uniform of superficial relations, ready to reawaken as soon as love stirs
the depths of the temperament. But there again a difficulty, almost
insurmountable, is met with. Obliged to concentrate his action to a
limited number of personages, the novelist can not pretend to incarnate
in them the confused whole of characters which the vague word race sums
up. Again, taking this book as an example, you and I, my dear Primoli,
know a number of Venetians and of English women, of Poles and of Romans,
of Americans and of French who have nothing in common with Madame Steno,
Maud and Boleslas Gorka, Prince d'Ardea, Marquis Cibo, Lincoln Maitland,
his brother-in-law, and the Marquis de Montfanon, while Justus Hafner
only represents one phase out of twenty of the European adventurer, of
whom one knows neither his religion, his family, his education, his point
of setting out, nor his point of arriving, for he has been through
various ways and means. My ambition would be satisfied were I to succeed
in creating here a group of individuals not representative of the entire
race to which they belong, but only as possibly existing in that race--or
those races. For several of them, Justus Hafner and his daughter Fanny,
Alba Steno, Florent Chapron, Lydia Maitland, have mixed blood in their
veins. May these personages interest you, my dear friend, and become to
you as real as they have been to me for some time, and may you receive
them in your palace of Tor di Nona as faithful messengers of the grateful
affection felt for you by your companion of last winter.

PAUL BOURGET.

PARIS, November 16, 1892.