justly proud.  Few, if any, however, will justify him in rating it superior to Moliere’s Tartuffe.[86] Throughout her trials and temptations Marianne preserves her innocence and her hand for M. de Valville, a handsome and wealthy young aristocrat, who is really enamoured of Marianne, despite certain infidelities of which he is guilty, and which Marianne pardons with the same forbearing charity and kindly philosophy that characterize our author himself.[87]

The story of Marianne is interesting, though never of so absorbing an interest as to hold the reader’s attention more closely than was held that of the writer himself.  It is a book to be read by piecemeal, and it may be laid down at any time.  Indeed, one is not surprised, nor much distressed, when the author fails to grasp again his fallen pen after the eleventh part.  I would not in any way detract from the literary value of a work which, as even critical La Harpe declares, “assures him one of the first places among French novelists;"[88] but the interest inspired by Marianne is of much the same sort as that inspired by the Spectateur.  The thread of the story serves merely to join the analyses of character, moral reflections, and digressions of various kinds which abound.  The style is conversational, very similar to that of his journals.

Taken as a whole it may be considered as a psychological study of a young girl’s heart, as viewed by herself in maturer years.  I am half inclined to say the heart of a coquette, for Marianne has much of the coquette in her nature, but she has, too, the nobler qualities of heart and mind.  She is an epitome, in short, of the feminine side of Marivaux.

One of the chief faults of the author’s style is apparent in Marianne to a degree unparalleled by most of his other writings, and that is the fault of over-elaborate description or definition.  His subtle mind could perceive so many delicate shades of character, which the less cultivated eye could not detect, that, by elaborating thereupon and endeavoring to disclose to others what he saw, he seemed to overdefine, or even to repeat himself, and sometimes became monotonous.  His was the delicate ear of the musical prodigy, capable of grasping half-tones quite beyond the range of the normal ear, and his attempt to cause them to be heard and appreciated by his coarser fellows brought him only criticism and abuse.  He realized at times his own powerlessness to convey in words all that he felt, and once said:  “On ne saurait rendre en entier ce que sont les personnes; du moins cela ne me serait pas possible; je connais bien mieux celles avec qui je vis, que je ne les definirais; il y a des choses en elles que je ne saisis point assez pour les dire, et que je n’apercois que pour moi, et non pas pour les autres:  ou, si je les disais je les dirais mal:  ce sont des objets de sentiment si compliques, et d’une nettete si delicate, qu’ils se brouillent des que ma reflexion s’en