Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/507

Rh me to be from the first book), but a serious man, examining deeply into life, and already beginning to see his way in it.

The next novel by Maupassant which I read was "Bel Ami."

"Bel Ami" is a very unclean book. The author here evidently gives himself full license in describing what attracts him, and at times seems to lose his dominant negative attitude toward his hero, and to pass over on to his side. But on the whole, "Bel Ami," like "Une Vie," has for basis a serious idea and sentiment. In "Une Vie" the fundamental idea is perplexity in the face of the cruel, meaningless, suffering life of an excel- lent woman ruined by a man's coarse sensuality; whereas here there is not only perplexity, but indignation at the prosperity and success of a coarse, sensual brute, who, by means of this same sensuality, shapes his career and attains a high position in society; indignation also at the depravity of the whole circle of society in which the hero attains success. In the former novel the author seems to ask: "Why, for what end, has this fine being been ruined? What was the cause?" Here, in this latter novel, he seems to answer: "All that is pure and good has perished and is perishing in our society, because this society is depraved, insane, horrible."

The last scene in the novel—the marriage, in a fash- ionable church, of the triumphant scoundrel, decorated with the order of the Legion of Honor, to a pure girl, daughter of an elderly and previously irreproachable mother, who has been seduced by him; a marriage blessed by a bishop, and regarded as something good and right by all present—expresses this idea with ex- traordinary force. Notwithstanding its encumbrance with unclean details (in which, it is to be deplored, the author seems to find pleasure) in this novel are seen the same serious demands from life.

Read the conversation of the old poet with Duroy after dinner (when leaving the Walters, if I remember rightly). The old poet bares life before his young friend, and exhibits it as it is, with its eternal and inevi- table companion, death.