Mommsen himself has not excelled the Goncourts in conscientious "documentation"; and yet, for all their care, their personages do not abide in the memory as living beings. We do not see them as individuals, but as types; and, strangely enough, the authors, despite the remarkable skill with which they materialize many of their impressions, are content to deliver their characters to us as so many illustrations of a species. Thus Marthe Mance in _Charles Demailly_ is _un type, l'incarnation d'un age, de son sexe et d'un role de son temps_; Langibout is _le type pur de l'ancienne ecole_; Madame Gervaisais, too, is _un exemple et un type_ of the intellectual _bourgeoise_ of Louis-Philippe's time; Madame Mauperin is _le type_ of the modern _bourgeoise_ mother; Renee is the type of the modern _bourgeoise_ girl; the Bourjots "represent" wealth; Denoisel is a Parisian--_ou plutot c'etait le Parisien_. The Goncourts, in their endeavour to be more precise, resort to odd combinations of conflicting elements. Within some twenty pages Renee Mauperin is _une melancolique tintamarresque_; the adjectives _bourgeoise_ and _diabolique_ are used to characterize the same thing; the Abbe Blampoix is at once "priest and lawyer, apostle and diplomatist, Fenelon and M. de Foy." And the same types constantly reappear. The physician Monterone in _Madame Gervaisais_ is simply an Italian version of Denoisel in _Renee Mauperin_; the Abbe Blampoix has his counter-part in Father Giansanti; Honorine is Germinie, before the fall; Nachette and Gautruche might be brothers. The procedure, too, is almost invariable. The antecedents of each personage are given with abundant detail. We have minute information as to the family history of the Mauperins, the Villacourts, Germinie, Couturat, and the rest; and the mention of Father Sibilla involves a brief account of the order of Barefooted Trinitarians from January, 1198, to the spring of 1853! There is a frequent repetition of the same idea with scarcely any verbal change: _un dos d'amateur_ in _Renee Mauperin_ and _le dos du cocher_ in _Germinie Lacerteux_. And the possibilities of the human back were evidently not exhausted, for at Christmas, 1882, Edmond de Goncourt makes a careful note of the _dos de jeune fille du peuple_.