Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/35

Rh hopes and noble impulses, as convinced of their general futility in a struggle against the pressure of nature and the grip of inexorable circumstance. His tragedy is thus rather of the Greek type, less concerned with the play of character than with the march of destiny. His depression, again, is of the sort that so often alternates with fits of high spirits in men of his nature. When he fairly lets himself go, no modern French novelist, except the creator of Tartarin, and scarcely any Englishman but Dickens, can be so absolutely rollicking. La Maison Tellier is one instance; and prudishness itself must relax when hearing how sadly the model youth of Gisors fell short of the standard proper to the winner of good Madame Husson's prix de vertut, or how quartermaster-sergeant Varajou, on a visit to his prim relations, unfortunately mistook the evening party of Monsieur le Premier President de Mortemain for an entirely different order of entertainment.

Another charge levelled at Maupassant is that of hardness and imperfect sympathy—"a way without tenderness," as Dickens said of Smollett. His limitations in a love-story have been indicated above, and it is worth while to consider how far the accusation can be sustained or refuted in other directions. It may at once be admitted that in