suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a woman of refinement.  But while in Balzac’s pages what emerges is the concrete vision of provincial life down to the last pimple on the nose of the lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of a surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero’s mind.  In fact, Beyle’s method is the classical method—­the method of selection, of omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central impression of supreme reality.  Zola criticises him for disregarding ’le milieu.’

Il y a [he says] un episode celebre dans ‘Le Rouge et Le Noir,’ la scene ou Julien, assis un soir a cote de Mme. de Renal, sous les branches noires d’un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la main, pendant qu’elle cause avec Mme. Derville.  C’est un petit drame muet d’une grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analyse merveilleusement les etats d’ame de ses deux personnages.  Or, le milieu n’apparait pas une seule fois.  Nous pourrions etre n’importe ou dans n’importe quelles conditions, la scene resterait la meme pourvu qu’il fit noir ...  Donnez l’episode a un ecrivain pour qui les milieux existent, et dans la defaite de cette femme, il fera entrer la nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptes molles.  Et cet ecrivain sera dans la verite, son tableau sera plus complet.

More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing?  Zola, with his statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact.  He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol ‘nuit,’ to suggest the ‘milieu’ at once to the reader’s imagination.  Everybody knows all about the night’s accessories—­’ses odeurs, ses voix, ses voluptes molles’; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once in a way, an elaborate expatiation upon them!  And Beyle is perpetually evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way.  ’Comme il insiste peu!’ as M. Gide exclaims.  Perhaps the best test of a man’s intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.  Beyle knew this, and his novels are full of passages which read like nothing so much as extraordinarily able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost.

It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye for detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was of the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling vividness, when he wished.  But he very rarely did wish:  it was apt to involve a tiresome insistence.  In his narratives he is like a brilliant talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, taking for granted the intelligence of his