All these forces, and others less ponderable, have fused into what I may term the nineteenth century French spirit, as illustrated and measurably interpreted by the French short-story.
Three sub-tones of this French symphony, to use a trope, are emotional nature, passion for military glory, and religious sentiment. Emotional endowment the French, in common with other Latin races, possess—a fact which calls for no comment. The military spirit, chastened by the experiences of the Franco-Prussian War, has been decreasingly in evidence during the last four decades, yet indications are not wanting that the fire burns none the less vitally because smothered by practicalities. The war-theme constantly recurs in the short-story, and “glory” is still dear to every Frenchman. As for the third element, religion, the evidence is more contradictory. France has always felt a deep undercurrent of religious feeling. Her public worship has perpetuated this ideal in churches many and noble, as well as in a pomp of ceremonial peculiarly suited to an artistic Latin people. But I should seek for the surest proof of the religious spirit not so much in these signs as in the life of the provinces, the influence of the church there, and their constant manifestations of religious faith. The clerical crisis was not confined to the great cities, so that the last twenty years has shown marked changes in public sentiment, but there are potent signs of a reaction toward free religious life, for France will be church-loving. The typical abbé lives in her fiction as beautifully as does the soldier.
And so I have ventured to name emotion, war, and religion as three significant sub-tones of French life. But there are five other phases of the French spirit which show out in the short-story, though they do not seem to me so fundamental. Of these now a few words.
We find, first, volatile sentiment, as shown in quick changes of attitude, sudden concentrations, extremes of gayety and depression, lively speech, and a general habit of regarding a tempest in a teapot as a serious crisis, with now and then a surprising way of smiling away a real tragedy. There is much of the child-nature here, and therefore the loving, the lovable, and the sweet.
Love of hearth is another French characteristic, the mistresses and assignations, true and fictive, to the contrary notwithstanding. The typical homes of any nation are found less in its cities than in its smaller centers; and so it is in France, for the bulk of high-grade fiction is pretty certain to be a safe index of public feeling.
A third characteristic is the unique attitude of the French toward womanhood. The mother, in France, is honored above belief; the wife somewhat less so; the young girl knows nothing, and is therefore merely amusing; the woman of easy morals occupies a large place because she must be reckoned with as a recognized factor. The whole attitude of France toward its womanhood is compounded of sentiment, lightness, and cynicism. Less independent than the American woman, less free than the English, less domestic than the German, the French woman is more a being to charm man than a companion for him. And so runs the current of the short-story, side by side with the sweep of life.
A fourth trait in the French short-story is a minute, detached observation, tinged with cynicism—the inevitable result of realism. It is for this reason that so many French short-stories seem unsympathetic. Scientific observation—really, a German trait—is likely to be cold when applied to tumults of the soul! And the writer who as a moral vivisectionist relentlessly applies the scalpel runs the risk of becoming blasé, not to say cruel. He is more concerned with the truth of facts than with extracting the truth from facts.
A final characteristic is artistry. To do a short-story with fineness, deftness, perfection of detail, and beauty of finish; to cut an intaglio, so to say, to paint a miniature, to inlay a jewel—that is the Frenchman’s conception of the artistic in brief fiction, and in that he is unsurpassed.
Here, then, are some qualities of the French spirit as evidenced in the short-story of the period—qualities fundamental and in the phase, but patent, as it seems to me, in a large proportion of the entire short-story product.
Viewing the subject generally, as one must in attempting a survey of so varied a field as the last eighty years in French fiction, there are several periods fairly well-defined in the movement of the short-story. As a differentiated type the short-story appeared at a time when classical ideals of form had broken down and moral ideals also had quite fallen. For three decades, precise, logical prose had been as cheerfully scouted as were old-fashioned swaddling-clothes of personal virtue. For a period equally long, “Freedom” had been the sweet word every one uttered with unction. Rousseau had laid his blade to the root of the existing order; Chateaubriand had broken loose from the fetters of old literary forms; Madame de Staël had coined the word “romanticism” with a new image and a superscription enchanting to the mind agitated by the sudden opening of the unknown; the success of French arms abroad had let in a flood of new ideas—the reign of romance was undisputed. Color, movement, dreams, enthusiasm—all these prose began to borrow from poetry. Charles Emmaniel Nodier—a classicist in form, but a romanticist in spirit—began his florid tales, while Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset applied their poetic skill to the telling of prose stories.