omadic--the characters are artistes in a travelling show. This
at once suggests comparison with M. Edmond de Goncourt's _Les Freres
Zemganno_; or rather a contrast: for the two stories, conceived in
very similar surroundings, differ in at least two vital respects.

Compared with "Les Freres Zemganno."

For what, in short, is the story of _Les Freres Zemganno_? Two
brothers, Gianni and Nello, tumblers in a show that travels round the
village fairs and small country towns of France, are seized with an
ambition to excel in their calling. They make their way to England,
where they spend some years clowning in various circuses. Then they
return to make their _debut_ in Paris. Gianni has invented at length a
trick act, a feat that will make the brothers famous. They are
performing it for the first time in public, when a circus girl, who
has a spite against Nello, causes him to fall and break both his legs.
He can perform no more: and henceforward, as he watches his brother
performing, a strange jealousy awakes and grows in him, causing him
agony whenever Gianni touches a trapeze. Gianni discovers this and
renounces his art.

Now here in the first place it is to be noted that the whole story
depends upon the circus profession, and the brothers' love for it and
desire to excel in it. The catastrophe; Nello's jealousy; Gianni's
self-sacrifice; are inseparable from the atmosphere of the book. The
catastrophe is a professional catastrophe; the jealousy a professional
jealousy; the sacrifice a sacrifice of a profession. And in the second
place we know, even if we had not his own word for it, that M. de
Goncourt--contrary to his habit--deliberately etherealized the
atmosphere of the circus-ring and idealized the surroundings. He calls
his tale an essay in poetic realism, "Je me suis trouve dans une de
ces heures de la vie, vieillissantes, maladives, laches devant le
travail poignant et angoisseux de mes autres livres, en un etat de
l'ame ou la verite trop vraie m'etait antipathique a moi aussi!--et
j'ai fait cette fois de l'imagination dans du reve mele a du
souvenir." We know from the Goncourt Journals exactly what is meant by
"du souvenir." We know that M. Edmond de Goncourt is but translating
into the language of the circus-ring and symbolizing in the story of
Gianni and Nello the story of his own literary collaboration with his
brother Jules--a collaboration of quite singular intimacy, that ceased
only with Jules's death in