I believe, then, that if one seeks to know the world exactly as it is, the theatre does not furnish the means whereby one can pursue the study.  A far better opportunity for knowing the private life of a people is available through the medium of its great novels.  The novelist deals with each person as an individual.  He speaks to his reader at an hour when the mind is disengaged from worldly affairs, and he can add without restraint every detail that seems needful to him to complete the rounding of his story.  He can return at will, should he choose, to the source of the plot he is unfolding, in order that his reader may better understand him; he can emphasize and dwell upon those details which an audience in a theatre will not allow.

The reader, being at leisure, feels no impatience, for he knows that he can at any time lay down or take up the book.  It is the consciousness of this privilege that gives him patience, should he encounter a dull page here or there.  He may hasten or delay his reading, according to the interest he takes in his romance-nay, more, he can return to the earlier pages, should he need to do so, for a better comprehension of some obscure point.  In proportion as he is attracted and interested by the romance, and also in the degree of concentration with which he reads it, does he grasp better the subtleties of the narrative.  No shade of character drawing escapes him.  He realizes, with keener appreciation, the most delicate of human moods, and the novelist is not compelled to introduce the characters to him, one by one, distinguishing them only by the most general characteristics, but can describe each of those little individual idiosyncrasies that contribute to the sum total of a living personality.

When I add that the dramatic author is always to a certain extent a slave to the public, and must ever seek to please the passing taste of his time, it will be recognized that he is often, alas! compelled to sacrifice his artistic leanings to popular caprice-that is, if he has the natural desire that his generation should applaud him.

As a rule, with the theatre-going masses, one person follows the fads or fancies of others, and individual judgments are too apt to be irresistibly swayed by current opinion.  But the novelist, entirely independent of his reader, is not compelled to conform himself to the opinion of any person, or to submit to his caprices.  He is absolutely free to picture society as he sees it, and we therefore can have more confidence in his descriptions of the customs and characters of the day.

It is precisely this view of the case that the editor of the series has taken, and herein is the raison d’etre of this collection of great French romances.  The choice was not easy to make.  That form of literature called the romance abounds with us.  France has always loved it, for French writers exhibit a curiosity—­and I may say an indiscretion—­that is almost charming in the study of customs and morals at large; a quality that induces them to talk freely of themselves and of their neighbors, and to set forth fearlessly both the good and the bad in human nature.  In this fascinating phase of literature, France never has produced greater examples than of late years.