character. Her literary essays and reviews show a knowledge of technique
which could be accepted at any time as a text-book for the critics and
the criticised. She knew exactly how artistic effects were obtained, how
and why certain things were done, why realism, so-called, could never be
anything but caricature, and why over-elaboration of small matters can
never be otherwise than disproportionate. Nothing could be more just
than her saying about Balzac that he was such a logician that he
invented things more truthful than the truth itself. No one knew better
than she that the truth, as it is commonly understood, does not exist;
that it cannot be logical because of its mystery; and that it is
the knowledge of its contradictions which shows the real expert in
psychology.

Three of her stories--_La Petite Fadette_, _La Mare au Diable_, and
_Les Maitres Mosaistes_--are as neat in their workmanship as a Dutch
painting. Her brilliant powers of analysis, the intellectual atmosphere
with which she surrounds the more complex characters in her longer
romances, are entirely put aside, and we are given instead a series
of pictures and dialogues in what has been called the purely objective
style; so pure in its objectivity and detachment that it would be hard
for any one to decide from internal evidence that they were in reality
her own composition.

To those who seek for proportion and form there is, without doubt, much
that is unsymmetrical in her designs. Interesting she always is, but to
the trained eye scenes of minor importance are, strictly speaking, too
long: descriptions in musical language sometimes distract the reader
from the progress of the story. But this arose from her own joy in
writing: much as she valued proportion, she liked expressing her mind
better, not out of conceit or self-importance, but as the birds, whom