pictures representing a religious procession. It was all excellently painted, but no relation of the artist to his subject was perceptible.

"And do you regard these ceremonies as good and consider that they should be performed, or not?" I asked him.

With some condescension to my naïveté, he told me that he did not know about that and did not want to know it; his business was to represent life.

"But at any rate you sympathize with this?"

"I cannot say so."

"Well then do you dislike these ceremonies?"

"Neither the one thing nor the other," replied, with a smile of compassion at my silliness, this modern, highly cultured artist who depicted life without understanding its purpose and neither loving nor hating its phenomena.

And so unfortunately thought Maupassant.

In his preface to Pierre et Jean he says that people say to a writer, "Consolez-moi, amusez-moi, attristez-moi, attendrissez-moi, faites-moi rêver, faites-moi rire, faites-moi frémir, faites-moi pleurer, faites-moi penser. Seuls quelques esprits d'élites demandent à l'artiste: faites-moi quelque chose de beau dans la forme qui vous conviendra le mieux d'après votre tempérament." 1

Responding to this demand of the élite Maupassant wrote his novels, naïvely imagining that what was considered beautiful in his circle was that beauty which art should serve.

And in the circle in which Maupassant moved, the beauty which should be served by art was, and is, chiefly woman— young, pretty, and for the most part naked-and sexual con

1 "Console me, amuse me, sadden me, touch my heart, make me dream, make me laugh, make me tremble, make me weep, make me think. Only a few chosen spirits bid the artist compose something beautiful, in the form that best suits his temperament."

nection with her. It was so considered not only by all Maupassant's comrades in art-painters, sculptors, novelists, and poets-but also by philosophers, the teachers of the rising generation. Thus the famous Renan, in his work, Marc Aurèle, p. 555, when blaming Christianity for not understanding feminine beauty, plainly says:

"La défaut du christianisme apparaît bien ici. Il est trop uniquement moral; la beauté, chez lui, est tout-à-fait sacrifiée. Or, aux yeux d'une philosophie complète, la beauté, loin d'être un avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvénient, est un don de Dieu, comme la vertu. Elle vaut la vertu; la femme belle exprime aussi bien une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que l'homme de génie ou la femme vertueuse. Elle le sent et de là sa fierté. Elle sent instinctivement le trésor infini qu'elle porte en son corps; elle sait bien que, sans esprit, sans talent, sans grande vertu, elle compte entre les premières manifestations de Dieu. Et pourquoi lui interdire de mettre en valeur le don qui lui a été fait, de sertir le diamant qui lui est échu? La femme, en se parant, accomplit un devoir; elle pratique un art, art exquis, en un sens le plus charmant des arts. Ne nous laissons pas égarer par le sourire que certain mots provoquent chez LES GENS FRIVOLES. On décerne le palme du génie à l'artiste grec qui a su résoudre le plus délicat des problèmes, orner le corps humain, c'est à dire orner la perfection même, et l'on ne veut voir qu'une affaire de chiffons dans l'essai de collaborer à la plus belle œuvre de Dieu, à la beauté de la femme! La toilette de la femme, avec tous ses raffinements est du grand art à sa manière. Les siècles et les pays qui savent y réussir sont les grands siécles, les grands pays, et le christianisme montra, par l'exclusion dont il frappa ce genre de recherches, que l'idéal social qu'il concevait ne deviendrait le cadre d'une société complète que bien plus tard, quand la révolte des

gens du monde aurait brisé le joug étroit imposé primitivement à la secte par un piétisme exalté." 1

(So that in the opinion of this leader of the young generation only now have Paris milliners and coiffeurs corrected the mistake committed by Christianity, and re-established beauty in the true and lofty position due to it.)

In order that there should be no doubt as to how one is to understand beauty, the same celebrated writer, historian, and savant wrote the drama, L'Abbesse de Jouarre, in which he showed that to have sexual intercourse with a woman is a service of this beauty, that is to say, is an elevated and good action. In that drama, which is striking by its lack of talent and especially by the coarseness of the conversations between d'Arcy and the abbesse, in which the first words make it evident what sort of love that gentleman is discussing with the supposedly innocent and highly moral maiden, who is not in the least offended thereby-in that drama it is shown that

1The defect of Christianity is clearly seen in this. It is too exclusively moral; it quite sacrifices beauty. But in the eyes of a complete philosophy beauty, far from being a superficial advantage, a danger, an inconvenience, is a gift of God, like virtue. It is worth as much as virtue; the beautiful woman expresses an aspect of the divine purpose, one of God's aims, as well as a man of genius does, or a virtuous woman. She feels this, and hence her pride. She is instinctively conscious of the infinite treasure she possesses in her body; she is well aware that without intellect, without talent, without great virtue, she counts among the chief manifestations of God. And why forbid her to make the most of the gift bestowed upon her, or to give the diamond allotted to her its due setting? By adorning herself woman accomplishes a duty; she practises an art, an exquisite art, in a sense the most charming of arts. Do not let us be misled by the smile which certain words provoke in the frivolous. We award the palm of genius to the Greek artist who succeeded in solving the most delicate of problems, that of adorning the human body, that is to say, adorning perfection itself, and yet some people wish to see nothing more than an affair of chiffons in the attempt to collaborate with the finest work of God-woman's beauty! Woman's toilette with all its refinements is a great art in its own way. The epochs and countries which can succeed in this are the great epochs and great countries, and Christianity, by the embargo it laid on this kind of research, showed that the social ideal it had conceived would only become the framework of a complete society at a much later period, when the revolt of men of the world had broken the narrow yoke originally imposed on the sect by a fanatical pietism.

the most highly moral people, at the approach of death to which they are condemned, a few hours before it arrives, can do nothing more beautiful than yield to their animal passions.

So that in the circle in which Maupassant grew up and was educated, the representation of feminine beauty and sex-love was and is regarded quite seriously, as a matter long ago decided and recognized by the wisest and most learned men, as the true object of the highest art-Le grand art.

And it is this theory, dreadful in its folly, to which Maupassant submitted when he became a fashionable writer; and, as was to be expected, this false ideal led him in his novels into a series of mistakes, and to ever weaker and weaker production.

In this the fundamental difference between the demands of the novel and of the short story is seen. A novel has for its aim, even for external aim, the description of a whole human life or of many human lives, and therefore its writer should have a clear and firm conception of what is good and bad in life, and this Maupassant lacked; indeed according to the theory he held, that is just what should be avoided. Had he been a novelist like some talentless writers of sensual novels, he would, being without talent, have quietly described what was evil as good, and his novels would have had unity, and would have been interesting to people who shared his view. But Maupassant had talent, that is to say, he saw things in their essentials and therefore involuntarily discerned the truth. He involuntarily saw the evil in what he wished to consider good. That is why, in all his novels except the first, his sympathies continually waver, now presenting the evil as good, and now admitting that the evil is evil and the good good, but continually shifting from the one standpoint to the other. And this destroys the very basis of any artistic impression the framework on which it is built. People of little artistic sensibility often think that a work of art possesses

man.

unity when the same people act in it throughout, or when it is all constructed on one plot, or describes the life of one That is a mistake. It only appears so to a superficial observer. The cement which binds any artistic production into one whole and therefore produces the illusion of being a reflection of life, is not the unity of persons or situations, but the unity of the author's independent moral relation to his subject. In reality, when we read or look at the artistic production of a new author the fundamental question that arises in our soul is always of this kind: "Well, what sort of a man are you? Wherein are you different from all the people I know, and what can you tell me that is new, about how we must look at this life of ours?" Whatever the artist depicts-saints, robbers, kings, or lackeys-we seek and see only the artist's own soul. If he is an established writer with whom we are already familiar, the question no longer is, "What sort of a man are you?" but, "Well, what more can you tell me that is new?" or, "From what new side will you now illumine life for me?" And therefore a writer who has not a clear definite and just view of the universe, and especially a man who considers that this isn't even wanted, cannot produce a work of art. He may write much and admirably, but a work of art will not result.

So it was with Maupassant in his novels. In his first two novels, and especially in the first, Une Vie, there was a clear, definite, and new relation to life, and it was an artistic production; but as soon as, submitting to the fashionable theory, he decided that this relation of the author to life was quite unnecessary and began to write merely in order faire quelque chose de beau (to produce something beautiful), his novels ceased to be works of art. In Une Vie and Bel-Ami the author knows whom he should love and whom he should hate, and the reader agrees with him and believes in him-believes in