One Tuesday evening at the end of the 19th century, a room in Mallarmé's aprtment, number 89, rue Rome, Paris. There they were, the great talents of the age, excitedly discussing aesthetics: L'Isle-Adam, Verlaine, Vaéry, Gide, Claudel, Debussy, Redon, Gauguin, Rodin. The room was so crowded, you could hardly see the host Mallarmé's face. This was their weekly Tuesday meeting, called "Le Mardis." They talked about art, politics, God, the future of mankind... They learned from each other, and carved out a new age with their work. In 1898, Zola published an article entitled "J'Accuse!" in a local newspaper. In it, the great writer-to-be expressed his rage over the Dreyfus Affair, the huge bribery scandal involving politicians, bureaucrats, and businesses. The Dreyfus Affair scandal represented a strong protest against the establishment, and aroused public opinion. In Paris alone it initiated a fierce clash between the Left and the Right. Writers and artists were forced to make their ideas and positions public, leading to the formation of a new century of new French thought. New generation intellectuals like Gide, Proust, and Valéry were at the time feeling "the smell of an airtight room, " as Gide wrote, in the naturalist and symbolist literature of the times.So it was Belle Époque--when art and theater flourished with a zeal, that the young writers established a literature magazine called N.R.F. (La Nouvelle Revue Françise; "The New French" Revue) and began to change the scent of the times. Many writers of the new generation contributed to this marvelous new media, forming a intellectual community. Proust was finally able to publish his Remembrance of Things Past in N.R.F., after being rejected by all other publishers.This literature movement was succeeded by the artists of Esprit Nouveau like Cocteau and Apollinaire.