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playwright as she wanted to go on the stage. Micheline has been informed by friends, and "by the sure instinct that never deceives", of the misconduct of the man whom she still loves. It takes her long, though, to realize the treason of Aimée. She tries first to pretend to herself that she does not care about it. Her pride forbids her to admit that she is jealous. She represses her own acute pain. But she feels that she cannot bear the suffering alone, and she writes to her cousin, Lucien Hevelot, who has become an able engineer, now making a fortune in Egypt, to come to her. On receiving her note, Lucien leaves everything and sails for France.

However Micheline does not wait for him in Paris, and, as she learns that her husband, under pretense of rehearsals of a new play, is living in Brussels, at the same hotel with Aimée, she wants to see for herself what is going on between them and she goes to Belgium.

At

The same passion which once armed the hand of her father revives in her when she witnesses her husband gayly making ready for a drive and kissing Aimée as she enters the car. that moment, Micheline draws the pistol hidden in her hand-bag. But, before she has pulled the trigger, the thought of the terrible, always living remorse of her father after his crime, stops her hand. She lets the couple go unharmed. She immediately flies to Bruges where she refuses to meet her cousin, the good Hevelot who has followed her there, never doubting that he would persuade her to marry him at the end. She retires to the country place where she grew up, and after some months in the healthy atmosphere of her youth, she decides that she will forgive but not forget. Meanwhile her frivolous husband continues his gay life in Paris; the silly Lucien is to marry the adventuress Aimée, who has succeeded in persuading him that she is a pure, innocent girl who has been shamefully treated by Micheline and slandered by Bernard, and Micheline consoles herself and with the approaching birth of her baby finds a new reason for living.

Of course this too brief analysis can give no idea of the charm which runs through these pages. The plot, thus reduced, will seem to be but a new version of an age-old story wonderfully told, of an attractive, complex, variegated, feminine character,

surrounded by the three varieties of male brutality which are called selfishness, frivolity and honest stupidity.

What holds the interest of the reader is precisely what cannot be analyzed: the seduction of the thought and of its expression, of a philosophy, that flashes continuously through the book making the reading an uninterrupted delight of the mind.

The strange book entitled Sous le Soleil de Satan, which is the first work of its young author, Georges Bernanos, belongs to the modern school, and accordingly shows a complete disdain for the three factors which were once considered indispensable to the art of a novelist; composition, unity of the plot, and clearness of expression. In spite of this fault Sous le Soleil de Satan was the success of the season and some critics went so far as to compare Mr. G. Bernanos's talent to the genius of Balzac.

In fact the influences mostly felt at reading these pages is not so much that of Balzac as those of Dostoievski and Paul Claudel. As in the work of this last writer, religious fear is the real subject. From the Russian genius, the author may have borrowed the methods for revealing the relentless and obscure work of the conscience in the most terrible as well as under the very ordinary circumstances of life.

There are two quite different books, with apparently no connection between them, in Sous le Soleil de Satan. Satan, if it can be said so, is the only point of contact between the two and the center of the book.

In the first part, or prologue, is told the story of the attractive but ill-natured daughter of a wealthy brewer, Germaine Malorthy, who, being only sixteen, has misconducted herself first with a middle-aged and poor nobleman whom she shoots after he has refused to marry her; second with a radical and somewhat repugnant doctor, politician and Member of Parliament, upon whom she tries to impose the paternity of her unborn child so that he, fearing the consequences, would deliver her before the child be born. As he refuses, she becomes insane.

The second part shows the sufferings and tribulations of a very humble and simple-minded priest, Father Donissan. despised and ridiculed by his colleagues, submitting himself to all kinds of penances and macerations, suspicious even to his

parishioners, and who proves to be a Saint. Walking one night on a road, Father Donissan loses his way and meets "a black, jovial little walker", who is none other than Satan. After many successive extremely pathetic-attacks by tricks, threats, sarcasms, temptations, the Sinister Angel finally leaves the priest inanimate on the road.

This scene certainly one of the most daring and, for the author, most difficult to deal with-is the center of interest of the book. Satan here has nothing of the romantic and conventional Mephisto of Dr. Faust. He is near to humanity and, like the Devil in the old Mysteries of the Middle Age, really a part of the human soul. He is both real and supernatural and his conflict with the poor Father Donissan makes us witness the tragic fight between the two eternally opposed principles, the grandeur and the vileness, of humanity.

A quarryman finds the priest, revives him, and, while they are both walking, a few moments later, on the road, a new phenomenon takes place. Father Donissan sees, with his eyes of flesh, what is hidden to the most subtle intuition, the soul and conscience of the man who accompanies him. And this soul fills his own soul with respect and love. It is a "simple, attentive, every day, taleless soul, busy with poor cares. But a sovereign humility, like a heavenly light, soaking it in its reflection. . .

Because he has seen this grandeur in the humblest human being, and because he has now the power to see "through the flesh and bodies", Father Donissan will now reveal to all men and women the divine principle which resides in them-and which they themselves ignore. Meeting Germaine Malorthy the murderess, now restored to health, at the outskirts of his village, he immediately attemps to discover to her the antecedents, unknown to her, which are really responsible for her crimes: then he tries to make her see the hidden beauty of her soul. After a fight between her pride and her conscience, now true and unveiled, the girl is driven by "the Enemy" to commit suicide. But before she dies, she calls for Father Donissan, who against the will of the parents and the abuse of all the village, carries the dying girl to the church and makes her a convert.

Father Donissan continues pursuing the Enemy, in his fellow men and in himself, while his reputation is growing, until one day, after he has yielded to the supplications of a mother and has vainly tried to revive her dead child, he believes that he has succumbed to the temptation of Satan. He retires to his church and dies from a cardiac attack in his confessional.

Many passages of this book remain obscure. Some are too long. But the impression which lingers after reading it is one of a poignancy which marks only a masterpiece.

The French Academy has just awarded its yearly and much envied Great Prize of Literature to Mr. François Mauriac for his novel Le Désert de l'Amour, or rather for all his literary work, which is already voluminous. This novel places the author among the most prominent writers of the modern school and, like Sous le Soleil de Satan, proceeds from the religious idea. Like Mr. Bernanos, too, Mr. Mauriac is both a mystic and a realist.

The Désert de l'Amour shows that love may mark the whole life of a young man if he refuses to see its real meaning and turn it for good. Raymond Courréges, when only seventeen, falls in love with a "butterfly" of society, whom his own father passionately loves. But the girl rejects both. Raymond breaks off with his parents and goes astray. After twenty years he meets simultaneously his father and the woman whom he has never forgotten. She is married and his father has returned to his family life. Raymond alone, because of his obstinacy in his miserable passion, continues leading a disorderly, aimless and more and more degrading life.

Mr. Mauriac has written somewhere:

The inner drama of a man who can tame his heart-a drama which is shown neither in words nor in acts-who can describe it? What artist would dare to imagine the progresses and ruses of God's mercy, mysterious protagonist! It is our servitude and our misery that we can depict without a lie only the passions!

However we have the impression, when reading the books of Mr. Mauriac, that the author achieved more than once that most difficult work.

Paris, 1926.

GEORGES LECHARTIER.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

DECEMBER-JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1926–1927

FOREWORD

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AN institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, wrote Emerson.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW is an institution which is the lengthened shadow of its long line of editors and contributors. Its annals reach back to the early days of the Republic, though its inception followed briefly the closing of the last war between the English speaking nations of the earth.

The barriers of distance and slow communication of a century ago have been broken. Today the future of the world hangs upon the spirit moving the Anglo-Saxon race. To foster and cherish relations of comity, reserving freedom "to point out errors if they be found errors", and accepting in good part constructive, informed and honest criticism, will be our interpretation of the phrase which has been carried upon the title page and cover of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for generations.

Though of supreme value in fixing the tone of THE REVIEW, it is not needful here to call the roll of an earlier epoch, containing the great names of the literary world found within its pages. It will be our endeavor to maintain the honorable traditions impressed upon THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW through its life of one hundred and twelve years, to protect its literary destinies,

Copyright, 1926, by North American Review Corporation. All rights reserved.

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