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248 bitter, his mocking turned always into apostrophe or reproach.

In his novels an underlying conviction of the inevitability of sorrow prevents the development of any sense of pleasure. His satire of provincial and bourgeois manners is pitiless. Nearly all of his heroes are blameless unfortunates, souls exceptional or commonplace, destined alike to suffering. With the artist’s intuition, Oriani has discovered the terrible law that governs great and small—the tendency of life toward a centrifugal futility. The tragedy which fills Defeat is more impressive than the detail of any conjugal drama: perfection itself leads to unhappiness. Even under the best conditions human experience tends toward the impossible.

The novels of Oriani are by no means perfect works. Some of them are old-fashioned, others are monotonous. They all lack that exquisiteness and novelty which readers have sought in this popular and ephemeral genre since the time of Flaubert. But if we think of the novelists who were contemporary with him, we can do no less than put him on a par, here too, with men who in point of fame surpassed him so much as not to be aware of his existence.

The most popular of these novelists, Fogazzaro and d’Annunzio, are but women in comparison: Fogazzaro a mystic devotee with leanings