than _L'Assommoir_, a reaction _must_ set in. From
the filthiness of low life, I dare say, but how about the elegant
fleshliness of the previous school? France will have to undergo a
complete turning inside out before this loses its hold upon the national
mind; as a proof of which I may mention the fact that a man who knew as
much of the world and of books as Taine does, one day said to me that
the best advice he could offer to a foreigner who thought of devoting
himself to letters was to carry back with him, to his own country,
Balzac, Stendhal and Merimee.

Of all the men of letters at Paris, there was no one for whose works I
cherished so hearty an admiration as I did for those of Ivan
Tourgueneff, and none in whose personality I felt so profound an
interest. Tourgueneff is far from being a model novelist, but his tales
are written with wonderful power, and yet are neither indecent nor
melodramatic nor rasping to the nerves. That the burden of strong
natures is in proportion to their strength, that human nature in general
is weak, and that the Devil still sometimes appears incarnate in the
person of lovely woman, seem to form his theory of life. Hence his
stories are ever sad, but they are not depressing; for his weak
characters we sympathize with and do not despise, his strong and
generous ones we sorrow for, his lovely women we reverence. And,
however great one's admiration of Tourgueneff's books may be, the man
Tourgueneff will not appear unworthy of them. What storms may, in
earlier years, have passed over the heart of the now sixty-year-old man
I do not know, but now his rather aged face, fringed with perfectly
white hair and beard, bears an expression of perfect peace. Much of his
time is constantly employed in helping others, and, from all I heard,
Madame Greville hardly exaggerated when she said to me, "He is a saint,
a nineteenth-century saint!" And withal he is one of the most guileless
of men: whatever he may think of men in general, he never can bring
himself to think ill of any man in particular.

Tourgueneff has now for a long period passed at least six months of the
year in Paris, and only three or four in Russia. He used to spend the
summer at Baden, but since the war he has exchanged Baden for
Carlsbad--whether or not on account of sympathy with France, and hence
hatred of the peacefully-disposed nation which it is pleased to consider
its deadly enemy, I do not know. It might well be, for he feels a