Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/419

 RECENT FRENCH LITERATURE. 405 Louis Savignan as a young man had been in love with a girl who, to save her parents from ruin, had been forced to marry a rich man. Savignan when the story opens has become a famous historian, and is the editor of a great re- actionary Catholic periodical, ' Le Germe.' He is a widower, 42 years of age, and has one son. The husband of his old sweetheart, who is ignorant that his wife and Savignan had ever been ac- quainted, is the prime mover in a scheme to return Savignan as deputy for the district. Thus Savignan meets his old love again, his passion revives, and though until then he had lived virtuously, he suc- cumbs and leads a double life, thinking one way, acting in another. His son was in love with and desired to marry the daughter of a modernist. The girl was, however, secretly engaged to a modernist priest, Fauchon, whom she marries ; by a series of strange chances the love-letters written by Savignan to his mistress fall into Fauchon's hands, and he determines to publish them in a paper with which he is connected, and so show up the wickedness of the religious conservatives. The fact comes to the knowledge of young Savignan, and in endeavour- ing to force his father's incriminating letters from Fauchon, the young man is shot. And Bourget draws the moral ' il faut vivre comme on pense, sinon, tot ou tard, on finit par penser comme on a vecu.' The book is written with great care, and whichever side we take, modernist or reactionary, we must concede the absolute sincerity of the author. As a piece of art, it deserves to rank with any of Bourget's best novels of an earlier period.