What a perfect bourgeois is Mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice, his resignation, and his flatness! The Abbé Faujas is sinister and great—a true director! How well he manages the woman, how ably he makes himself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then in brutalising her!
As to her (Marthe), I cannot express to you how much I admire her, and the art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. Her hysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. How well you describe the breaking-up of the household!
I forgot to mention the Tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and the Abbé Bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility.
Provincial life, the little gardens, the Paloque family, the Rastoil, and the tennis-parties,—perfect, perfect!
Your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest words and phrases: “The tonsure like a cicatrice;” “I should like it better if he went to see the women;” “Mouret had stuffed the stove,” etc.
And the circle of youth—that was a true invention! I have noted many other things on the margins, viz.:
The physical details which Olympe gives regarding her brother; the strawberry; the mother of the abbé ready to become his pander; and her old trunk.
The harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poor sweetheart, because he detects thereon “an odour of woman.”
The description of the sacristy, with the name of M. Delangre on the wall—the whole phrase is a jewel.
But that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work, is the end! I know of nothing more powerful than that dénouement. Marthe’s visit at her uncle’s house, the return of Mouret, and his inspection of the house! One is seized by fear, as in the reading of some fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendous realism, the intensity of truth. The reader feels his head turned, in sympathy with Mouret.