We find, first, volatile sentiment, as shown in quick changes of attitude, sudden concentrations, extremes of gayety and depression, lively speech, and a general habit of regarding a tempest in a teapot as a serious crisis, with now and then a surprising way of smiling away a real tragedy. There is much of the child-nature here, and therefore the loving, the lovable, and the sweet. Love of hearth is another French characteristic, the mistresses and assignations, true and fictive, to the contrary notwithstanding. The typical homes of any nation are found less in its cities than in its smaller centers; and so it is in France, for the bulk of high-grade fiction is pretty certain to be a safe index of public feeling. A third characteristic is the unique attitude of the French toward womanhood. The mother, in France, is honored above belief; the wife somewhat less so; the young girl knows nothing, and is therefore merely amusing; the woman of easy morals occupies a large place because she must be reckoned with as a _recognized_ factor. The whole attitude of France toward its womanhood is compounded of sentiment, lightness, and cynicism. Less independent than the American woman, less free than the English, less domestic than the German, the French woman is more a being to charm man than a companion for him. And so runs the current of the short-story, side by side with the sweep of life. A fourth trait in the French short-story is a minute, detached observation, tinged with cynicism--the inevitable result of realism. It is for this reason that so many French short-stories seem unsympathetic. Scientific observation--really, a German trait--is likely to be cold when applied to tumults of the soul! And the writer who as a moral vivisectionist relentlessly applies the scalpel runs the risk of becoming blasé, not to say cruel. He is more concerned with the truth _of_ facts than with extracting the truth _from_ facts. A final characteristic is artistry. To do a short-story with fineness, deftness, perfection of detail, and beauty of finish; to cut an intaglio, so to say, to paint a miniature, to inlay a jewel--that is the Frenchman’s conception of the artistic in brief fiction, and in that he is unsurpassed. Here, then, are some qualities of the French spirit as evidenced in the short-story of the period--qualities fundamental and in the phase, but patent, as it seems to me, in a large proportion of the entire short-story product.