The four volumes of the _Histoire Contemporaine_, the last two of which, with their witty tirades oil the Dreyfus affair, were of no small assistance to the opponents of the Nationalists, are, though of unequal value, a very remarkable product of ripe experience and Olympian superiority. The principal character, the gentle and wise Monsieur Bergeret, unfortunate as a husband, fortunate in that he was able to obtain a divorce, is, as a type, in no respect inferior to the personages in whom other great French authors have embodied themselves. He is a worthy brother of Alceste, Figaro, and Mercadet. More artistically perfect than this lengthy four-volume novel are the short modern stories published under the title of _Crainquebille_. The first of these, which gives its name to the book, is told placidly, simply, cuttingly, bitterly. The plot is so simple that it can be compressed into a few lines. A decent old man, a street vendor of vegetables, has stopped with his barrow in front of a shop in a very busy thoroughfare. He is waiting for payment for some leeks which he has sold. A policeman orders him to move on, and, heedless of the old man's muttered, "I'm waiting for my money," repeats the order twice in the course of a few moments, and then, enraged by Crainquebille's "resistance to authority," arrests him and accuses him before the magistrate of having made use of the insulting expression in which the common people give vent to their dislike of the police--a thing which the old man has certainly not done. The magistrate, who places more faith in the assertion of the policeman than in the denial of the poor man, sentences the latter to a fortnight's imprisonment and a fine of fifty francs. When he comes out of prison Crainquebille finds that his customers have deserted him for another hawker, and will have nothing more to do with him because of his disgrace. He sinks deeper and deeper into poverty and misery, until at last he feels that the only way left him to provide himself with a shelter is to rush at a policeman shouting the offensive expression which he had before been unjustly accused of using. This policeman, however, leaning stoically against a lamp-post in pouring rain, despises the insult, and takes not the slightest notice of it, so that the poor man's last resort fails him. Crainquebille is painfully touching; the next little story, _Putois_, is both witty and pregnant with meaning. "Lucien," says Zoé to her brother, Monsieur Bergeret, "you remember Putois?" "I should say so. Of all the familiar figures of our childhood, no other is still so vividly before my eyes. He had a peculiarly high head." "And low forehead," adds Mademoiselle Zoé.