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A VOLUME of fiction which, while it possesses something of the power and charm of Gustave Flaubert, takes us through no scenes of cruelty or coarseness, but relies for its interest on the blameless pathos of life, touched in the spirit of a true realism, is worth pointing out to English readers. The volume takes its name from the singular story of Serenus, a Christian martyr, to which are added certain briefer Stories Of The Past And Of To-day. With two slight exceptions, two pieces of peculiarly Parisian humour, which make a harsh contrast with the rest of the book, these stories are as pure and solemn as the pictures of Alphonse Legros. The narrative of Serenus, the patrician martyr, has about it something which reminds one of those sumptuous Roman basilicas put together out of the marble fragments of older pagan temples or palaces; and in the shorter pieces the busy French journalist seems to have gone for a sort of mental holiday to quiet convent parlours and white-washed village churches -places of subdued colour and personages congruous therewith, pleasant, doubtless, to fatigued Parisian eyes. M. Jules Lemaitre is before all things an artist, showing in these pieces, the longest of which attains no more than sixty pages, that self-poss ession and sustained sense of design which anticipates the end in the commencement, and never loses sight of it that gift of literary structure which lends so monumental an air to even the shortest of Flaubert's pieces. Then, he has Flaubert's sense of compassion and his peculiar interest in certain phases or aspects of religious life; and his art (again like Flaubert's) is a learned art. There is the fruit of much and varied reading and thought in this volume, short as it is, though

without a shade of pedantry; and its union of realism, of the force of style which is allied to a genuine realism, with an entire freedom from the dubious interests of almost all French fiction, gives it a charming freshness of effect.

We propose to say a few words on those shorter pieces first, giving some specimens of M. Lemaitre's manner. The hero of La Mère Sainte-Agathe, a very intellectual young Parisian, has formed a somewhat artificial marriage engagement with a guileless orphangirl at the convent school over which Mother Sainte-Agathe presides. Mother Sainte-Agathe was still young

thirty years, perhaps thirty-five. But years, in the case of "the religious," when they are pretty and live really holy lives, rather embalm them than add to their age. When the young man visits the girl, the Mother presides over their interviews, looking at them with an air of kindness and serenity, with an expression she wore always, in which one seemed to detect the presence of a thought, unique, eternal in its character, ever mingled with the thought of the present hour. One day the girl leads her lover into the convent garden.

"It was a large one, and so neat and prim!neat and prim as a convent-chapel. An avenue of limes, as exact in line as a row of tapers, led to a terrace projecting on the Loire, with a pleasing view over the landscape of Touraine. Between its gentle banks, amid scattered groups of rustling poplars, the river spread out like a lake, with little pale-coloured islands tufted with misty beds of osiers, and against the horizon a long, long bridge of delicate arches, silver-grey-all very sweet, with melting outlines in water-colour tints, under a lightsome sky of soft blue."

But the childish lover is shrewd enough to notice that in these visits the real business of conversation (very

superior conversation, on M. Renan, for instance) is wholly between the Mother and the clever young man. She writes one day at the end of one of her letters: "Mother Sainte-Agathe tells me that I don't put warmth enough into my letters. Ah! my friend, I have enough of it in my heart nevertheless; only perhaps I am still too little to know how to tell it." The young man does not marry the orphan, and, of course, not the reverend Mother. He thought it well to discontinue his visits to the convent.

"Almost without note of the fact," he says, "I was treating Lydia like a child. Whenever I said anything at all serious it was to Mother Saint-Agathe I addressed myself.

They were exquisite, those conversations with the Mother-all the more exquisite because I was then finishing a volume of criticism and fantasy combined, in which I put the utmost amount of Renauism, Impressionism, and Parisian raillery, in turn or altogether. And it was often after the reading of some perverse book that I took myself to those white interviews. One day at parting, when I kissed Lydia, I saw tears in her eyes. You are crying, Lydia: have I hurt you in any way?' She gave me a long, serious look, and the look was no longer that of a mere child. 'Are you quite sure,' she said to me in a low voice, that it is still for my sake that you come here?'

"It haunted me through the evening, through the whole night, little Lydia's question. In spite of myself she had revealed to me what was at the bottom of my heart. In effect, I perceived with much distress that for some time past it was for Mother Sainte-Agathe I had come, that that charm of innocence in my betrothed was exhausted. Yes, it was over-well over!

"I did not venture to the convent next day, nor the day after that. Did she look out for me? I never returned there again."

A still more melancholy note is struck in L'Ainée, the story of a beautiful girl, the eldest of eight sisters, who sees them all cheerfully married to the suitors who had begun by paying court to herself. It pained her to see her nephews and nieces, although she loved them much, and spent her days in work for them. And what added to her unhappiness was that every one, in these matters, took her for a confidante and adviser, regarding her as a person of extraordinary pru

dence, superior to human passions. To her the prize never comes. Her languors, her dejected resumptions of life, are told with great feeling and tact, till death comes just in time to save her from the dishonour to which the ennui of her days had at last tempted her.

Les Deux Saints presents a curious picture from religious life in a French country village, the not ill-natured irony of which by no means destroys an agreeable sense of calm remoteness from the world in reading it.

"The little village of Champignot-lesRaisins had an aged Curé, an old church, and in the church an ancient image. The image was the image of St. Vincent, patron of vine-dressers. It was of wood, and seemed to have been shaped by the strokes of a hatchet. It had a great belly, a big face frankly painted with vermillion, breathing of gaiety and good-nature-the physiognomy of a vine-dresser at the time of vintage. Pretty it was not. But the Curé and his flock were used to it. The image of the good saint enjoyed the greatest consideration in the parish, and deserved it, for it worked miracles.'

The old Curé dies. His youthful successor forces a smart new image on his flock. The parish is divided between the votaries of the old and the new; and the tiny provincial controversy seems by a certain touch of irony to give the true measure of many greater, perhaps less ingenuous controversies; and for half an hour one has a perfect calm at Champignot-les-Raisins.

M. Lemaitre writes for the most part as a pure artist. He writes to please the literary sense to call into pleasurable exercise a delicately-formed intelligence. In one instance, however, it is to be feared he is writing for a practical purpose. En Nourrice describes the fate of a little child put out to nurse in the country. "He is a beautiful infant," cries the mother at his birth: "he shall be named George. I hope he may be very happy!" Alas! all goes the other way. His foster-brother, the strenuous Fred, wears out the frail stranger's dainty frocks-la belle robe de Georges. When the parents make their visits it

"The little Parisian's destiny had been that terrible, inexplicable destiny of the infants who suffer and cry for a few months and then One die, having understood nothing in it all. night he had refused to sleep. He had refused the feeding-bottle, and even the breast of Rosalie, the treat allowed him when it was too late. His eyes rolled convulsively the cheeks were of the colour of earth: the infant was dying. Towards morning, instead of crying, little groanings had escaped him, almost like the complaints of a grown person. last he had grown quite still and moved no more. His mother was glad to have escaped the sight of that.

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At

"It rained in torrents when she and M. Loisil arrived at the village. The young mother, who had been in tears all the way from Paris, could weep no more, rocking herself in her damp gown, her red eyes under her crape. Early in the morning Rosalie had sent Fred to his grandmother's. She, too, was weeping,sincerely if you please.

"Then the mother looked at the little corpse in its cradle of basket-work. George was wearing for the first time his fine frock, dirtied by Fred. He was terribly thin, with cheeks like old wax, the nose dwindled, the eyelids blue, his tiny mouth, pale and partly open, with a little foam at the back, had a touch of violet round the lips.

"Poor little babe! how he is changed!' said the mother, sobbing. M. Loisil looked at the dead child attentively, but said nothing. A horrible doubt had come to him.

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more.

Come,' said Rosalie, 'don't look any It is too painful.' Then on a sudden enters Totor, holding Fred in his arms, like a great bundle. Rosalie grew pale. Totor explained that grandmother was sick and would not keep them.

"And Fred, with one of George's caps on his head and one of George's sashes round his waist, in George's white shoes, bursting with health, good-tempered, and moving skittishly in the arms of Totor, began smiling at the lady and gentleman.

"The carpenter came, then the Curé, with a choir-boy pattered with mud, carrying an old tarnished cross which tottered on its pole.

"They are sickening, those funerals of Parisian nurslings one sees sometimes crossing an empty village-street, leading, behind a coffin of the size of a violin-case, a lady and gentleman in mourning, who pass by, dabbing their eyes, while the labourers regard them curiously from the barn-doors (it happened in La Beauce) on the way to leave a bit of their own hearts in some corner of a forgotten cemetery. As the first shovel of earth fell, Madame Loisil, who had forgotten in her illness that one first

kiss she had given to George, cried out, 'Ah! my poor babe, you will never have a kiss from me alive!'"

Of the Tales Of Other Days, two -Boun and Les Funérailles de Firdousi-are Oriental pieces, apologues, full of that mellow and tranquil wisdom which becomes the East. We profess to be no great lovers of an Oriental setting. A world from which mediæval and modern experience must, from the nature of the case, be excluded, makes on our minds an impression too vague for really artistic effect. The intimacies, the minute and concrete expression of the pathos of life, are apt to be wanting in compositions after the manner of Rasselas. But it is just that element-the refinement of wisdom, the refinement of justice, an exquisite compassion and mercy in the taking of life-which the reader may look for in the charming story of Boun.

Les Deux Fleurs is another Story Of Other Days, reminding us somewhat of Flaubert's St. Julien l'Hospitalier. Its aim is, again, that of an apologue, impressing the characteristically French moral that, "in the regard of heaven, charity is of equal value with chastity. It is best to have both if one can. Let him who lacks the second, try at all events to attain the first. Amen!" As a picture from the Middle Ages it possesses a reality of impression not often found amid mediæval sceneries-an impression much enhanced by the gently satiric effect of the half-sceptical chaplain (a figure worthy of Chaucer), who accompanies the hero to the Crusades. Already in the Middle Ages, as he goes decorously on his way, he can divert himself in a curious observation of the ideas, the deportment of others.

"Simon Godard, mounted on his old mule, rode usually side by side with the knighterrant his master, whose candour of spirit he loved; and oftentimes they conversed together to while away the length of the journey. 'Shall we be soon in Palestine?' Sir Oy de Hautecœur asked him one day, being no great clerk in matters of geography. About a month hence we shall be getting near it,

if no accident happens,' answered the chaplain. 'But only one-half of our number will be left when we arrive. In the East large numbers die of want, of fatigue, of malignant fevers. I don't know whether you perceive it, lost in dreaming as you always are, but we leave behind us many of our companions; and as there is no time to dig their graves, the dogs and the crows provide them another sort of sepulture.

The

"I don't pity those,' said the knighterrant, who go before us to Paradise. body is but a prison: its substance vile; and it matters little what becomes of it.'

"Sire, there are moments when for my part I fail to distinguish clearly the prison from the prisoner. It grieves me that so many of us die. And I don't see precisely what good end is served by their deaths. We are spending a year and more on the work of taking two or three towns, and when the day of conquest comes we shall be but a handful of men.'

"True! But the walls of Jericho did not fall till the seventh day, and this is not yet the seventh crusade.'

"But is it really necessary that Christians should possess the sepulchre of the Lord, which, after all, is an empty sepulchre, and which He suffers to remain for a thousand years in the hands of infidels? And don't you think that the soil of their country belongs to them, as lawfully as the soil of France to Frenchmen?'

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"Talk not thus, Master Chaplain such railleries ill become a Churchman and a holy man like yourself.'

"I am not joking, sire! But the will of Heaven does not appear to me so manifestly as it appears to you. It irks me to think that Heaven has given to its worst enemies a wiser industry than ours, and better engines of war, and the victory over its faithful servants.'

"Are you unaware then that their riches come from the devil and serve only to maintain them in their abominable manners? If Heaven permits them to overcome us from time to time, that is because it tries those whom it loves, because trials purify and lift us to itself.'

"Sire! you would make an excellent theologian and I but an indifferent knight. But if by good fortune I were a seigneur in the land of France, I think I should seldom leave it. While the seigneurs go afar to get killed, the stay-at homes fall behind with their dues. The bourgeois in the towns add pound to pound, and as the seigneurs want money for their distant expeditions, get by purchase all sorts of liberties. I don't complain of that, being of the people myself. But what I say is, that a nobleman who takes the Cross is greatly taken in.'

"I am aware, Master Chaplain, that you are not uttering your true thoughts, and that all this is meant to try me. I am not troubled because other Christians endeavour to improve their low and hard condition. For myself, I am neither a draper nor a grocer that I should

remain always in my hole, taking no thought except for money and bodily gratification. I am in quest of what is of higher price. I am made of different paste from your bourgeois and your serfs. I should scarce be able to remain long in any one place, or limit my happiness to the things one can see and touch. I love the Demoiselle de Blanc-Lys, and I leave her not knowing whether I shall return. I go to make my trial in an adventure which you declare foolish and useless, and of which certainly I shall have no profit even if I succeed. And wherefore ?-I know not. Only I can do no otherwise. And I have a sense that it is pleasing to God and that I am a workman of His.'

"Master Simon Godard could only answer, 'Amen!'"

On the whole, Pauvre Ame is the most characteristic of M. Lemaitre's shorter stories. We think the English reader will forgive some copious extracts.

"If one must needs feel pity for all people's sorrows, the life and heart of an honest man would not suffice. One would begin by lamenting the violent and tragic griefs which force themselves into view. And then those other sorrows, the sorrows which are modest, which hide themselves under a veil of sweetness and seeming serenity. There are destinies stifled and silent, where the pain is so secret and so equable in its continuance, and makes so little sound, that no one thinks of commiseration. Yet nothing is more worthy of pity than those unquiet and solitary hearts, which have yearned to give themselves and no one has cared to take, which have lavished their treasures unheeded and without fruit, and which death at last carries away, outwardly intact, but torn within, because they preyed upon themselves."

Mademoiselle de Mérisols, then, one of those quiet souls whose fortunes M. Lemaitre loves to trace, inhabited in an old street of convents a small set of apartments, with melancholy old. furniture she had been able to keep from what had belonged to her parents. The happiest hours of her life were at the Sunday mass and vespers. She would have been pretty could she have felt gay. She loves and is disappointed; but she bravely resumes once more her life of hard work as a teacher, putting her from time to time in contact with home scenes which only bring the closer to herself her sense of isolation in the world. Love comes at

She

last, but in that ironic mood which seems to be one of M. Lemaitre's fixed ideas of the spirit of human life. was thirty-five. The excellent M. de Maucroix was twenty years older. But she felt afraid of eternal solitude. She had hopes of a child, but it never came. For eight years she was her husband's nurse. She closed his eyes and shed tears for him. She found herself rich. Only once again the poor soul was alone in the world. She busied herself in good works, but felt an immense weariness. What she needed was some one she might love singly and with all her force. Then follows one of those curious episodes only possible in Roman Catholic France, and the writer finds his opportunity for a striking clerical portrait.

"Madame de Maucroix was in the habit of attending the Sunday Offices at the chapel of the Dominicans. It was warmer, sweeter, more intimate, than in the churches. Many women of fashion repaired thither, rustling softly as in a drawing-room.

"One great festival a monk preached-thirty years of age, handsome, slender, with a superb pallor. He talked much of love and human affections. He quoted Plato, Virgil, Lamartine. He preached on doubt, and was still more modern. He quoted contemporaries-Jouffroy, Leopardi, Heine, De Musset. He described the anguish of a mind which does not believe; and some of his touches would have been equally appropriate to the picture of a heart in anguish because it does not love. Father

Montarcy was one of those generous hearts with a superficial mind often to be found in the order of St. Dominic. He had all the beautiful illusions of Lacordaire, and united to them some pretensions to science. He was one of those monks who have read Darwin and attend the physiological courses at the Sorbonne. His style of speaking was vague and inflated, but with flights of real beauty. He moved along, involved in his dream, isolated from what is real, body and soul alike draped in white-draped with much skill. He was profoundly chaste, but felt his power over women, taking pleasure in it in spite of himself, lending himself to their adoration.

"He became the director of Madame de Maucroix. She told him the story of her life and confided to him the void in her heart. What was she to do to fill that void? And every time she called him Father bethought herself that he might have been her son.

"With a fine stroke of policy, moved also by the poor woman's desolation, and responding

to his own secret desire, he observed gravely: 'My daughter, it is I who should call you mother, and you should call me son. I am young, and I feel how feeble I should be without that special aid which Heaven accords to its priests. I may believe that you have acquired by a life of virtue an illumination equal to that conferred by the holy oil of the priesthood. Will you be my mother and director?' And he, in his turn, confessed himself to Madame de Maucroix."

She had a son, then! Her life became a charming one. Every mornShe ing she assisted at his mass. busied herself, precisely as a mother might have done, with his wardrobe and his linen. She accompanied him to the various towns to which he went to

preach, and listened with delight to all his sermons. She seeks to know the family history of Father Montarcy, and hearing that he was an orphan feels her joy renewed. He was the son of a working-man, like the Saviour, like many who have become powerful in this world. She does but admire him the more. He had but one sister, devout, insignificant enough, a dressmaker in a country town. Madame de Maucroix provided a dowry and got her well married. She feels proud to have a hand in all the affairs of the convent, in going thither with perfect freedom, receiving from the fathers as she passes ceremonious smiles and greetings, as if in recognition of her right. Often she would call to mind the great Christian women of the early Church, Paula, Monica. It was fascinating to play the part of a Mother of the Church. What Madame Swetchine had been for Lacordaire, it was her dream to be for Father Montarcy.

Only she carried the part of director a little too far. A kind of jealousy -jealousy of penitents younger, and with other charms than hers-mingles with her devotion.