If I were a writer of the naturalistic school--that is, if I were without care for modesty or the choice of words--I should need here to summon physiology to my aid to paint in all its brutality the love that the Princess Olsdorf and Paul Meyrin felt for each other; and the lines that I should devote to this study, and the scenes that it would involve, would give their distinctive note to the book. They would probably make it successful, thanks to the unhealthy curiosity by which even the freshest readers are tainted nowadays, for we live in a strange age, when cynicism reigns alike in letters, art, business, and politics. Cynicism is indeed the only sovereign that our pseudo-republic is willing to accept. In truth, license has never been so unbridled; never has mediocrity gone so far, impudence mounted so high, or indifferent work, dramatic and literary, had so much success, if cleverly launched. Our country, formerly known for its gallantry and good taste, has become the kingdom of what is common and vulgar. This new state of things is due to many causes--the _abandon_ of religion, the scandalous rapidity with which fortunes have been won, the eager desire to enjoy everything, and also--it is needful that one should dare to say it--the invasion of those numberless Southerners who have carried everything with a high hand, and brought with them into the society they have gained a footing in, the vanity, the extravagance, and the boastfulness inherent in their natures. A Gasçon or a Provençal may, of course, be an upright, worthy, and intelligent man, a devoted friend--I have known many with these qualities, but too often they are lacking. One might suppose they were incompatible with the terrible accent of these men, their epileptic gestures, their rage for loud talking, for calling people by their names, and for talking of their own affairs to everybody. And if the Southerner is a Jew, too, the case is worse than ever, for then no place or reward is safe from his greed. To put against the few men of wit, the occasional writers of the first order, the two or three poets that the South has given us, what noisy, insolent, troublesome _parvenus_ Paris owes to it! It would seem that everything is these people's, of right. They slip in everywhere, shamelessly, jostling one another, greedy of place and honor rather than avaricious. Such of them as are not poets or musicians are hair-dressers, or croupiers at gambling-tables, or statesmen. This calamitous invasion has come upon us chiefly from the right bank of the Garonne, and the sea-coast; for further inland, toward the mountainous country, these Southerners are of another kind--almost a different race. First they have a less marked accent, and, second, some indisputable qualities are theirs.