There is one thing that is known only to ourselves, and that is that woman’s most inexorable task-master is woman, as in this instance, when the otherwise irreproachable mother torments her dearly-loved child. If only on account of this one novel, Barbey may be said to belong to the future, when there will exist a psychology of man and woman and human conditions, of which the germs are only just beginning to show themselves in him and in one or two others. But what of his Catholicism? He lets the monk die after having undergone a severe penance in a Trappist monastery, after which he receives absolution and is duly reconciled with Heaven. Everything that has broken with nature can be reconciled in nature, because all life is only a fragment and a groping in the darkness, and in the deepest sense there exists no immutable link between cause and effect, crime and punishment. The innocent must suffer more than human martyrdom, while the guilty escapes with an insignificant, but as he supposes, just penance. Barbey’s Catholicism is that great, deep, intuitive understanding that fathoms all humanity. _How do we Stand?_ In this book I have tried to draw a characteristic sketch of the eight most remarkable heads among the legion of authors belonging to the nineteenth century. I have not stopped to make any literary estimates, as these are of no lasting importance, because they vary with the change of standards. What I have done is to uncover and expose to view the subject-matter of their productions. I have tried to drag forward the personality of the author, in order that the man may be measured by his work, and the work by the man; for a man’s work is no fortuitous incident. The man and his work are one; the work of a manly man is man’s work, the work of an effeminate man is fancy work, and the work of a half man is half work. Now I ask: What is it that we women have to demand from the men of this century who have offered to be our guides, teachers, deliverers, cavaliers and religious teachers? And this is our reply: We ask that they should be men, nothing more. The more manly they are, the more womanly we shall be--preaching and education, rivalry and competition, boasting and flattery are all of no good, only the manly man can redeem the womanly in woman; all else is make-believe.