efforts to popularize Mark Twain in France, he makes plain, was an
almost complete check; for to the French taste Mark Twain's pleasantry
appeared macabre, his wit brutal, his temperament dry to excess. By
some, indeed, his exaggerations were regarded as symptoms of mental
alienation; and the originality of his verve did not succeed in giving a
passport to the incoherence of his conceptions. "It has been said,"
remarked M. Forgues, with keen perception, "that an academician slumbers
in the depths of every Frenchman; and it was this which prevented the
success of Mark Twain in France. Humour, in France, has its laws and
its restrictions. So the French public saw in Mark Twain a gross
jester, incessantly beating upon a tom-tom to attract the attention of
the crowd. They were tenacious in resisting all such blandishments
. . . . As a humorist, Mark Twain was never appreciated in France.
The appreciation he ultimately secured--an appreciation by no means
inconsiderable, though in no sense comparable to that won in Anglo-Saxon
and Germanic countries--was due to his sagacity and penetration as an
observer, and to his marvellous faculty for calling up scenes and
situations by the clever use of the novel and the _imprevu_. There was,
even to the Frenchman, a certain lively appeal in an intelligence
absolutely free of convention, sophistication, or reverence for
traditionary views _qua_ traditionary." Though at first the salt of
Mark Twain's humour seemed to the French to be lacking in the Attic
flavour, this new mode of comic entertainment, the leisurely exposition
of the genially naive American, in time won its way with the _blase_
Parisians. Travellers who could find no copy of the Bible in the street
bookstalls of Paris, were confronted everywhere with copies of 'Roughing
It'. When the authoritative edition of Mark Twain's works appeared in
English, that authoritative French journal, the 'Mercure de France',
paid him this distinguished tribute: "His public is as varied as
possible, because of the versatility and suppleness of his talent which