dy to welcome the truant when he returns. They also get drunk at
restaurant dinners, and then call their lovers--quite correctly, but not
agreeably--"Cochon!" "Sale bete," etc. This of course is what our
_fin-de-siecle_ critics _could_ "recommend to a friend."

But if the reader thinks that this summary is a prelude to anything like
the "slate" that I thought it proper to bestow upon _Les Liaisons
Dangereuses_, or even to such remarks as those made on the Goncourts, he
is quite mistaken. Laclos had, as it seemed to me, a disgusting subject
and no real compensation of treatment. In _Bel-Ami_ the merits of the
treatment are very great. The scenes pass before you; the characters
play their part in the scenes--if not in an engaging manner, in a
completely life-like one. There is none of the _psychologie de
commande_, which I object to in Laclos, but a true adumbration of life.
The music-hall opening; the first dinner-party; the journalist scenes;
the death of Forestier and the proposal of re-marriage over his
corpse;[487] the honeymoon journey to Normandy--a dozen other
things--could not be better done in their way, though this way may not
be the best. It did not fall to me to review _Bel-Ami_ when it came out,
but I do not think I should have made any mistake about it if it had.
There are weak points technically; for instance, the character of
Madeleine Forestier, afterwards Duroy--still later caught in flagrant
delict and divorced--is left rather enigmatic. But the general technique
(with the reservations elsewhere made) is masterly, and two passages--a
Vigny-like[488] descant on Death by the old poet Norbert de Varenne and
the death-scene of Forestier itself--give us Maupassant in that mood of
_macabre_ sentiment--almost Romance--which chequers and purifies his
Naturalism.

But the main objection which I should take to the book is neither
technical nor goody. The late Mr. Locker, in, I think, that most
fascinating "New Omniana" _Patchwork_,[489] tells how, in the
Travellers' Club one day, a haughty member thereof expressed surprise
that he should see Mr. Locker going to the corner-house next door. The
amiable author of _London Lyrics_ was good enough to explain that some
not uninteresting people also used the humbler establishment--bishops,
authors, painters, cabinet-ministers, etc. "Ah!" said the Traverser of
Perilous Ways, "that would be all very well if one _wanted_ to meet that
sort of people. But, you see, one _doe