e
moved, and sometimes, also, bold and clever sketches of the world at
large. "C'est une fete delicieuse," he tells us, "pour un misanthrope, que
le spectacle d'un si grand nombre d'hommes assembles; c'est le temps de sa
recolte d'idees. Cette innombrable quantite d'especes de mouvements forme
a ses yeux un caractere generique. A la fin, tant de sujets se reduisent
en un; ce ne sont plus des hommes differents qu'il contemple, c'est
l'homme represente dans plusieurs milliers d'hommes."[36] Wherever he
might be, on the street, at the homes of his friends, at church, or at the
theatre, he was ever a prey to this demon of observation. Behold him
coming from the theatre; forced by the throng to stop a moment, he employs
the time to examine the passers-by: "J'examinais donc tous ces _porteurs
de visages_, hommes et femmes; je tachais de demeler ce que chacun pensait
de son lot; comment il s'en trouvait; par exemple, s'il y en avait
quelqu'un qui prit le sien en patience, faute de pouvoir faire mieux; mais
je n'en decouvris pas un, dont la contenance ne me dit: Je m'y tiens."[37]

Whatever he saw became food for meditation, and, if not used at once, was
treasured up for future need. Marivaux came at last to surmise that here
lay the secret of his inspiration, but it was not for some years yet that
he expressed himself, as he did in the _Spectateur francais_: "Ainsi je ne
suis point auteur, et j'aurais ete, je pense, fort embarrasse de le
devenir... je ne sais point creer, je sais seulement surprendre en moi les
pensees que le hasard me fait naitre, et je serais fache d'y mettre rien
du mien."[38]

In the _Mercure_ for August, September, and October, 1717, and for March
and June, 1718, appeared from the pen of Marivaux "five letters to M. de
M----, containing an adventure, and four letters to Mme. ----, containing
reflections on the populace, the _bourgeois_, the merchants, the men and
women of rank, and the _beaux esprits_." This seems to be a turning point
in his literary life. He appears now to have grasped the idea of his own
limitations and of his own powers, powers which will be disclosed, not
only in his journalistic work, but in his novels and his plays. I refer to
those excellences which are the direct result of the acuteness of his
observation. These writings gained for him the agnomen of _Theophraste
moderne_, which his sense of fitness and natural dislike of over-praise
led him to disclaim in a letter to the _Mercur