“ Every book-lover who goes to Paris must visit the banks of the Seine and revel among the riches of that vast exhibition of old books, art objects, rare prints, and fascinating what-not, which for generations have been the despair and the admiration of collectors. Over an old-book mart on the Quai Malaquis, Jacques Anatole Thibault—now everywhere known as Anatole France—was born April 16, 1844. From that day to this he has never left as a residence that Paris whose every paving-block he knows, as he himself says, and whose every stone he loves. ”

“ And so on this spot the convent of Mercy was built, as a shelter for storm-beleaguered sailors, and it was said by humble folk that for many years the foot-prints of Jesus Christ could be seen there in the sands of Flanders.
There is little charm in Balzac’s work, much coarseness, much detail of vileness, much to cause the sensitive to shudder; but there is much, too, that causes the soul to judge itself honestly, and many a beauty-crowned peak rising nobly from the valley darkness. ”

“ Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went down into the street with the becoming gravity and pride of one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a fragment of the Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.
I looked upon as sovereignly ridiculous all those who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so notoriously Egyptian; and it seemed to me that the true occupation of every man of sense was to have a mummy’s foot upon his desk. ”

“ Hence, again, Balzac has used in his short-stories less the realistic method of narration than the romantic. Pure realism as a method is suited to the novel, where life shows whole; but the short-story, which presents a section, a phase, an incident of life, and by which we do not hope to gain a picture of an age, of a whole social system, or even of an entire individual life, is almost compelled to adopt the methods of romanticism even when laying its fictional foundations, as Balzac did, deep in the ground of reality. ”

“ You must have perfection, the ideal and poesy—all those things which do not exist. Instead of loving in a woman [Pg 104] the love that she has for you, of being grateful to her for her devotion and for the gift of her heart, you look to see if she resembles that plaster Venus in your study.... You are not a lover, poor Tiburce, you are simply a painter. ”

“ The explanation of this wholesome spirit is simple—unlike the others, Halévy had not come up from the provinces with eyes ready to pop out at the city sights. From boyhood he knew all sides of Parisian life, and saw things in correct perspective, so he did not interpret light-heartedness to be lightness, nor gayety to be abandon. All sorts and conditions of men move in his stories, but the vicious, the sensual, the mean, are no more prominent in the Paris he paints than they are in the real Paris—and that means that they exist in much the same numerical proportion as in any other metropolis. ”

“ Always his understanding of the people of the stage is apparent. In many a tale these folk appear, and never is the hand that leads them forward ungentle, even when the words of the introducer are tinged with irony.
As for form, it is not especially in his plot-structure that we see traces of Halévy’s training in the drama, for he seldom emphasizes plot at all. But when he does depart from his favorite sketch form to attempt the short-story, he still writes simply; and so inevitably do the incidents succeed one another that there scarcely seems to be even a plot. ”

“ One day on the street Tiburce catches sight of a woman who bears—a striking resemblance to the Magdalen! Her—Gretchen—he eventually meets, and to her he reluctantly gives his love. Yet, though Gretchen comes to love Tiburce, she cannot evoke in him quite the same feelings he knows in the presence of Rubens’ beautiful woman—the Magdalen is still his ideal. Even when he christens the girl with the name of the Penitent, the transformation is not complete. ”

“ In faithful description the precursor of the realists, he still adhered to his romanticist ideals. Word-connoisseur, and stylist of the first order, he loved perfection of literary form because such harmonies were the outward limbs of beauty.
Here was an aggressive, positive, individual man, strong in love as in loathing, tender to all [Pg 101] animals, living, like Balzac, joyously a life of struggle against debt, and at last winning a place greater than the forbidden seat in the Academy—a place among the most distinguished romanticists that France ever gave to the world. ”

“ When Nicolas and Porbus are permitted to view Frenhofer’s completed canvas, they discover that in his long effort to perfect his work the old painter has entirely covered the original picture, and that not more than a shadowy human foot is to be seen; only the imaginative eye of the artist himself is able to see the figure! ”

“ He was doing in honor of the Holy Mother of God the feats which had brought to him the most applause. Not comprehending that this simple man was thus placing his talent and his knowledge at the service of the Holy Virgin, the two elders cried out at the sacrilege.
The Prior understood that Barnabas had an innocent heart; but he thought that he had fallen into dementia. All three were preparing to drag him vigorously from the chapel when they saw the Holy Virgin descend the steps of the altar in order to wipe with a fold of her blue mantle the sweat which burst from the brow of her juggler. ”

“ But we ought to be, if we are not, drawn by thoughts of a melodious rhythm of words portraying honest emotions, of country life that exhales the “perfume of new hay and of ripe wheat,” of woodsy ways and forest folk—in a word, thoughts of a world where, as in La Bretonne, the lowliest respond to human need, and even crime cannot stamp out the image of the beautiful, a world full of goodness rising out of the ooze of evil. ”

“ In no one of Halévy’s stories do we see so clearly the application of his robust, sincere literary creed as confessed in his own words:
“We must not write simply for the refined, the blasé, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. [Pg 69] We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully into the Odéon omnibus. We must write courageously for the bourgeois, if it were only to try to refine them, to make them less bourgeois. ”

“ In Memoriam was the title of his first success—a romance in verse, quickly appraised by critics at a value which it still maintains, and displaying the qualities for which the author’s writings are appreciated to-day.
We never tire of debating as to whether distinguished men are more the product of their times, than their era is moulded by its men. Doubtless something of both views is the ultimate truth. Theuriet, however, left no profound influence upon his age. ”

“ In attempting to get a view of his broad genius we must remember our author’s versatility, not alone of gift but of temper; and since a consideration of his novels is not pertinent to this paper, let [Pg 10] us see if the many-sided Balzac is not clearly revealed in a varied half-dozen of his greatest short-stories.
Picture this powerful worker spending endless days and nights, months on end, roaming the streets of Paris, haunting purlieu and boulevard, absorbing with the thirsty passion of a universal analyst the knowledge of what man is. ”

“ Is it not for the [Pg 144] purpose of taking the character of a fool in some mystery-play?”
“Not for that purpose, father,” responded Barnabas. “Such as you see me, I am named Barnabas, and I am by calling a juggler. It would be the most beautiful occupation in the world if one could eat every day.”
“Friend Barnabas,” replied the monk, “take care what you say. There is no more beautiful calling than the monastic state. Therein one celebrates the praises of God, the Virgin, and the saints, and the life of a monk is a perpetual canticle to the Lord.” ”

“ There Master Frenhofer, an eccentric, wealthy old artist, is discoursing on his theories of art (set forth brilliantly [Pg 11] and at length in the story, and illustrating the marvellous sweep of Balzac’s knowledge) . Frenhofer is obsessed by the conviction that the artists of the day do not make their subjects live, and illustrates by criticising the painting, “St. Mary the Egyptian,” which Porbus has about completed. “Your saint is not badly put together, but she is not alive. Because you have copied nature, you imagine that you are painters, and that you have discovered God’s secret! ”

“ At these words, uttered with an impressive unction, a holy awe seized the assistant and the two nuns. Beneath the arches of St. Peter’s at Rome God could not have appeared with more majesty than He then appeared in that asylum of poverty, before the eyes of those Christians; so true is it that between man and Him every intermediary seems useless, and that He derives His grandeur from Himself alone. ”

“ I would quite willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who are durable—you no longer know how to preserve yourselves: the oldest people that you can produce are scarcely fifteen hundred years old, and they are no more than a pinch of dust. See here—my flesh is hard as basalt, my bones are bars of steel!
“I shall be present on the last day of the world with the body and the features which were mine in life; my daughter Hermonthis will endure longer than a statue of bronze. ”

“ In the cool nights he imagines music in the heavens above. He ponders on his past life.
The magnetic will of the Provençal seems to control brute nature, or else she has not felt the pangs of hunger, for her amiability is unbroken, and he trusts her completely. Whatever she may [Pg 16] be doing, she stops short at the word “Mignonne.” One day when he shows acute interest in a flying eagle, the lioness is evidently jealous, and the Provençal now declares that “she has a soul.” ”

“ The very natural dread inspired by the silence was augmented by all the terror which at that time caused France to groan; then, too, the old lady had not as yet met any one; her sight had long been feeble, so for this and for other reasons she could not discern by the lights of the lanterns the few distant passers-by, who were scattered like phantoms on the broad highway of the quarter. She went on courageously alone through that solitude, as though her age were a talisman which would preserve her from all evil. ”

“ In all life, at home and widely journeying abroad, he sought it, and when he found it, whether in human form, in relics of ancient art, in modern picture and marble, or in the unrivalled symmetry of nature, his whole being throbbed with delight. ”

“ Believing himself safe for the present, the man rises and leaves the grotto; she follows, rubbing against his legs and uttering a wild, peculiar cry, whereupon he again goes through the petting motions usual with domestic animals, at the same time weighing the chance of killing her with one blow of his weapon. On her side, the lioness scrutinizes him kindly, yet prudently—then she licks his shoes. ”

“ After heart-breaking protests, the lad is compelled to yield. As his sister Clara places her head on the block, the young French officer, Victor, now friendly with the English, runs to her and tells her that if she will marry him her life will be saved. Her only reply is to her brother, “Now, Juanito,” and her head falls at the feet of her lover. When the day is done, the youngest son, Juanito, is alone. To save the family honor, he has been the executioner of the day.
Only a little less tragic is “The Conscript,” which is part sketch, part short-story. ”

“ Because of this quality, it seems evident that, as Brunetière has pointed out, Balzac elected to develop these incidents in short-story form rather than expand them into novels. Treated in the short-story, they stand for what they are—extraordinary happenings in common life (as distinguished from impossible “incidents” which are told in fantastic and ultra-romantic short-stories) ; in the novel, they would have been enlarged out of their true focus, and so have seemed to bear a more important, a more typical, relation to life as a whole than any such exceptional incidents ever do. ”

“ If any one would have said to old Pharaoh that the foot of his adored daughter would serve for a paper-weight, he would have been greatly surprised, considering that he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out to hold the triple coffin, painted and gilded and all covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,” continued the singular little merchant, half aloud, and as though talking to himself. ”

“ Gautier, like many another man of letters, presents some contradictions of temperament and production, but for the most part his work is infused with his own strong individuality.
Like Loti, he knew the life of many lands and wrote sympathetically of Spain, Italy, Russia, the Netherlands, and the alluring East. A painter turned art critic and journalist—and so indefatigable a journalist that he himself has estimated that it would require three hundred volumes to compass his collected writings—he pursued a painter’s methods in his literary work. ”

“ At length he seeks shelter and sleep in a grotto, but awakens to find his asylum shared by a huge lioness. He considers well the possibilities while he waits for her to wake. When she opens her eyes her pretty, coquettish movements remind him of “a dainty woman.” The soldier expects immediate conflict and draws his dagger; but the lioness stares steadily at him for a moment, then walks slowly but confidently toward him. ”