.