Recent Fiction [pp. 99-109]

102 Recent Fiction. [Ju
ther... It was a female. The fur on the belly and an interest in real life as it actually lies thr
on the thighs was of sparkling whiteness. Several bing all about him that such fiction c
little spots like velvet made pretty bracelets round
T... ~~~~greatly prosper with him. Yet it is son
her paws. The muscular tail was also white, but it greatly prosper with him. Yet it is s
terminated with black rings. The fur of the back, thing gained if weariness with the near en
yellow or dead gold, and very soft and glossy, bore in aspiration for the distant; and on
the characteristic spots, shaded like a full blown rose, out of one's petty province, one may char
which distinguish the panther from all other species to go very far. It will certainly be a disti
of fels.. This terrible hostes, lay tranquilly snoring,
in an attitude as easy and graceful as that of a cat on an r s, not to speak of other intl
the cushion of an ottoman. Her bloody paws, sin- lectual centers, if beginning with Balzac
ewy and well-armned, were stretched beyond her head, English it should happen to end with Geo
which lay upon them; and from her muzzle project- Sand in the original French.
ed a few straight hairs, called whiskers, which shim- Gustave Flaubert has the great recomme
mered in the early light like silver wires... At
this instant the panther turned her head towards the dation of having been the close persol
Frenchman and looked at him fixedly, without mov- friend of George Sand and Turgenief. It
ing. The rigidity of her metallic eyes, and their in- impossible that a man could have been t
supportable clearness made the Provenyal shudder. without sensitiveness of spirit and finen
The beast moved towards him; he looked at her ca- of mental fibre. Yet he was evidently ca
ressingly, with a soothing glance by which he hoped
ble, at the same time, of that insensitiven
to( magnetize her. He let her come quite close to a th met ot sene
him before he stirred; then with a touch as gentle and and that mental obtuseness which Pa
loving as he might have used to a pretty woman, he sians alone seem able to possess in incong
slid his hand along her spine from the head to the ous union with theopposite qualities. Amo
flanks, scratching with his nails the flexible vertebra our own people, love of the bloody and t
which divide the yellow back of a panther. The
creature drew up her tail voluptuously, her eyes soft- ghoulsh s the proper trat of the vulgar; an
ened, and when for the third time the Frenchman if the brutal taste creeps up higher in the
bestowed this self-interested caress, she gave vent to cial strata than one might suppose, it is co
a purr like that with which a cat expresses pleasure; ertly and shamefacedly. The translator
but it issued from a throat so deep and powerful that Salanmb6 says that " Zola and the men of
the sound echoed through the grotto like the last
......, t~~~~~ype... have gone to an extreme at whJ
chlords of an organ rolling along the roof of a church." t e s hi gnt an hic
Flaubert's wisdom, his dignity, and his den
The sudden birth of an interest in Balzac tion to literature would never have permit
in this country is symptomatic of several him to arrive. His disdain for the conve
things. In the first place, like the recent tional restriction of the cold and classi
interest in Russian literature, it denotes a school was not so great as to lead him to
commendable aspiration to reach out beyond decencies, or to pervert his imaginatio
our own provincial horizon, and to learn But this same translator describes Salamr
what it is that other races and temperaments as "like an exquisite piece of Greek scu
admire Furthermore, it indicates a partial ture, mighty, yet too ethereal in its beat