heir school. They knew how
to remain lucid and classic, in taste as much as in form--Merimee
through all the audacity of a fancy most exotic, and Maupassant in the
realism of the most varied and exact observation. At a little distance
they appear to be two patterns, identical in certain traits, of the
same family of minds, and Tourgenief, who knew and loved the one and
the other, never failed to class them as brethren.

They are separated, however, by profound differences, which perhaps
belong less to their nature than to that of the masters from whom they
received their impulses: Stendhal, so alert, so mobile, after a youth
passed in war and a ripe age spent in vagabond journeys, rich in
experiences, immediate and personal; Flaubert so poor in direct
impressions, so paralyzed by his health, by his family, by his theories
even, and so rich in reflections, for the most part solitary.

Among the theories of the anatomist of "Madame Bovary," there are two
which appear without ceasing in his Correspondence, under one form or
another, and these are the ones which are most strongly evident in the
art of De Maupassant. We now see the consequences which were inevitable
by reason of them, endowed as Maupassant was with a double power of
feeling life bitterly, and at the same time with so much of animal
force. The first theory bears upon the choice of personages and the
story of the romance, the second upon the character of the style. The
son of a physician, and brought up in the rigors of scientific method,
Flaubert believed this method to be efficacious in art as in science.
For instance, in the writing of a romance, he seemed to be as
scientific as in the development of a history of customs, in which the
essential is absolute exactness and local color. He therefore naturally
wished to make the most scrupulous and detailed observation of the
environment.

Thus is explained the immense labor in preparation which his stories
cost him--the story of "Madame Bovary," of "The Sentimental Education,"
and "Bouvard and Pecuchet," documents containing as much minutiae as
his historical stories. Beyond everything he tried to select details
that were eminently significant. Consequently he was of the opinion
that the romance writer should discard all that lessened this
significance, that is, extraordinary events and singular heroes. The
exceptional personage, it seemed to him, should be suppressed, as
should also high dramatic incident,