writer, and a philosopher by turns. I will add one more trait; he was
devoid of all spirit of criticism. When he essays to demolish a
theory, one is amazed to find in this great, clear writer such lack of
precision of thought, and such weak argument. He wrote the least
eloquent and the most diffuse study of Flaubert, of "that old, dead
master who had won his heart in a manner he could not explain." And,
later, he shows the same weakness in setting forth, as in proving his
theory, in his essay on the "Evolution of the Novel," in the
introduction to Pierre et Jean.

On the other hand, he possesses, above many others, a power of
creating, hidden and inborn, which he exercises almost unconsciously.
Living, spontaneous and yet impassive he is the glorious agent of a
mysterious function, through which he dominated literature and will
continue to dominate it until the day when he desires to become
literary.

He is as big as a tree. The author of "Contemporains" has written that
Maupassant produced novels as an apple-tree yields apples. Never was a
criticism more irrefutable.

On various occasions he was pleased with himself at the fertility that
had developed in him amid those rich soils where a frenzy mounts to
your brain through the senses of smell and sight. He even feels the
influence of the seasons, and writes from Provence: "The sap is rising
in me, it is true. The spring that I find just awakening here stirs
all my plant nature, and causes me to produce those literary fruits
that ripen in me, I know not how."

The "meteor" is at its apogee. All admire and glorify him. It is the