Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

36

NOTES ON NOVELISTS

had formerly arrayed his victorious fleet. (I say " poetically "
on purpose to give him the just benefit of all the beauty of his
power.) The process of the disaster, so full of the effect,
though so without the intention, of perversity, is difficult to
trace in a few words; it may best be indicated by an example
or two of its action.
The example that perhaps most comes home to me is again
connected with a personal reminiscence. In the course of some
talk that I had with him during his first visit to England I
happened to ask him what opportunity to travel (if any) his
immense application had ever left him, and whether in particular he had been able to see Italy, a country from which I
had either just returned or which I was luckily-not having
the Natural History of a Family on my hands-about to revisit.
" All I've done, alas," he replied, " was, the other year, in the
course of a little journey to the south, to my own pays-all that
has been possible was then to make a little dash as far as Genoa,
a matter of only a few days." " Le Docteur Pascal," the conclusion of Les Rougon-Macquart, had appeared shortly before,
and it further befell that I asked him what plans he had for the
future, now that, still dans la force de l'&ge, he had so cleared
the ground. I shall never forget the fine promptitude of his
answer- " Oh, I shall begin at once Les Trois Villes." " And
which cities are they to be e " The reply was finer still"Lourdes, Paris, Rome."
It was splendid for confidence and cheer, but it left me, I
fear, more or less gaping, and it was to give me afterwards the
key, critically speaking, to many a mystery. It struck me as
breathing to an almost tragic degree the fatuity of those in
whom the gods stimulate that vice to their ruin. He was an
honest man-he had always bristled with it at every pore;
but no artistic reverse was inconceivable for an adventurer who,
stating in one breath that his knowledge of Italy consisted of a
few days spent at Genoa, was ready to declare in the next that
he had planned, on a scale, a picture of Rome. It flooded his