BOURGET'S SHORT STORIES.*
THIS volume is certainly "from the French," but it cannot be called a translation into English. It is neither English nor French, as our readers will soon perceive. Of the four " por- traits " from the French of M. Paul Bourget, three of them taken from his Nouveaux _Pastels, the one entitled "A Saint" is the longest and most lifelike. In all of them we see one or two points only of It Bourget's many-sided genius ; be is as profoundly analytical as ever, idyllic, dramatic, tragic ; but we have none of the subtle delineations of the metaphysics of passion, no studies—except, perhaps, faintly foretold in the youthful heroines of "Childhood Perfidy "—of the fin-de- sisecle " mondaine," her luxurious surroundings, her correctly attired lovers, or the analysis of her emotions, to which we have become accustomed. "Marcel," the first portrait in the book, is a reminiscence of a boyish friendship, "the only in- terest of which—if, indeed, it has one—consists in the study, so rarely attempted, of an aspect of a child's sensitiveness." In A Story of a Child, recently written by an American authoress, we have been strongly reminded of the child's secret, though futile flight, and of the heart-awakening that follows. "Monsieur Viple's Brother" is the record of a by- gone tragedy. The veil of an apparently uneventful life, lifted for a moment, discovers a hidden scar ; the old man speaks of a brother, long dead, who in his boyhood avenged an insult by shooting an Austrian officer. But this brother was a fiction ; it was Optal Viple himself "who has avenged his out- raged father, he, the sometime associate of the University, who, since that time, perhaps, had never touched a weapon. What strange mystery sometimes lies behind the most peaceful and humble career !" A " Gambler " and "Childhood Perfidy" are slighter sketches, though " study " is, perhaps, a more ap- propriate word for the dissection of human nature that is a special characteristic of M. Bourget. He turns his micro- scopic eye even on the friendships of boys and girls, their childish loves and quarrels, and lays bare the intricacies of hopes and fears, the miseries that seem gigantic in proportion to the size of the sufferers, the actions that for good or for evil may determine the future course of their lives.
The author himself narrates the episode that gives its name to the book. Staying at an hotel in Pisa, whose inmates he describes with his usual clearness of outline and finish of detail, he accidentally meets a young Frenchman, Philippe Dubois, and in his company makes a pilgrimage to the 4' nationalised" convent of Monte Oilier° in search of recently discovered frescoes. In Dubois we recognise a type of the 4' opicurien brutal et scientifique," against whom M. Bourget warns the rising generation in his Preface to Le Disciple :— "There existed in him two distinct beings,—the one correct and submissive, the son of a professor on a mission ; the other, the unknown novelist and poet, with all the bitterness of pre- cocious rancour, pre-supposing a conspiracy against his talent. That duality attested a strong nature, and superior by its suppleness and its power to dominate itself. But, at the same time, his sourness indicated a soul without love, whose dreams dwelt before all, in the profession of a writer, on the brutal satisfactions of wealth and fame." There is the keynote of the young man's character. Dubois was possessed with a "furious desire for money;" his diatribes against successful authors and men of talent always converge to one point, the point of income received or price paid. "'And to think,' he concluded, with infinite bitterness, that my father will not even give me the three thousand francs that I should require to spend six months in Paris before terming out. Three thousand francs ! What a mediocrity like * * * (another name of a popular author) makes out of * A Saint and Others. From the French of Paul Bourget, Translated by John Gray. London Osgood, Liolivaine, said Co.
fifty pages of copy.' " When the travellers arrive at the con- vent, the younger man levels his sarcasms at the hospitable Abbe, the primitive fare, the simple aspirations of the small brotherhood. M. Bourget pauses, as usual, to dissect the characters he is creating. He is attracted by the youth's knowledge and originality, and at the same time repulsed by his want of human sympathy. He compares Dubois with the Abbe
"Certainly the poor monk had not the least intellectual subtlety ; but immediately I had felt him quite sincere, quite truly devoted to his mission, the care of his dear convent until its former inmates should return. Of the two, which was the young man' which was the old, if youth consists in the clasp of an ideal with a strong, a passionate embrace P But consumed as he was with his irony and precocious nihilism, my youthful companion at all events had his own set of opinions. if he formed an antithesis with the poor priest set to watch over a deserted convent, it was a frank antithesis, the opposition of this tag of the century to the simple and pious spirit of former times,"
M. Bourget can feel the strength and beauty of a sincere faith; he can, as it were, live two lives of inward attraction and outward recoil; he gropes restlessly for a light that seems un- obtainable,—" Was not I more unfortunate still, I, who shall have passed my life understanding equally the evil allure of negation, and the splendours of profound faith, without reaching either one or the other of those poles of human emotion." Throughout his books and essays there is always this triste note, this expression of an incurable pessimism.
There is a vivid description of a bare room in the convent, where the "trembling light from the four flames of the lamp, vaguely illuminated two walls painted with fresco, and a third, that at the first glance, seemed to be still covered with white- wash." As the Abbi: passed a lighted taper along the wall, bits of the painting began "to live under the flame," then as he moved on, "the piece that had been drawn up from the shadows, slid back into them again." After showing his beloved frescoes, the Abbe displays a number of coins, of which his visitors are the first to point out the antiquity and value. Yielding to a passionate thirst for money, and urged on by the " monstre litteraire " that is devouring him, Philippe Dubois steals two valuable coins, and the theft is only discovered accidentally. It would be impossible to com- press into a few words the skilful delineation of Philippe's remorse, the awakening of his conscience—for he had not yet rid himself of that inward voice—or the knowledge of human nature and divine charity shown by the simple Abbe. In this story of "the dawn of another soul," M. Bourget has used, as it were, the plaintive "vox humana" stop ; he has played upon human feelings that, when touched with a master-band, must vibrate and thrill in every one who has not outlived his responsive emotions. Though in an ordinary way the French novelist writes as a Parisian of the Parisians, he has travelled much, and, Proteus-fashion, assumes the manner of the countries he visits. In Italy, he assimilates
the traditions of a devout and mystical religion, and with his wide outlook depicts with equal skill the simple faith of an
old monk, who in his quiet retreat has learned to win souls, and the cynical scepticism of the youth, who, in his anxiety to conquer the world of his ambition, succumbs to a passing temptation.
As will be seen from some of the extracts already given, the translator has made sad havoc of Id. Bourget's style. The book is written in a curious idiom that is certainly not English ; "he wished to repay in once," may be a literal translation of "ii voulut payer en tine foie," but the phrase is unknown to us; and to write of bars of iron that "practically were a ladder going to the height of a chimney in one direction, and in the other they connected (sic) with a second ledge, by means of which one could get in two steps upon the terrace I have already spoken of," results in a sen- tence that is absolutely unintelligible. In spite of this defect, the author's individuality remains,—his charm lies in his subtle delineations of character, his knowledge of men, his breadth as well as his detail. Genius rises above such acci- dents as a faulty knowledge of syntax, and of M. Paul Bourget's genius there can be no doubt.
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