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EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

Renee Mauperin

Edmond de Goncourt, born at Nancy on May 26, 1822, and his brother Jules, born in Paris on December 17, 1830, were primarily artists, who, while wandering over France, knapsack on back, discovered that their note-books also made them writers.  In 1850 they entered upon a literary partnership which only finished with the death of the younger brother on June 20, 1870.  Their earliest literary endeavours consisted of a series of historical studies dealing with the France of the second half of the eighteenth century.  It was not until 1860, with the publication of their first novel, “Les Hommes de Lettres,” that they discovered their true bent lay in fiction.  “Renee Mauperin,” which is, perhaps, the best known of their books, was published in 1864.  As a psychological analysis of contemporaneous youth, it is probably without its equal in French fiction.  “The plot of the story,” wrote Edmond de Goncourt, “is secondary.  The authors have rather preferred to paint the modern young woman as she is:  the product of the artistic and masculine system of education in force during the last thirty years.  We have also attempted to portray the modern young college man influenced by the republican ideas of the time since Louis Philippe.”  Edmond de Goncourt died on July 16, 1896.

I.—­A Wayward Girl

“Yes, I love riding and hunting.  I never miss a meet.  The wind blowing through one’s hair, the hounds, the horns, the trees flying past you—­it is intoxicating!  In those moments I feel brave.  Life has few other pleasures for a well-brought-up girl like me.  Everything is shocking!  I dance, yes ... but do you think I am allowed to talk to my partner?  Yes, no, no, yes—­that’s all!  That’s proper.  And I am allowed to read if the books and articles are proper.  I paint in oils, and that shocks my family; a young lady must not go beyond copying roses in water-colours.  Isn’t the current strong here?”

Renee Mauperin and young Reverchon, her parent’s guest, were swimming in the Seine.

“How beautiful!” exclaimed the girl, as she noticed the evening sun gilding the river and the banks where country and suburb merged into each other.

“You are an artist by nature, mademoiselle.”

“Ouf!” she exclaimed with a comic intonation.

A boat approached.

“Well, Renee, how is the water?” asked one of the rowers.

“Splendid, thanks, Denoisel,” she replied, as she mounted the steps lowered for her.

“I was almost getting nervous for you.  And Reverchon?  Ah, there he is!”

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Renee was the youngest daughter of a distinguished Napoleonic officer, who, at the time of the revolution of 1830, was elected deputy, and fought with all his ardour for the Liberal cause, but who subsequently, at the urging of his wife, a tyrannical conventional member of the bourgeois, retired from the world of politics and established a sugar refinery, so as to be able to provide suitably for his three children.