The true novel of this sort comes into existence under freer and more fanciful conditions than obtain in the intelligent and tidy, though somewhat melancholy, manufacture of M. Hermant. A young writer, who died a score of years ago, Jean de Tinan, produced masterpieces in _Pense-tu réussir?_ and _Aimienne_, which have not been surpassed. To-day this type of novel has a right and a left--elegance on the right and Bohemianism on the left, the latter as a rule being more picturesque and more highly flavoured. On the right there is what one might call, using the word in the sense in which it is used by historians of mediæval literature, a _littérature courtoise_--I mean a literature of the court with some refinement and some sensuality. Here the author describes his little amatory adventures, endeavouring to relieve their inevitable banality with a certain piquancy in the introduction of portraits of his men and women friends, chosen among an elegant society. _Les Papiers de Cleonthe_, by M. Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, and _Le Diable a l'Hôtel_, by M. Emile Henriot, which have just appeared, though they fall sometimes into banality, make agreeable reading. On the left there is the little Bohemian novel, which deals with Montmartre as ancient stories dealt with Miletus. Its characters are artists and their more or less interesting friends, young women and their more or less interested friends. The novel of Montmartre, in which style Charles-Louis Philippe wrote the earliest masterpieces, is practised to-day in the most agreeable fashion by M. Francis Cares, author of _Bob et Bobette_, M. Mac-Orlan, author of _La Clique du Café Brebis_, and M. André Billy, the author of _Scènes de la Vie Littéraire_. Nevertheless these sometimes shady cabarets, where boredom is chased away, must not be confused with the higher spheres of literature. * * * * * The French novel, regarded as a whole, is at the present moment going through a crisis. The qualities of original, free, and vigorous creation which were the causes of success from Balzac to Maupassant have become rare. The novel no longer produces those real and living characters round whom, as Taine said, it is possible to walk. But it is remarkable for qualities of intelligence.