And I must not forget that requisite bit of description--ten lines, not more--which, for rapidity of observation and precision and delicacy of touch, seems to me unsurpassable; indeed, to find anything that might be set against it, I should have to turn to that supreme success, that final vindication of the divine power of words--Flaubert's "L'Éducation Sentimentale." The passage I allude to is when Renée goes to the great fête at the Tuileries. She wears a wonderful dress, composed entirely of white muslin and black velvet. The bodice is in black velvet, the skirt in white muslin, garnished with a million flounces, and all cut up and adorned with bows made out of black velvet: no ornament but one diamond in her fawn-coloured hair. Suddenly the people draw into lines, and the corpulent Emperor walks down the room on the arm of one of his generals. Renée shrinks back: but she cannot get away--she is in the front rank; and, when Napoleon fixes his, all eyes are fixed upon her. A heaven of lustres is above her head, a velvety carpet beneath her feet, and she hears the general whisper to the Emperor: "There's a carnation that would suit our button-holes uncommonly well." The rest of the fête is lost in this _moment d'âme_;--is an acute note that vibrates long in the monotonous melody of her life. Whether "La Curée" is a faithful picture, true to the smallest detail, of life under the Second Empire, I cannot say. Nor do I care. I am content to take it for what it seems to me to be--a gorgeous, a golden poem, born of the author's contemplation of the scenes he describes. Although a tyrant, Napoleon the Third was a demagogue at heart. When he came into office Paris was starving. To govern, he saw that he would have to feed the people, and to do this the ingenious plan of creating an immense debt, living upon it and giving the city as security, was adopted. He appeased his enemies by calling new names to the front, he unchained, and he gave them unlimited means of gratifying their appetites. In a house of ill-fame politics do not occupy men's minds--why not turn Paris into a house of ill-fame? But what is true for individuals is true for nations: Sedan was the suicide of the prostituted city. This is the view M. Zola takes of the Second Empire. "La Curée" is but a corner of it, but I do not know any corner more beautifully finished, more perfectly proportioned. Of course faults may be urged: it may be said, and I admit with a certain show of reason, that the characters are more representative of the classes to which they belong than individual men and women. The same argument may be used, and with equal effect, against Hamlet, against Orestes, against every beautiful drawing of Hokousaï and Hokkeï: but when possible and impossible faults have been found, and all visible and invisible flaws taken note of, I believe it will be admitted by the blind, the dumb, and the lame that, when the last page of "La Curée" is read, the