Then arose in France--for other countries require no further comment here--a series of notable story-writers, of supreme distinction in all that goes to make the short-story the most popular literary type: compressed delineation of a single crucial situation, highly centralized leading character, swift characterization, deft handling of crisis, climax, and dénouement, and, throughout, masterful work in local color. The short-story nomenclature among the French is not clearly translatable, for three reasons--we have no precise English equivalents, critics do not entirely agree upon what equivalents are nearest to the French terms, and, best reason of all, the French short-stories have this in common with all others: their forms often overlap, and so bear marks of touching more than one type. And when I have said this I have said nothing to their discredit; only the Procrustean purist first builds a bed and then stretches or cuts every story-guest to fit! I cannot say this in voice loud enough: to set up a standard of what is a true short-story is no more to decry those short fictive narratives which do not meet the form than it would be to brand the lyric as imperfect because it does not fulfill the requirements of the epic. But, to be specific, the three terms which we constantly meet in French fiction are _roman_, _nouvelle_, and _conte_. The _roman_ may be dismissed as a general term standing largely for what we in English variously denominate the (long) romance, the novel, and the (long) tale. The _nouvelle_ most nearly approaches our English short-story, but it also stands for the novelette, or very short novel, or even the expanded short-story. The _conte_ is really a generic word for a short fictional narrative or any story that is short, like the tale, the anecdote, and the fictional sketch, without meaning specifically the short-story to whose characteristics of compression, unity of impression, and crisis, climax and dénouement of plot, I have just referred. So I repeat: in these studies the term short-story must be given some latitude of interpretation. * * * * * The French short-story of the last eighty years is not only typically Gallic but characteristic of the period. Just as there are four tests of nationality in fiction so there are four forces which contribute to its periodicity: The influence of the soil, the heritage of the preceding period, the special characteristics of the period itself, and the influence of surrounding nations. All these result in what may be called the Spirit of the Period, concerning which a word must be said presently.