ndemned.

BOURGET, PAUL CHARLES JOSEPH (1852- ), French novelist and critic, was
born at Amiens on the 2nd of September 1852. His father, a professor of
mathematics, was afterwards appointed to a post in the college at
Clermont-Ferrand. Here Bourget received his early education. He
afterwards studied at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes. In 1872-1873 he produced a volume of verse, _Au bord de
la mer_, which was followed by others, the last, _Les Aveux_, appearing
in 1882. Meanwhile he was making a name in literary journalism, and in
1883 he published _Essais de psychologic contemporaine_, studies of
eminent writers first printed in the _Nouvelle Revue_, and now brought
together. In 1884 Bourget paid a long visit to England, and there wrote
his first published story (_L'Irreparable_). _Cruelle Enigme_ followed
in 1885; and _Andre Cornelis_ (1886) and _Mensonges_ (1887) were
received with much favour. _Le Disciple_ (1889) showed the novelist in a
graver attitude; while in 1891 _Sensations d'Italie_, notes of a tour in
that country, revealed a fresh phase of his powers. In the same year
appeared the novel _Coeur de femme_, and _Nouveaux Pastels_, types of
the characters of men, the sequel to a similar gallery of female types
(_Pastels_, 1890). His later novels include _La Terre promise_ (1892);
_Cosmopolis_ (1892), a psychological novel, with Rome as a background;
_Une Idylle tragique_ (1896); _La Duchesse bleue_ (1897); _Le Fantome_
(1901); _Les Deux Soeurs_ (1905); and some volumes of shorter
stories--_Complications sentimentales_ (1896), the powerful _Drames de
famille_ (1898), _Un Homme fort_ (1900), _L'Etape_ (1902), a study of
the inability of a family raised too rapidly from the peasant class to
adapt itself to new conditions. This powerful study of contemporary
manners was followed by _Un Divorce_ (1904), a defence of the Roman
Catholic position that divorce is a violation of natural laws, any
breach of which inevitably entails disaster. _Etudes et portraits_,
first published in 1888, contains impressions of Bourget's stay in
England and Ireland, especially reminiscences of the months which he
spent at Oxford; and _Outre-Mer_ (1895), a book in two volumes, is his
critical journal of a visit to the United States in 1893. He was
admitted to the Academy in 1894, and in 1895 was promoted to be an
officer of the Legion of Honour, having received the decoration of the
order ten years bef