but what would you have of a "prize poem"? It was acted at one of the theatres at Paris in 1883, under the auspices of the dilettante Comte d'Orsay, and it had a very gratifying "literary" success. Such, omitting the early works, of which I have every first edition, and the numerous volumes of which the titles and no more have been published, are the works we have before us from which to study "peut-être le seul des hommes de notre génération qui ait eu en lui l'étincelle du génie"--as Catulle Mendès, ever generous in his literary appreciation of friend and foe, has said in that charming book, _La légende du Parnasse contemporaine._ I shall speak chiefly of the _Contes cruels,_ and I shall try to classify them after a fashion, in order to approach one after another the various sides of this multiform and manysided genius. First and before all, Villiers is a humorist, and he is a humorist who has no limitations, who has command of every style, who has essayed every branch of the literature of the fantastic. There are some halfdozen of tales--all contained in the _Contes cruels_--which, for certain of the rarest qualities of writing--subtleties, delicate perversities, exquisite complexities of irony essentially modern--can be compared, so far as I know, with nothing outside the _Petits poèmes en prose_ of Baudelaire. _Les demoiselles de Bienfilâtre, Maryelle, Sentimentalisme, Le convive des dernières fêtes, La Reine Ysabeau_--one might add the solitary poem inserted, jewel amid jewels, amongst the prose--these pieces, with which one or two others have affinities of style though not of temper, constitute a distinct division of Villiers' work. They are all, more or less, studies in modern love, supersubtie and yet perfectly finished little studies, so light in touch, manipulated with so delicate a finesse, so exquisite and unerring in tact, that the most monstrous paradoxes, the most incredible assumptions of cynicism, become possible, become acceptable. Of them all I think the masterpiece is _Les demoiselles de Bienfilâtre;_ and it is one of the most perfect little works of art in the world. The mockery of the thing is elemental; cynicism touches its zenith. It becomes tender, it becomes sublime. A perversion simply monstrous appears, in the infantine simplicity of its presentment, touching, credible, heroic. The edge of laughter is skirted by the finest of inches; and, as a last charm, one perceives, through the irony itself--the celestial, the elementary irony--a faint and sweet perfume as of a perverted odour of sanctity. The style has the delicacy of the etcher's needle. From beginning to end every word has been calculated, and every word is an inspiration. No other tale quite equals this supreme achievement; but in _Maryelle,_ in _Sentimentalisme,_ and the others there is the same note, and a perfection often only less absolute. _Maryelle_ and _Sentimentalisme_ are both studies in a