Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/20

Rh as weak and reckless as his father, being extravagant besides. The book ends leaving Jeanne, the much-tried heroine, realizing an afterglow of tenderness in the care of his child by a dead mistress who has robbed her of his love and helped him to ruin the old home. It would be difficult to name a more depressing book, but the whole workmanship is admirable, the local colour is faultless, and the characters are alive. The only blot on the story, as a story, is the vengeance of a rather melodramatic husband on the vicomte, by machinery which Maupassant borrowed from an early short story of his own, and which is scarcely worthy of him. Une Vie is not fitted for what is called family reading, but it is difficult to see why the Bibliothéque des Chemins de Fer should have refused to sell it in a country where the extravagances of M. Catulle Mendès and M. Octave Mirbeau can be had for the asking. A boycott of this kind is, however, an excellent advertisement, as Flaubert found in the case of Madame Bovary; though a threatened prosecution of Maupassant, on account of some verses printed in a country newspaper, might have had graver consequences, owing to their author's official position.

Three of the remaining novels treat of different phases of life in Paris. Bel-Ami depicts the glorious