. In fact, as
observed above, it is little more than a torso. Even _Pierre et Jean_,
by far the greatest of all, if scale and artistic perfection be taken
together, falls short in the latter respect of _Boule de Suif_, which,
small as it is, is a complete tragi-comedy in little, furnished with
beginning, middle, and end, complying fully with those older exigences
which its author affected to despise, and really as great as anything of
Merimee's--greater it could not be.

There is no doubt that the theory which Maupassant says he learnt from
Flaubert (in whose own hands it was always subordinated to an effort at
larger completeness) does lead to the composition of a series or flock
of isolated vignettes or scenes rather than to that of a great picture
or drama. For it comes perilously close--though perhaps in Maupassant's
own case it never actually reached--the barest and boldest (or baldest)
individualising of impressions, and leaving them as they are, without an
attempt at architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I was
walking down the Euston Road. There passed me a fellow dragging a
truck, on which truck there were three barrels with the heads knocked
out, so that each barrel ensheathed, to a certain extent, the one in
front of it. Astride of the centre barrel, his arms folded and a pipe in
his mouth, there sat a man in a sort of sailor-costume--trousers,
guernsey, and night-cap--surveying the world, and his fellow who dragged
him, with an air of placid _goguenarderie_. It was really a striking
impression, and absorbed me, I should think, for five or six seconds. I
can conceive its coming into a story very well. But Maupassant's
theories would have led to his making a whole story out of it, and his
followers have already done things quite as bad, while he has himself
come near to it more than once.[513] In other words, the method tends to
the presentations of scraps, orts, fragments, instead of complete
wholes. And Art should always seek the whole.

As for the character of Maupassant's "illusions," there could never be
much doubt about some of them. _Boule de Suif_ itself pretty clearly
indicated, and _La Maison Tellier_ shortly after showed, at the very
opening of his literary career, the scenes, the society, and the solaces
which he most affected: while it was impossible to read even two or
three of his stories without discovering that, to M. de Maupassant, the
world was most emphatically _not_ the best o