wearies even of a poet who wears light gloves and believes in love as he believes in God! and after a season returns to her legitimate protector, a wiser if not a better woman. But in the "book of

irony" Daudet handles the theme with a finer sense of the ludicrous, and binds this pair together for life with chains forged by imbecility on the one hand and egotism on the other. The executioner and his victim, each is necessary for the other.

The Vicomte renames his countess Charlotte, in memory of Goethe's Charlotte (doubtless, too, he had discovered a strong resemblance between himself and Goethe). Sacred memory of Charlotte von Stein! What had that illustrious, highly accomplished and deeply intellectual Lady of Weimar in common with this vulgar, inane bit of French frailty that he should have named it for her? But the amenities of literature are many. Madame von Stein was a German, and Daudet never forgave the Germans for entering Paris!

Even the Vicomte himself seems to realize at times that this name of Charlotte was strikingly inappropriate for his slave-for he shortens it to Lolotte (which is also French for “frailty”).

Amaury d'Argenton is not a special product of French life and literature, he is rather that relentless ego which masquerades under many disguises, but remains the type of the everlasting poseur. Hardly as subtle a creature as the Egoist of George Meredith, for the machinery which sets the puppet in

motion is not at all complex, and he is quite transparent to all save himself and his countess.

The Failures naturally revolve around Amaury, his faithful satellites, for he is the most stupendous failure of them all. Does their homage and his reception of it sound exaggerated to the reader? Let him read that delicious paper of Rod's, Hugo et Nos Contemporains, where the reception of an ode of the poet is touchingly described:

"How characterize such a poem by such mediocre words as 'admirable,' 'superb,' ' marvellous'? - Impossible!

"And so there is a silence of some moments, then the inner worshippers approach. They kiss his hands. They raise their eyes to Heaven. To the amazement of some of the uninitiated, this word echoes through the salon:

666 Cathedral ! '

"Another orator exclaims:

"Gothic arch!'

"Still a third, glancing around him: "Egyptian Pyramid!'"

Such the amenities of a French salon. Verily, it is not possible to exaggerate human nature.

Perhaps no one of Daudet's characters shows more of the method and motive of what he wrought than Ida de Barancy. How is her personality revealed? By one of those slight touches which lays bare the inmost nature of the woman.

"Par un K, monsieur le supérieur, par un K.

Le nom s'écrit et se prononce à l'anglaise, comme ceci, Djack."

Thus she introduces herself. Her child's real name and future are matters of supreme indifference to her, but that his name is spelt à l'anglaise, with a K, is a matter of real moment!

With all her inanities, her amiable smile, her shallowness, this voluble, volatile creature is a very typical bit of femininity.

Daudet's delineation of the Modern Woman has gone deeper than the mere surface. His types are various, but each one adds something to our knowledge of that complex, constantly varying, manysided problem. Except George Meredith and Balzac, no modern novelist, perhaps, has handled this topic more skilfully, or with greater variety. He has shown us in Claire Fromont the dignity of wifehood. He has shown in Désirée how love could transfigure the little workgirl - a nature so pure and tender and faithful that it cannot conceive of evil or wrong, and perishes of very sorrow when the bitter knowledge is rudely thrust upon it. He has pictured in Frédérique, the noblest perhaps of all his creations, the queen struggling with the woman, the mother for supremacy — the mother, the woman finally conquering the queen. Very real women, all of these. As he has painted virtue he has not hesitated to paint vicebut stripped of every last vestige of ornament. Side by side with Désirée is Sidonie, coldly vicious to the core, to whom vice is merely a means of

attaining an end, and that end the gratification of a nature so cruel and sordid and false that it might have been transparent even to so ingenuous a nature as Risler's.

In Sappho another type, the woman frankly, openly, brutally corrupt, because it is the law and necessity of her being.

In Ida still another type- the creature of chance and impulse, to whom vice is quite as much an accident as virtue. Her bird-like brain is incapable of understanding the nature of either. There is neither motive nor premeditation in the evil she does, no consciousness of wrong - yet in spite of her amiable smile, she is far more terrible than Sidonie or Sappho this mother in name merely, the unconscious cause of her son's life-long martyrdom, his Nemesis and final executioner. Why is she so terrible? Because of that accident or fatality which intrusts to this shallow, helpless, scatterbrained creature a destiny greater than her own. It is impossible to read Daudet without carrying away his conviction as to the purpose and meaning of maternity. It is the divine Seal of Godhead, set upon the eternally Feminine, hallowing it, investing it with new graciousness. We have the culmination of that thought in Frédérique, where the mother is a Queen! We see another presentation of the same thought in Jack where the mother is a courtesan. She is terrible because of that which makes Frédérique great and gracious, the mere fact of

her maternity. After a fashion of her own she loves her Jack (with a K), is ever ready to caress him, and at last slays him. There is grim and terrible truth in this picture; it is significant too because it indicates Daudet's attitude towards certain real issues of modern living.

What then, books, both

The fin-de-siècle novel or romance is a very different thing from that of the past. The problem has not changed but the presentation of it has made vast strides. Who dares predict what will be the novel of the future? But this is certain, any picture of society which paints it only in glowing colors, and has to do only with "the good, the beautiful, the true," is false in so far as it is one-sided. Good and evil exist side by side, the novelist must paint both. makes the difference between two of which treat of the same subject? It is an indefinable difference so intangible it can scarcely be put into words and underlying it is the element of personality, the mental and moral attitude of the writer towards the things he describes. Of this even he himself may be at times unconscious, yet it is a potent factor and force in determining the tendency of a book. What is the characteristic of much of modern romance and realism from Gautier to D'Annunzio? Not that it deals with forbidden topics, but the method and the wherefore of its dealings with these things at all. The literature of latter-day decadence is more brilliant, more striking in wealth of imagery than any litera