In his _Rome_, too, he shows world forces again, again expanding, magnificently triumphant. Over them, queening it as of yore, stands the glorified Venus of the Greeks, meaning that natural impulses in the heart outlast laws made to subdue them, just as after building, destroying again what is built, the red earth remains, insolent, sullen, but always dominant. History tells how poor people of Rome went, for generations, to the crumbling Colosseum for material with which to build humble homes. Just so today lesser novelists go to these massive creative monuments, such as Zola’s _Rome_, for purpose of a similar quarrying. The tiny germ for little novels, stories, is concealed in these giant accumulations. We find what may have been initial impulse for _Imperial Purple_, by Saltus. We recall Zola saying, in this book, that _the imperial purple of the Caesars has slipped down upon the shoulders of the priests_. Here is the ghost of Bourget’s _Cosmopolis_. In the labyrinths of Zola’s rich, masterful _Rome_ not only these books, but others I might name, float, disembodied shadows. There are only a few novelists counting all races. They can be counted on fingers of the hand. Other novels are woven out of the floating, uncounted richly wasteful threads of the great. In the little popular story tellers of any day or race, there are few ideas, seldom profound seeing nor anything worth while. There are few originators. The works of Zola marked the death of the old novel. Zola is not using imagination, but the cold observation of the scientist. The scientific mind is dawning. The fear which was to make Maupassant mad is the hidden, dramatic _motif_ in his stories. It sat in his brain weaving patiently a Penelope-web, which, at last, smothered him. Maupassant was cynic, sensualist, and sumptuous master of the hidden soul. He touches the heart, the intellect, and the senses. _Timon le Magnifique_, (Max Daireaux), is a merited satire upon today, its playthings, its vain, but would-be serious toys, a clever synthesis, usually false, of how something may be made out of nothing. It is written in a cold, detached manner. But I should not be surprised if it were aimed at individuals of Paris. Cubist, futurist art, is skillfully enough interpreted. There is sincerity. Often there is perception. And there does not seem to be more malice than necessary. The temper of mind of the central personality is characterized by lukewarmness. The frail story gives opportunity to display reflections about life, which have, as motive persistent disillusion, and no small amount of scorn of that human animal, _man_. It is the tragic skepticism of a world, once eloquent, at fire heat, now tepid, among men who are weaker, who have fewer moments of grandeur. There were things said brilliantly but without emotion. Fine food, served cold. Take it or leave it, I do not care. If you can think, you will see I am right.