Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/36

Rh these books delightful characters—a Parson Adams, an Uncle Toby, a Colonel Newcome—will be sought in vain. Nor are his heroines especially sympathetic. Jeanne in Une Vie has all the virtues, for once in a way, but is too entirely a victim to be at all adorable. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the scheme of some of the books positively excludes not merely admirable, but even likeable, personages. In Bel-Ami the excellence of the satire depends on the varied worthlessness of everybody; the whole tone is as unmoral as in one of Congreve's comedies. Or perhaps, as an exhibition of the purely practical conduct of life in its basest aspects, the book comes closer to Defoe than to any intervening novelist. As in Moll Flanders, there are no magnificent culprits, or deviations into even criminal sentiment. Mammon and Chemosh, not Lucifer, are the presiding deities. In a lesser degree the same may be said of Mont-Oriol, which appeared in 1887. But two years later M. F. Brunetière was able to write, "Last year we observed with pleasure the modification of M. de Maupassant's genius—the further he advances, the more humanity he displays." Certainly Pierre et Jean, which evoked this eulogy, is not lacking in profound pity and sympathy; though as always, the author,