Maupassant’s renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted.  It is not difficult to perceive why.  Maupassant is an intensely national writer.  He is so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness, in his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has been accepted by his countrymen without having had to pay the tribute of flattery either to the nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division of the nation.  The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands excused from the duty of patriotic posturing.  He is a Frenchman of Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to be universally comprehensible.  What is wanting to his universal success is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness.  He neglects to qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew paper roses over the tombs.  The disregard of these common decencies lays him open to the charges of cruelty, cynicism, hardness.  And yet it can be safely affirmed that this man wrote from the fulness of a compassionate heart.  He is merciless and yet gentle with his mankind; he does not rail at their prudent fears and their small artifices; he does not despise their labours.  It seems to me that he looks with an eye of profound pity upon their troubles, deceptions and misery.  But he looks at them all.  He sees—­and does not turn away his head.  As a matter of fact he is courageous.

Courage and justice are not popular virtues.  The practice of strict justice is shocking to the multitude who always (perhaps from an obscure sense of guilt) attach to it the meaning of mercy.  In the majority of us, who want to be left alone with our illusions, courage inspires a vague alarm.  This is what is felt about Maupassant.  His qualities, to use the charming and popular phrase, are not lovable.  Courage being a force will not masquerade in the robes of affected delicacy and restraint.  But if his courage is not of a chivalrous stamp, it cannot be denied that it is never brutal for the sake of effect.  The writer of these few reflections, inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with the work of the man, has been struck by the appreciation of Maupassant manifested by many women gifted with tenderness and intelligence.  Their more delicate and audacious souls are good judges of courage.  Their finer penetration has discovered his genuine masculinity without display, his virility without a pose.  They have discerned in his faithful dealings with the world that enterprising and fearless temperament, poor in ideas but rich in power, which appeals most to the feminine mind.

It cannot be denied that he thinks very little.  In him extreme energy of perception achieves great results, as in men of action the energy of force and desire.  His view of intellectual problems is perhaps more simple than their nature warrants; still a man who has written Yvette cannot be accused of want of subtlety.  But one cannot insist enough upon this, that his subtlety, his humour, his grimness, though no doubt they are his own, are never presented otherwise but as belonging to our life, as found in nature, whose beauties and cruelties alike breathe the spirit of serene unconsciousness.