had not the magical power to restore grey ashes to life. The 'Rhodanthe and Dosicles' of the Byzantine monk Theodore Prodromus, written in the thirteenth century, remained cold and insipid. 'Drosilla and Charicles' belongs to a still later period. Yet in this diffuse, imitative work of Nicetas Eugenianus two points of interest may be noticed. The first is the change in the legend of Charon. No longer the ferryman on the Styx, he is the dark horseman, who traverses the earth gathering his convoys for the nether world, carrying the children on his saddlebow, driving the young before him, and followed by the laggard steps of the aged. So Cleander meets him in the mountains, and implores him to reveal the doom of his beloved Calligone. The second point is the praise bestowed on Chagus, the Arab sheikh, as compassionate as he is brave, who restores to liberty the two captive Greeks. It is a tribute to the generosity and learning of the Khalifs of Bagdad, an unconscious recognition of the fact that the intellectual supremacy of the world in medicine and philosophy was passing from Greece to Arabian students. Strictly speaking, versified romances do not belong to prose fiction. But it was in these barren sands that the mighty stream of the imaginative literature of Greece was arrested and lost. If it be asked how far the ancient prose romances affected the development of the modern novel, the answer is that their influence was small. The romantic literature of the Middle Ages was an independent growth. For centuries knowledge of Greek almost disappeared from the Western world. It was preserved in Calabria through its connexion with the Eastern Empire, and was more studied in the schools of Canterbury and York than elsewhere in Europe. But the number of scholars who, before the fifteenth century, were famous for their knowledge of the language, might almost be counted on the fingers of both hands. It was not till the Revival of Learning that Greek literature was enthusiastically studied in the West, or that her prose fiction was made accessible to the public. For one brief period 'l'immortel 'Héliodore' ruled the romance writers of France. But, before the close of the seventeenth century, Greek prose fiction, except in the form of pastorals, had become, what it has ever since remained, an antiquarian interest instead of a living literary influence. R. E. PROTHERO. THE SHORT STORY IN FRANCE, 1800-1900 I. La Vénus d'Ille, etc. By PROSPER MÉRIMÉE. 1847. Paris. 1830 1836 et seq. 2. Nouvelles. By THEOPHILE GAUTIER. Paris. DAUDET. Paris. 5. L'Étui de Nacre. By ANATOLE FRANCE. Paris. 1892. 6. Claire de Lune, Contes de la Bécasse, etc. By GUY DE MAUPASSANT. Paris. 1883-1890. 7. Stello. By ALFRED DE VIGNY. Paris. 1832. It te T was during the period when the genius of romanticism had saturated the public with exuberant rhetoric and eloquent sentimentalism, typified by Victor Hugo and George Sand, that the contes of Mérimée and Gautier revindicated, in different fashion and by opposite methods, the supreme value of form in composition and of that unity of effect which is twin to structural completeness. Neither, it is true, escaped the infection of contemporary taste. The infatuation of the monstrous and the exceptional possessed the imaginations of both writers, and the themes they selected by preference are insulated by abnormality of character and incident, or detached by remoteness of time and place, from ordinary experience. Mérimée's pages are dyed with sanguinary extravagances, as in Carmen,' 'Les Ames du Purgatoire,' and 'Lokis'; Gautier portrays to satiety the Byronic frenzies of sensuous passion in his 'Fortunio,' 'Le Roi Candaule,' and 'La Morte Amoureuse.' But apart from a similar tendency towards the exotic and the abnormal, and apart from their place as pioneers of the doctrine of art for art's sake, no two artists ever reached their goals by more contrary paths. Gautier sought his end in concentration, Mérimée in elimination of detail. Gautier, by accumulated touches, all conducing to one effect, attained his special quality-pictorial unity. Mérimée with trained precision resumed in some few clearly outlined traits whole groups of minutiæ. Further, Mérimée carried to perfection the economy of words. 'La Vénus d'Ille,' a modernised version of the ring given to the goddess, illustrates the process. A Parisian archaeologist is the guest of a provincial confrère. His host owns an antique Venus of dubious date and sinister aspect. The statue stands at an angle of the garden hedge which bounds the village tennis-ground. The son of the house, bridegroom-elect, has possessed himself of an antique ring for the approaching marriage ceremony. The suggestion of the whole plot is contained in these two presentments: the ringthe statue. The guest depicts the tedious family life, trite, vulgar, pretentious; but now here, now there, comes a glimpse of some undercurrent of dim horror. Soon the first hint of vitality in the sullen, inanimate bronze is given. The Venus, 'l'idole,' is in ill repute with the superstitious villagers. As the guest gazes from his window at dusk some lads in passing have caught sight of the ominous idol, the 'coquine.' A stone is thrown-there is a cry, a sound of clumsy flight. 'Elle me l'a rejetée !' She has thrown it back at me! The story progresses; its surface the usual, the familiar; its understrata the abnormal, the impossible. The traditional incidents follow. Upon the wedding-eve there is tennis-play; the bridegroom joins the play, he sets his ring for safety upon the finger of the malignant effigy, forgets it, seeks it at nightfall. 'Elle a serré le doigt,' stammers the bridegroom to the guest. He has been drinking hard at the marriage feast-maybe it was a drunken illusion. The supper ended, the Parisian retreats to his own bedchamber located in the wing allotted to the newly-wed couple. Night has come. 'Le silence régnait depuis quelque temps lorsqu'il fut troublé par des pas lourds 'qui montaient l'escalier. Les marches craquèrent forte'ment. . . . ' Oppressed with some sense of disquiet he sleeps a disturbed sleep; when he wakens, 'Il pouvait être 'cinq heures du matin. . . le jour allait se lever. Alors 'j'entendis distinctement les mêmes pas lourds. Cela me 'parut singulier.' A pause he listens-there comes a cry, bells ring, steps pass hither and thither, servants run to and fro. The guest rises, dresses in haste; he seeks the corridor; the door of the nuptial-room is open wide. Across the bed the body of the bridegroom is stretched-' il était déjà raide 'et froid. Ses dents serrées . . . on eût dit qu'il avait été étreint dans un cercle de fer. Mon pied posa sur quelque chose de dur qui se trouvait sur le tapis; je me baissai et vis la bague.' Few authors have shown more skill than Mérimée in expressing a character by an isolated action, or a complete personality by one type-feature. The prefatory incident in the story of Arsène Guillot when Arsène, abandoned by her lovers, expends her last five-franc piece in votive candles to the intent that her livelihood may be assured in her unavowable trade, elucidates the whole course of the narrative. It is the casual episode that determines the nature of the ensuing catastrophe, nor could pages of analytic psychology characterise more completely the attitude of heart and mind belonging to the naïve sinner of her forlorn class. Mastery in the art of such abbreviations is a leading factor throughout Mérimée's fiction. Having presented his 'signe' he states his facts with studied moderation and inimitable conciseness of phrase and diction. The very violence of the action depicted in many instances facilitates his aim. Extremes admit of no superlatives and invite little annotation. He leaves them unexplained, uninterpreted; they need no commentary. Logically enchained, episode succeeds episode with calculated crescendo of emphasis. They are viewed from one standpoint only-the bystander's. Mérimée makes no pretence to be the depositary of human secrets; his is not the office of the confessor but of the detective, and his psychology lies not in the dissection of mental states but in their visible outcome and exposure. In a different way it is for the sense of sight that Gautier wrote, as with rapid visualising touches he regretted that 'less happy than painter or musician, he could only present 'the objects not simultaneously but in succession.' His stories resolve themselves into sequences of scenes; Le Roi 'Candaule,''La Toison d'Or,' 'Le Nid de Rossignols,' are picture-narratives. Colour and form engross the author's attention. Where the conte cruelle of literature sought sensational stimulus from instincts of physical or moral repulsion, Gautier, on the other hand, sought it in the principle of non-moral physical attraction. Beauty is the decorum of his art; and as for the moralist goodness is the redemption of life, so for Gautier beauty is the veil cast over the deformities and distortions of nature. In it he sought immortality, ' dans l'art les événements passent et la beauté seule reste.'* In excess of detail he approaches Balzac; but where Balzac inventories, Gautier depicts; his catalogue consists of illustrations. Every non-pictorial element is ignored, nor is any pictorial element admitted which is not in close relation to the colour, outline, and movement of the picture. In his use of words the translation of things seen to things written is as direct as language permits. To present, not to suggest, is his endeavour; hence his general avoidance of allegorical and emblematic imagery whenever the dictionary could supply a term, however recondite and technical, sufficiently distinctive to characterise the object treated. He is no doubt driven, as all writers must be at times, to employ descriptive metaphorical diction, but when it occurs it lies as close to the object described as the mould to the cast. 'La pluie hachait le ciel à fils menus.' 'Le houblon du treillage passait 'familièrement sa petite main verte par un carreau cassé.' 'Une Nuit de Cléopâtre' is perhaps the most brilliant example of an art where the pen acts as a substitute for the brush. The hot desolation of the vast Egyptian necropolis of mystery and granite, 'where the sole occupation of the 'living would appear to be the embalming of the dead,' is outstretched before our eyes, threaded by the opaque waters of the sluggard Nile. Over all'une lumière crue, éclatante ' et poussiéreuse à force d'intensité, ruisselait en torrents de 'flamme, l'azur du ciel blanchissait de chaleur comme un métal 'à la fournaise.' The scene shifts to the queen's garden, with its pools and fountains, its verdurous luxuriance of leaf and blossom. Thither Meïamoun penetrates Actaeon-wise-death the penalty. Cleopatra arrests the doom; his life is in truth forfeit, but it pleases her first to pay its price-the payment, one night, une nuit de Cléopâtre.' Again the scene shifts. Meïamoun as a god sits enthroned beside that woman-glory of the ancient world. The death-cup is outpoured, Meïamoun lifts it. For a moment Cleopatra's touch retards the crisis, for a moment only; the sound of trumpets breaks the spell; Anthony's heralds ride into the vast hall, and Cleopatra's detaining hand falls from her lover's arm. 'C'est l'heure *Hist. du Romantisme.' T. Gautier. 1874. |