The omnibus for which I was waiting had not arrived, and I remained standing in front of a bookseller’s table where the newest publications were displayed. There in a row, side by side, lay _Flirt_, by Paul Hervieux; _L’Amour Artificiel_, by Jules Cazes; _L’Inutile Beauté_ and _Notre Cœur_, by Guy de Maupassant. They lay there like a continuation of my thoughts, confirming the truth of those observations of which I had as yet hardly convinced myself. I came nearer and examined _Notre Cœur_, and meditated on the new element which this book contains, and on the old element which caused it to run through three editions in a fortnight. Old mingled with new, boldness with conventionality, there you have the secret of the best and most critical of modern French romance writers, Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, and J. K. Huysmans, combined with that unsurpassable art of telling a story, that short, simple clearness of diction which renders Guy de Maupassant the greatest of the three. An open carriage came driving out of a side street. A pretty little woman in a light-coloured dress lay back with her head resting against the cushions as though exhausted with lassitude and ecstasy, and under her large, yellow straw hat, pressed against her face, was the face of a man dressed in black who was sitting beside her, kissing her like one possessed, without ever raising his head, oblivious of all else.... It looked like the old French love, the love of Heloïse and Manon Lescaut and George Sand. The French women of to-day have ceased to love like that; it is only paid love that loves in that fashion now. The ladies of the _bourgeoisie_ and the _hautes mondaines_ do not love any more, and cannot love any more. That is exactly what those three books, lying side by side on the bookseller’s table, have to tell: _Flirt_, _L’Amour Artificiel_, and _Notre Cœur_. II There is a strangely feeble pulsation in these three books, the voice is hushed, the colours broken. In reading them we seem to sit as on a rainy day in a finely furnished, richly perfumed drawing-room, before an open fire-place with a red glass screen, in which the flame flickers and is magnified, producing an effect that is wonderfully sleepifying and unreal. Yet in the midst of all this luxury we can hear the pattering of the rain outside, and our souls shiver as the artificial home comforts glide further and further away, and we are left surrounded by cold and emptiness.... The reason is that the women who live in this home have no warmth to give, their charms are restless and unsatisfying, their vanity is cruel and insatiable, they need men as they need the mirrors in their dressing-rooms, in order that they may be surrounded by them and able to see their own images reflected from every possible point of view.