Renée Mauperin

E-text prepared by Camille François, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
The French Classical Romances Complete in Twenty Crown Octavo Volumes
Editor-in-Chief EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.
With Critical Introductions and Interpretative Essays by
HENRY JAMES PROF. RICHARD BURTON HENRY HARLAND ANDREW LANG PROF. F. C. DE SUMICHRAST THE EARL OF CREWE HIS EXCELLENCY M. CAMBON PROF. WM. P. TRENT ARTHUR SYMONS MAURICE HEWLETT DR. JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY RICHARD MANSFIELD BOOTH TARKINGTON DR. RICHARD GARNETT PROF. WILLIAM M. SLOANE JOHN OLIVER HOBBES
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ALYS HALLARD
WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION BY JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY
A FRONTISPIECE AND NUMEROUS OTHER PORTRAITS WITH DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY OCTAVE UZANNE
P. F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1902 BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY
The partnership of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is probably the most curious and perfect example of collaboration recorded in literary history. The brothers worked together for twenty-two years, and the amalgam of their diverse talents was so complete that, were it not for the information given by the survivor, it would be difficult to guess what each brought to the work which bears their names. Even in the light of these confidences, it is no easy matter to attempt to separate or disengage their literary personalities. The two are practically one. Jamais âme pareille n'a été mise en deux corps. This testimony is their own, and their testimony is true. The result is the more perplexing when we remember that these two brothers were, so to say, men of different races. The elder was a German from Lorraine, the younger was an inveterate Latin Parisian: the most absolute difference of temperaments, tastes, and characters—and absolutely the same ideas, the same personal likes and dislikes, the same intellectual vision. There may be, as there probably always will be, two opinions as to the value of their writings; there can be no difference of view concerning their intense devotion to literature, their unhesitating rejection of all that might distract them from their vocation. They spent a small fortune in collecting materials for works that were not to find two hundred readers; they passed months, and more months, in tedious researches the results of which were condensed into a single page; they resigned most of life's pleasures and all its joys to dedicate themselves totally to the office of their election. So they lived—toiling, endeavouring, undismayed, confident in their integrity and genius, unrewarded by one accepted triumph, uncheered by a single frank success or even by any considerable recognition. The younger Goncourt died of his failure before he was forty; the elder underwent almost the same monotony of defeat during nearly thirty years of life that remained to him. But both continued undaunted, and, if we consider what manner of men they were and how dear fame was to them, the constancy of their ambition becomes all the more admirable.