m the Gaul the technique, the point of view and the choice of
theme which characterizes the French Novel from Stendhal to
Balzac, from Zola to Guy de Maupassant.

I

The name of Henri Beyle, known to literature under the sobriquet
of Stendhal, has a meaning in the development of the modern type
of fiction out of proportion to the intrinsic value of his
stories.

He was, of course, far surpassed by mightier followers like
Balzac, Flaubert and Zola; yet his significance lies in the very
fact that they were followers. His is all the merit pertaining
to the feat of introducing the Novel of psychic analysis: of
that persistent and increasingly unpleasant bearing-down upon
the darker facts of personality. Hence his "Rouge et Noir,"
dated 1830 and typical of his aim and method, is in a sense an
epoch-making book.

Balzac was at the same time producing the earlier studies to
culminate in that Human Comedy which was to stand as the chief
accomplishment of his nation in the literature of fiction. But
Stendhal, sixteen years older, began to print first and to him
falls the glory of innovation. Balzac gives full praise to his
predecessor in his essay on Beyle, and his letters contain
frequent references to the debt he owed that curious bundle of
fatuities, inconsistencies and brilliancies, the author of "The
Chartreuse de Parme." Later, Zola calls him "the father of us
all," meaning of the naturalistic school of which Zola himself
was High Priest. Beyle's business was the analysis of soul
states: an occupation familiar enough in these times of Hardy,
Meredith and Henry James. He held several posts of importance
under Napoleon, worshiped that leader, loved Italy as his
birthplace, loved England too, and tried to show in his novels
the result of the inactive Restoration upon a generation trained
by Napoleon to action, violence, ambition and passion.

Read to-day, "Le Rouge et Noir," which it is sufficient to
consider for our purposes, seems somewhat slow in movement,
struggling in construction, meticulous in manner. At times, its
interminability recalls "Clarissa Harlowe," but it possesses the
traits' which were to mark the coming school of novel-writing in
France and hence in the modern world: to wit, freedom in dealing
with love in its irregular relation, the tendency towards
tragedy, and that subtlety of handling which makes the main
interest to depend upon motive and thought rather than upon the
external action itself