it, turns out to be itself a refinement,
and what has seemed a confused whirl, an improvisation, to be the result
really of reiterated labour, whose whole aim has been to bring the
spontaneity of the first impulse back into the laboriously finished
work.

In this just, sensitive, and admirable book, written by one who has
inherited a not less passionate curiosity about life, but with more
patience in waiting upon it, watching it, noting its surprises, we have
a simple and sufficient commentary upon the books and upon the man. The
narrative has warmth and reserve, and is at once tender and
clear-sighted. _J'entrevois nettement_, she says with truth, _combien
seront precieux pour les futurs historiens de la litterature du xix^e
siecle, les memoires traces au contact immediat de l'artiste, exposes de
ses faits et gestes particuliers, de ses origines, de la germination de
ses croyances et de son talent; ses critiques a venir y trouveront de_
_solides materiaux, ses admirateurs un aliment a leur piete et les
philosophes un des aspects de l'Ame francaise._ The man is shown to us,
_les elans de cette ame toujours grondante et fulgurante comme une
forge, et les nuances de ce fievreux visage d'apotre, brun, fin et
sinueux_, and we see the inevitable growth, out of the hard soil of
Quercy and out of the fertilising contact of Paris and Baudelaire, of
this whole literature, these books no less astonishing than their
titles: _Ompdrailles-le-Tombeau-des-Lutteurs_, _Celui de la
Croix-aux-Boeufs_, _La Fete Votive de Saint-Bartholomee-Porte-Glaive_.
The very titles are an excitement. I can remember how mysterious and
alluring they used to seem to me when I first saw them on the cover of
what was perhaps his best book, _Les Va-Nu-Pieds_.

It is by one of the stories, and the shortest, in _Les Va-Nu-Pieds_,
that I remember Cladel. I read it when I was a boy, and I cannot think
of it now without a shiver. It is called _L'Hercule_, and it is about a
Sandow of the streets, a professional strong man, who kills himself by
an over-strain; it is not a story at all, it is the record of an
incident, and there is only the strong man in it and his friend the
zany, who makes the jokes while the strong man juggles with bars and
cannon-balls. It is all told in a breath, without a pause, as if some
one who had just seen it poured it out in a flood of hot words. Such
vehemence, such pity, such a sense of the cruelty of the spectacle of a
man driven to