Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/14

Rh Any difficulty in classifying his genius, or in estimating the permanency of his fame, arises from no mystery enshrouding his life or his work. The evolution of each is absolutely straightforward and coherent: he traversed no "caverns measureless to man" on his way to the sunless sea which engulfed him at last. Through his single volume of verse, through his six novels, through the multitude of his short stories and feuilletons, the succeeding phases of a not very eventful life can be unerringly traced, like the path of an explorer on a map. There are glimpses of his boyhood at Étretat and Yvetot, of his school-days at Rouen, of his brief service as a volunteer in 1870, of his clerkship at a public department in Paris. Then, still traceable in the stories, came a spell of life in the capital, first in a small lettered society, later in a wider circle of acquaintance. From time to time there was a little travel, quite insufficient to free him from national limitations, a great deal of rowing and sailing, and a taste of fashion on the Riviera. This was all; and amid the astonishing variety of incident found in his stories he never passed out-side these simple bounds. Other great writers, though not many, have refrained from describing what they have not themselves seen. Except for a few rather unsuccessful excursions into the