4 JANUARY 1908, Page 36

Vanity. By Paul and Victor Margueritte. (Chatto and Winch's. 6s.)—It

is interesting to review occasionally in these columns the fiction of another country, and Miss (or Mrs.) K. S. West has provided a perfectly adequate translation of the last work of the Messieurs Margueritte. The book is a powerful picture of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and the apparent worldly success of the beautiful but corrupt Raymond° is extraordinarily revolting to the normal reader. The book is faithfully realistic in its descriptions of vice and disease of all sorts, but really preaches virtue indirectly, as all the characters who indulge in vanity, except Raymonde, come to terrible ends, and the reader feels that some catastrophe will inevitably overtake her, even after the last page is turned.