nd in honour to observe likewise whether the lady by your side
was ready to "cede" or not! It seems to me that in such circumstances
one would, to quote a French critic on an entirely different author and
matter, "lose all the grace and liberty of the composition."

[Sidenote: Oddments.]

Some oddments[508] may deserve addition. _Fini_, which might have been
mentioned in the last group, is a very perfect thing. A well-preserved
dandy in middle age meets, after many years, an old love, and sees,
mirrored in _her_ decay, his own so long ignored. Nobody save a master
could have done this as it is done. _Julie Romain_ is a quaint
half-dream based on some points in George Sand's life, and attractive.
The _title_ of _L'Inutile Beaute_ has also always been so to me (the
_story_ is worth little). It would be, I think, a fair test of any man's
taste in style, whether he did or did not see any difference between it
and _La Beaute Inutile_. In _Adieu_, I think, Maupassant has been guilty
of a fearful heresy in speaking of part of a lady's face as "ce _sot_
organe qu'on appelle le nez." Now that a nose, both in man and woman,
can be foolish, nobody will deny. But that foolishness is an organic
characteristic of it--in the sense of inexpressiveness, want of
character, want of charm--is flatly a falsehood.[509] Neither mouth nor
eyes can beat it in that respect; and if it has less variety
individually, it gives perhaps more general character to the face than
either. However, he is, if I mistake not, obliged to retract partially
in the very story.

I have notes of many others--some of which may be special favourites
with readers of mine--but room for no more. Yet for me at least among
all these, despite the glaring inequality, despite the presence of some
things utterly ephemeral and not in the least worth giving a new day to;
despite the "_salete_ bete"[510] and the monotonous and obligatory
adultery,[511] there abides, as in the large books, and from
circumstances now and then with gathered intensity, that quality of
above-the-commonness which has obliged me to speak of Maupassant as I
have spoken.

[Sidenote: General considerations.]

The vividness and actuality of his power of presentation are
unquestioned, and there has been complaint rather of the character of
his "illusions" (_v. sup._) than of his failure to convey them to
others. It is not merely that nature, helped by the discipline of
practice under the severest of ma