has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the
passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur
because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.

Of the minor characters that figure in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' the
chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,
the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbe
Mouret; La Teuse, the priest's garrulous old housekeeper; Desiree, his
'innocent' sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost
crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably
portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands out
as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably
places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and
Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true
to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France
similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet's shameless, purely animal life has
in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need
not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets
are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a
marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists
have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the
degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.

With reference to the English version of 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret'
herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
passages myself.