"FORT COMME LA MORT."* THERE is a certain kind of
French would-be-pathetic art, well known to frequenters of the Paris Salon, clever, realistic, powerful in all its details, but totally lacking the one essential element, the raison d'etre of all Art,—human sympathy. How many specimens of such work have passed year after year through the Palais de l'Industrie, emotional subjects, treated unemotionally, truthful in everything but in the impression of pathos they convey P Just this kind of unemotional art may be found among the literary productions of the present day. The French, who are professedly aiming at truth in every form of Art, seem to ignore that certain truths (perhaps the greatest) are hopelessly beyond the grasp of any clever system to which they may be said to have reduced Art, and that the most highly perfected technique will completely fail to seize what a flash of uncultivated intuitive and sympathetic insight will succeed at least in suggesting. The subject of Guy de Maupassant's latest novel, which has already exhausted some forty and odd editions, is by no means a pathetic one, but such as it is, might have been invested with a something dramatic or tragic, and the book might have been made more than what it ia,—a clear, correct, and dreary record. But how can we expect more from a work which was evidently conceived coldly and deliberately, without a gleam of enthusiasm or native impulse, planned out with less inspiration than an architectural designfor a grammar- school ? A cultivated and beautiful woman playing at the same time the part of wife to a French Deputy and mistress to a Parisian artist, is a commonplace theme enough for a French novel. Such a conception is too well worn to serve as a framework for a modern romance. But this is only the wise en place, as it were, of Fort comme is Mort, which only begins properly with the return home of Mademoiselle Guilleroy, whom Bertin, the hero of the tale, is to fall in love with, after having been her mother's lover during the best part of Madame Gnilleroy's married life. The subject, as will be seen, is hardly a beautiful one ; the treatment is, if possible, still less so. Madame Guilleroy is a fair, handsome, middle- aged woman. She has been the mistress of Bertin, a painter of repute, for many years, since she sat to him for her portrait some seven years after her marriage with the Comte de Guilleroy, a Deputy, too interested in agricultural questions to be much absorbed by domestic affections, but as good a husband as most men in his position, and certainly quite as good as a girl who marries without any sentiment but that of deliberate calculation deserves. Annette, her daughter, first appears as a little child in Bertin's studio, where she is at play while her mother is sitting for her portrait. Her next appearance is as a young girl about to make her debut in society. She has been brought up and educated in the country with her grandmother, only coming to Paris occasionally to visit her parents. As an habitue of the Guilleroys' house, • Port comae is Kart. Par Guy de Maapaasant. Paris: Paul 011eadorE.
Bertin sees her on these occasions ; but three years have elapsed since her last visit at the time the story opens, and Annette has grown from a child into a woman. A marriage
has been decided on by her parents, and she is sent for to make the acquaintance of her pretenclu, and accept the con-
ventional lot of French girls in her position. Annette bears a striking resemblance to her mother as she was some fifteen years back,—so striking, that when she stands next to Bertin's paint- ing of Madame Guilleroy, it is as if she, not her mother, had sat for the portrait. There are other points of resemblance : certain gestures and intonations recall to Bertin the first impressions of Madame Guilleroy which laid such a complete hold on him long ago. It is easy to foresee that almost unconsciously he will transfer to the daughter the love he bore to the mother,
although this change manifests itself at first by a return of the old passionate tenderness for Madame Guilleroy, which has become subdued of late into an amoureuse amitie. Their attachment has been a. more lasting one than might have been expected, for it is difficult to lend any depth of feeling or finer
instincts to a man who only laments the footing on which such an attachment is placed, because it excludes the possibility of
home comforts and an interieur which only married life can offer, or to a woman who, after the first step is taken, seems never troubled by a position which to one of naturally pare instincts would appear intolerable. When the courtisane
Marion de Lorme, in Victor Hugo's famous drama, discovers what real love is, she also learns for the first time its sacred character, and the impossibility of belonging to any one but the person who inspires the sentiment. Doubtless Victor Hugo's heroines are often exaggerated, but in these respects we like to believe that his knowledge of a true woman's nature is deeper than that of Guy de Maupassant. But then Madame Gnilleroy cannot be said to be atrue woman in the higher sense of the word. Like most of Maupassant's female characters, she is a compound of physical attractions and feline seduc- tions. The manner in which she has striven to preserve Bertin's affection is very characteristic of her nature :—
" D'ime facon discrete et continue, elle fit confer l'61oge sur lui ; elle le berca d'admiration at l'enveloppa do compliments, afin que, partout ailleurs, it trouvat l'amitie et meme la tendresse un peu froides et incompletes, afin qua si d'autres l'aimaient aussi ii fintt par s'apercevoir qu'aucune ne le comprenait comma elle. . . . . . . Mais lorsqu'elle eut mis en, son line at en sa chair de celibataire egoiste et fete une multitude de petits besoins tyranniques, lorsqu'elle fut bleu certain qu'aucune autre maitresse n'aurait comme elle le solid de les surveiller et de lea entretenir pour le ligoter par touter lee menues jouissances de la vie, elle eut pour tout A. coup, en le voyant se degater de sa propre maison, so plaindre sans cease de vivre seul," &c.
As to the question of remorse in betraying the boundless respect and trust of a man whose wordly goods she is enjoying, such an idea never seems to cross her mind, nor that of Bertin, who is treated as an intimate friend by the unsuspecting Guilleroy.
A very few months after Anisette's return, her mother dis- covers that her bwn daughter has unconsciously robbed her of what was most precious to her in life. The only means of recovering Bertin's affection that her imagination can suggest, is to precipitate Annette's projected marriage, and to use every effort to restore her own waning beauty. When she discovers that the most costly and varied artifices she employs for this purpose fail, she realises that the situation is a desperate one.
The reflection that there ' should be something in Bertin's affection that need not depend upon the smoothness of her skin or the lustre of her eyes, or that the particular condi- tions of the new passion he has conceived render it one to be rooted out—with his heart, if necessary—as a moral deformity, does not seem to occur to her, and the unfor- tunate woman never formulates in her mind a reproach or criticism with respect to his conduct. The scene in which the situation is openly recognised and discussed by her- self and Bertin is a dreary one, but not a touching one. It is too entirely bereft of heroism, or even dignity, of any kind. Bertin is completely victim to his passion for Annette, which
is all the more hopeless that her marriage is to take place in a few days. He leaves Madame Guilleroy, to wander about the streets in a restless, miserable way. In the middle of the night she and her husband are summoned to his house. He
has been run over by an omnibus. She is left alone with him while the doctor and her husband are gone to seek a house- surgeon and a nurse, but the end comes while they are absent. It is difficult to describe truthfully a death-scene and a final separation between two people who have loved each other, without being pathetic; but Guy de Maupassant succeeds in doing this as nearly as possible. All is infinitely dreary, and the sooner we take leave of such a scene the better. There is no consolation to be hoped for in any remembrance the man may leave behind him, nothing that can envelop his memory with anything but compassion, at most. As to the other per- sonages, we have no wish to speculate as to their destinies. We have pitied the two principal actors merely from the fact that they have apparently suffered, just as we should pity a cat who, in springing after her prey, impales herself on a spiked railing. Guy de Maupassant is regarded by his own nation as one of the most powerful of modern novelists, and one possessing a marvellous knowledge of human nature. His knowledge of animal nature is still greater in our eyes, for his characters have the passions and desires of animals, without the refining discrimination of human beings. In Fort comme la Mort, the personages are rather types than individuals, and this perhaps accounts for the impression that it is strangely lacking in originality. Simplicity and clearness, two qualities he possesses or has acquired, are pushed to excess in this work, and almost degenerate into poverty of expression and monotony of style. In line Vie and Jean et Pierre, his two most striking works, these qualities are found in their perfec- tion.
But Fort comme la Mort is remarkable, inasmuch as it betrays the cynicism of the author even more than that of his dramatis persona, a cynicism the more profound that it is so unconscious. We should close the book with a less sad im- pression could we believe that Guy de Maupassant was an exception among French authors in the possession of this characteristic, or that the taint did not spread beyond the literary and artistic classes of his nation.
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