‘Le Disciple’ and ‘Cosmopolis’ are certainly notable books.  The latter marks the cardinal point in Bourget’s fiction.  Up to that time he had seen environment more than characters; here the dominant interest is psychic, and, from this point on, his characters become more and more like Stendhal’s, “different from normal clay.”  Cosmopolis is perfectly charming.  Bourget is, indeed, the past-master of “psychological” fiction.

To sum up:  Bourget is in the realm of fiction what Frederic Amiel is in the realm of thinkers and philosophers—­a subtle, ingenious, highly gifted student of his time.  With a wonderful dexterity of pen, a very acute, almost womanly intuition, and a rare diffusion of grace about all his writings, it is probable that Bourget will remain less known as a critic than as a romancer.  Though he neither feels like Loti nor sees like Maupassant—­he reflects.

                  JulesLemaitre
               de l’Academie Francaise.

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

I send you, my dear Primoli, from beyond the Alps, the romance of international life, begun in Italy almost under your eyes, to which I have given for a frame that ancient and noble Rome of which you are so ardent an admirer.

To be sure, the drama of passion which this book depicts has no particularly Roman features, and nothing was farther from my thoughts than to trace a picture of the society so local, so traditional, which exists between the Quirinal and the Vatican.  The drama is not even Italian, for the scene might have been laid, with as much truth, at Venice, Florence, Nice, St. Moritz, even Paris or London, the various cities which are like quarters scattered over Europe of the fluctuating ‘Cosmopolis,’ christened by Beyle:  ‘Vengo adesso da Cosmopoli’.  It is the contrast between the rather incoherent ways of the rovers of high life and the character of perennity impressed everywhere in the great city of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose the spot where even the corners speak of a secular past, there to evoke some representatives of the most modern, as well as the most arbitrary and the most momentary, life.  You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it.  That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character.  It is composed of exceptions and of singularities.  We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land.  It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now in the case of a business man who desires to escape the consequences of some scandalous error; now in the case of a man of pleasure in search of new