MARGUERITTE, PAUL (1860- ) and VICTOR (1866- ), French novelists, both born in Algeria, were the sons of General Jean Auguste Marguerite (1823-1870), who after an honourable career in Algeria was mortally wounded in the great cavalry charge at Sedan, and died in Belgium, on the 6th of September 1870. An account of his life was published by Paul Marguerite as _Mon père_ (1884; enlarged ed., 1897). The names of the two brothers are generally associated, on account of their collaboration. Paul Marguerite, who has given a picture of his home in Algiers in _Le Jardin du passé_ (1895), was sent to the military school of La Flèche for the sons of officers, and became in 1880 clerk to the minister of public instruction. He designed two pantomimes, _Pierrot assassin de sa femme_ (Théâtre Libre, 1882), and _Colombine pardonnée_ (Cercle funambulesque, 1888), in which the traditional Pierrot, played by Margueritte himself, became a nervous, tragic creature. He resigned his clerkship in 1889 to devote himself entirely to literature, producing in rapid succession a series of novels, among which were _Tous quatre_ (1885), _La Confession posthume_ (1886), _Maison ouverte_ (1887), _Pascal Géfosse_ (1887), _Jours d'épreuve_ (1889), _Amants_ (1890), _La Force des choses_ (1891), _Sur le retour_ (1892), _La Tourmente_ (1893), _Ma grande_ (1892), _Âme d'enfant_ (1894) and _L'Eau qui dort_ (1896). Paul Margueritte had begun as a realistic novelist, but he was one of the five writers who signed a manifesto against Zola's _La Terre_, and he made his reputation by delicate, sober studies of the by-ways of sentiment. His brother Victor entered his father's regiment, the 1st chasseurs d'Afrique, in 1888, and served in the army until 1896, when he resigned his commission. He was already known by some volumes of poetry, and by a translation from Calderon (_La Double méprise_, played at the Odéon, 1898) when he began to collaborate with his brother. From the time of this collaboration Paul Margueritte's work gained in colour and force.