ent of style; it may be
described as an anecdote told with deliberate art, and in this
introduction of art lies its peculiar literary value. According to
Littre, there is no fundamental difference between a _conte_ and a
_roman_, and all that can be said is that the _conte_ is the generic
term, covering long stories and short alike, whereas the _roman_ (or
novel) must extend to a certain length. But if this is the primitive and
correct signification of the word, it is certain that modern criticism
thinks of a _conte_ essentially as a short story, and as a short story
exclusively occupied in illustrating one set of ideas or one disposition
of character. As early as the 13th century, the word is used in French
literature to describe an anecdote thus briefly and artistically told,
in prose or verse. The fairy-tales of Perrault and the apologues of La
Fontaine were alike spoken of as _contes_, and stories of peculiar
extravagance were known as _contes bleus_, because they were issued to
the common public in coarse blue paper covers. The most famous _contes_
in the 18th century were those of Voltaire, who has been described as
having invented the _conte philosophique_. But those brilliant stories,
_Candide_, _Zadig_, _L'Ingenu_, _La Princess de Babylone_ and _Le
Taureau blanc_, are not, in the modern sense, _contes_ at all. The
longer of these are _romans_, the shorter _nouvelles_, not one has the
anecdotical unity required by a _conte_. The same may be said of those
of Marmontel, and of the insipid imitations of Oriental fancy which were
so popular at the close of the 18th century. The most perfect recent
writer of _contes_ is certainly Guy de Maupassant, and his celebrated
anecdote called "Boule de suif" may be taken as an absolutely perfect
example of this class of literature, the precise limitations of which it
is difficult to define. (E. G.)

CONTE, NICOLAS JACQUES (1755-1805), French mechanical genius, chemist
and painter, was born at Aunou-sur-Orne, near Sees, on the 4th of August
1755, of a family of poor farm labourers. At the age of fourteen he
displayed precocious artistic talent in a series of religious panels,
remarkably fine in colour and composition, for the principal hospital of
Sees, where he was employed to help the gardener. With the advice of
Greuze he took up portrait painting, quickly became the fashion, and
laid by in a few years a fair competency. From that time he gave free
rein to his pass