he country, etc.: but its effect, though certainly helped
by, is not derived from, these. As always with Maupassant, it is out of
the bitter that comes the sweet. Hardly anywhere outside of
_Ecclesiastes_, Thackeray,[492] and Flaubert is the irony of life more
consummately handled in one peculiar fashion; while the actual _passion_
of love is nowhere better treated by this author,[493] or perhaps by
any other French novelist of the later century, except Fromentin.

[Sidenote: _Pierre et Jean._]

The line of ascent was continued in _Pierre et Jean_. It is not a long
book--a fact which perhaps has some significance--and no small part of
it is taken up by a Preface on "Le Roman" generally (_v. sup._), which
is the author's most remarkable piece of criticism; one of the most
noteworthy from a man who was not specially a critic; and one of the few
but precious examples of an artist dealing, at once judicially and
masterfully, with his own art.[494] In fact, recognising the truth of
the "poetic moment," he would extend it to the moments of all
literature; and lays it down that the business of the novelist is, first
to realise his own illusion of the world and then to make others realise
it too.

_Pierre et Jean_ itself has no weakness except that _narrowing_ of
interest which has been already noted in Maupassant, and which is rather
a limitation than a positive fault. There is practically one situation
throughout; and though there are several characters, their interest
depends almost wholly on their relations with the central personage.
This is Pierre Roland, a full-fledged physician of thirty, but not yet
successful, and still living with, and on, his parents. His father is a
retired Paris tradesman, who has come to live at Havre to indulge a
mania for sea-fishing; he has a mother who is rather above her husband
in some ways; and a brother, Jean, who, though considerably younger, is
also ready to start in his own profession--that of the law. A "friend of
the family," Mme. Rosemilly--a young, pretty, and rather well-to-do
widow--completes the company, with one or two "supers." Just as the
story opens, a large legacy to Jean by an older friend of the
family--this time a man--is announced, to the surprise of almost
everybody, but at first only causing a little natural jealousy in
Pierre. Charitable remarks of outsiders, however, suggest to him the
truth--that Jean is the fruit of his mother's adultery with the
testator--and