Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/415

 RECENT FRENCH LITERATURE. 401 ment I saw the other day that the English love of liberty began with the French Revolution. The writer had evidently forgotten such trifles as the signing of the Great Charter and the execution of Charles I. And while new books are to seek, we can read over again some old ones, and as war is the subject uppermost in our minds, we might for a beginning make our choice among the French literature dealing with the Franco-Prussian War. I suggest for reperusal such books as 'Les soirees de Medan,' a collection of stories of 1870, containing one of Maupassant's masterpieces, ' Boule de Suif,' and Zola's 'Attaque du Moulin'; volumes of short stories by Alphonse Daudet or Francois Coppee ; Georges Darien's ' L'Epaulette,' ' Bas les Coeurs, 1870-71,' and ' Biribi,' which describe the French army in no favourable light, it is true, but with realistic touches and much vivacity, and where we get a glimpse of the Prussians and their methods of warfare in 1866 and 1870: ' des Prussiens, des vagabondes, des Cosaques manques. . . ils savent vous tirer dans le dos pendant que vous bourrez votre pipe. C'est tout ' ; the series of novels by the brothers Marguerite ; Zola's ' Debacle,' and those novels by Rene Bazin, Maurice Barres, and Paul Acker, dealing with the wrongs of Alsace- Lorraine, or showing the virtues of a conscript army. A few books of interest were published, how- ever, before the outbreak of war. Ernest Renan's ' Fragments intimes et roman- esques ' may be regarded as a supplement to the autobiography of his youth. The most important