It was the landlord and the man from Auvergne, who were bringing the police. Jean François started forward to the landing and held out his hands for the handcuffs and said, laughing: “Forward, bad lot!” To-day he is at Cayenne, condemned for life, as an incorrigible. FOOTNOTES: [2] Revolutionary songs of '93. [3] _Tu_--Thou--used only in familiar address. [4] Police headquarters. [5] “The California” is a cheap eating-house in Paris. [6] In drawing lots for military service the higher numbers give exemption. [7] Literally, climbing and breaking in. [8] A receiver of stolen goods. [9] Stuffed into the sabots to cushion the feet. [10] A northwest wind on the Mediterranean. GUY DE MAUPASSANT, REALIST The inflexible realist in fiction can be faithful only to what he sees; and what he sees is inevitably colored by the lens of his real self. For the literary observer of life there is no way of falsifying the reports which his senses, physical and moral, make to his own brain. If he wishes, he may make alterations in transcribing for his readers, but in so doing he confesses to himself a departure from truth as he sees it. Pure realism, then, demands of its apostle both a faithful observation of life and a faithful statement of what he sees. True, the realist uses his artist’s privilege of selecting those facts of life which seem best suited to picturing his characters in their natures, their persons, and their careers, for he knows that many irrelevant, confusing, and contradictory things happen in the everyday lives of everyday men. So in point of practice his realism is not so uncompromising as his theories sound when baldly stated. How near any great artist’s transcriptions of life approach to absolute truth will always be a question, both because we none of us know what is final truth, and because realists, each seeing life through his own nature, will disagree among themselves just as widely as their temperaments, their predispositions, and their experiences vary. Thus we are left to the common sense for our standards, and to this common sense we may with some confidence appeal for a judgment. Guy de Maupassant was a realist. “The writer’s eye,” he says in _Sur l’Eau_, “is like a suction-pump, absorbing everything; like a pickpocket’s hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is constantly collecting material; gathering up glances, gestures, intentions, everything that goes on in his presence--the slightest look, the least act, the merest trifle.” But Maupassant was more than a realist--he was an artist, a realistic artist, frank and wise enough to conform his theories to his own efficient literary practice. He saw as a realist, selected as an artist, and then was uncompromising in his literary presentation.