But these reactionary movements were neither powerful nor for long. The disillusionment and cynicism of French life was bound to find expression in its fiction, and the more sincere and fearless the writer the more direct would be his methods. Naturalism became the final expression of realism, for naturalism is realism plus pessimism. Naturalism proposes not only to see things as they are and report things as they are seen, but it is a pessimist who sees and reports. Result--gloom, mire, and jagged stories, unkissed by a single star of hope! Émile Zola is the chief-priest, and Eugene Sue the industrious acolyte at the altar of this despairing cult. No people, however, could long enjoy an orgy of depression, and signs of moderation soon appeared. Guy de Maupassant, with all his abnormality, and Paul Bourget with all his pessimism, now and then touched the joyous side, and by and by a braver, more wholesome tone sounded in the French short-story--a tone of eclecticism, both of method and of philosophy. Surrounded by a social order emancipated from many past ills and having the promise of greater equity, quieted by the more or less permanent settlement of at least two of its most vexed questions, the France of to-day is encouraging a group of brilliant writers--Pierre Loti, Anatole France, Gustave Droz, Jules Lemaître, Jules Claretie, Renè Bazin, Jean Richepin, Marcel Prévost, and Paul Margueritte--who, though mostly no longer young, represent a youthful France in that they are emancipated from school and type and write as the story makes its call to their own natures. Sometimes one method, sometimes another, rises to dominance, but _the choice of the most available_ is after all the current practice. Of the future no man may tell, but backed by the rich traditions of literary France, the air of artistry all about, the growth of a more unselfish socialized life, and the promise of stable national conditions, we may well look for the most satisfying results in the French short-story of tomorrow. FOOTNOTES: [1] An inquiry into the development of the short-story in Russia at about this period has been reserved for the third volume of the series, which is devoted to short fiction of that land. SHORT-STORY MASTERPIECES FRANÇOIS COPPÉE AND HIS WORK There never has been a satisfactory definition of poetry, though all ambitious literary appraisers, from Aristotle down to Bernard Shaw, have essayed the task. But if to be able to institute apt and beautiful comparisons; to phrase in musical language thoughts of power, beauty, and feeling; to discern the ideal clothed in the real; to interpret the inner meanings of life--if this ability marks the poetic gift, then François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a poet--a poet in prose as well as in verse.