Woman is for Barbey the tragic, by reason of her inevitable destiny. Woman’s age is more sharply defined than man’s; her youth is more limited. She is unconscious of her own being, and when she realises it, she also realises her destiny. She stands so strong and fearless beneath the pressure of nature, that man cannot think of it without a shudder of intense compassion like that which inspired the deepest of Barbey’s stories, called by him _Une Histoire Sans Nom_. The subject of this extraordinary story is a woman who becomes a mother without wishing, without even knowing it. Kleist has described a case somewhat similar in one of his novels, only there the woman is experienced and understands what has happened. Kleist shows little sympathy in his development of the plot, which he describes from the man’s point of view, and the novel ends happily; Barbey, on the contrary, lays a peculiar stress on the tragic element, on the woman’s passiveness,--the reason of her eternal subjection to man--which renders her unable to do anything towards the furtherance or the hindrance of her inevitable destiny. An innocent young girl of sixteen lives alone in the old family mansion with her mother, by whom she is sternly watched, and where no one is admitted save a missionary preacher of the strictest order who is going his round from church to church. This unsuspecting child has begun to wander in her sleep without attracting the notice either of her mother or the maid, and one night, while she is in a somnambulant condition, the monk meets her on the doorstep and through him she becomes a mother. The following day he goes off on his mission, and both mother and daughter congratulate themselves that the melancholy man has departed. Time passes, until there is no longer any doubt, and the mother begins to torture the daughter, determined to discover how and through whom this can have occurred; the miserable child is terrified and can explain nothing. In this dreadful condition, under circumstances which woman only of all creatures of the earth has to endure, the poor girl’s mind undergoes a terrible trial which results in idiotcy. Barbey’s descriptions are physical rather than psychical, and only women can judge of the truth of his psychological divinations, and judge--not with words, but with the quivering of their nervous fibres. It relates not to this one case only, but to thousands of other cases, which to a man would appear quite human and endurable,--cases, not of violence, but merely of error and self-deception.