wed genius, Barbey
d'Aurevilly (_v. sup._ p. 453), the words which redress, by long
anticipation, the wrong done by his fellow Norman: "Les ailes du nez,
_aussi expressives que des yeux_."

[510] In a novel by a contemporary of his, otherwise not worth notice,
Sir Walter Scott was accused of "_pruderie_ bete"; I am sure the
adjective and substantive are much better mated in my text.

[511] I remember, in a book which I have not seen for about two-thirds
of a century, Miss Martineau's _Crofton Boys_, an agreeable anecdote
(for the good Harriet, when not under the influence of Radicalism, the
dismal science, Anti-Christianity, or Mr. Atkinson, could tell a story
very well) of a little English girl. It occurred to her one morning that
she should have to wash, dress, do her hair, etc., _every day for her
whole life_, and she sat down and wept bitterly. Now, if I were a little
boy or girl in French novel-world, when as I remembered that I should
have, as the one, never to marry, or to commit adultery with every one
who asked me; that, as the other, I must not be left five minutes alone
with a married woman, without offering her the means of carrying out her
and her husband's destiny; I really think I should imitate Miss
Martineau's child, if I did not even go and hang myself. "Fay ce que
voudras" may be rather a wide commandment. "Fay ce que dois" may require
a little enlarging. But "Do what you ought not, not because you wish to
do it, but because it is the proper thing to do" is not only "the
limit," but beyond it. I think that if I were a Frenchman of the
novel-type I should hate the sight of a married woman. Stone walls would
not a prison make nor iron bars a cage--so odious as this unrelieved
tyranny of _concupiscentia carnis_--to order! Perhaps Wilberforce's
Agathos had a tedious time of it in being always ready to resist the
Dragon; but how much more wearisome would it be to be always on the _qui
vive_, lest you should miss a chance of _not_ resisting him!

[512] The "time" was five and twenty years ago. But this passage,
trifling as it may seem to some readers, appeared to me worth
preserving, because my recent very careful reperusal of Maupassant, as a
whole, made its appositeness constantly recur to me.

[513] Nearest, perhaps, in the story called "En Famille," to be found in
the _Maison Tellier_ volume.

[514] Remarks already made on the particular novels and stories from
this point of view need only be refer