His first decade in Paris he wrote for such publications as _Chroniques Parisiennes_, _La France_, _Gaulois_, and _Figaro_. The entire gamut of criticism was achieved by him. He was fearless. His pen was vitriolic and also a sledge-hammer. Like old Dr. Johnson, if his weapon missed fire he brained his adversary with its butt-end. A formidable antagonist, yet the obverse of his medal shows us a poet of abnormal sensibilities, a leather of all injustice, a Quixote tilting at genuine giants, not missing windmills; also a man of great literary endowment and achievement. His critics speak of a period of discouragement during which he smoked opium, though without ill consequences. His was not a passive temperament to endure inaction. Like others, he had perversely imitated Baudelaire and De Quincey, but soon gave up the attempt. A nature trembling on the verge of lytic pantheism and truculent satire, Mirbeau had a hard row to hoe, and it is gratifying to learn that as he conquered in his art so he conquered himself. He waged war against Octave Mirbeau to the last. And no wonder. He has written stories that would bring a crimson blush to the brow of Satan. Turning the pages of the principal Paris reviews to which he copiously contributed we find him calling the financial press blackmailers; the law reporters “vermine judiciaire”; French journalism decidedly decadent: “The press kills literature, art, patriotism; it aggrandizes the shop and develops the shopkeeping spirit. It exalts the mediocre painters, sculptors, writers. Its criticism is venal.” As for the theatre--from the frying-pan into the fire! The theatre is the prey of mediocrity, wherein Le Maître de Forges is pronounced a masterpiece! The comedians (“les tripots revenus; cabotinisme”) of La Comédie Française come in for their share. Emile Zola, naturally enough, has his allegiance, but he dealt hard raps on the skulls of his followers, the Zolaettes, who hung on the fringe of the novelist’s dressing-gown. He admired Barbey d’Aurevilly and Elémir Bourges, as well he might; he attacked Daudet, Paul Bourget, Ohnet, Legouvé, Feuillet, Sarcey--dear old Uncle Sarcey, how Huysmans and Mirbeau did pound him!--and, last and worst, the art-critic of the _Figaro_, Albert Wolff. But he deserved the flaying.