life itself: that is what the Goncourts have done. And it is through
this conception of history that they have found their way to that new
conception of the novel which has revolutionised the entire art of
fiction.

_Aujourd'hui_, they wrote, in 1864, in the preface to _Germinie
Lacerteux_, _que le Roman s'elargit et grandit, qu'il commence a etre la
grande forme serieuse, passionnee, vivante, de l'etude litteraire et de
l'enquete sociale, qu'il devient, par l'analyse et par la recherche
psychologique, l'Histoire morale contemporaine, aujourd'hui que le Roman
s'est impose les etudes et les devoirs de la science, il pent en
revendiquer les libertes et les franchises_. _Le public aime les romans
faux_, is another brave declaration in the same preface; _ce roman est
un roman vrai_. But what, precisely, is it that the Goncourts understood
by _un roman vrai_? The old notion of the novel was that it should be an
entertaining record of incidents or adventures told for their own sake;
a plain, straightforward narrative of facts, the aim being to produce as
nearly as possible an effect of continuity, of nothing having been
omitted, the statement, so to speak, of a witness on oath; in a word, it
is the same as the old notion of history, _drame ou geste_. That is not
how the Goncourts apprehend life, or how they conceive it should be
rendered. As in the study of history they seek mainly the _inedit_,
caring only to record that, so it is the _inedit_ of life that they
conceive to be the main concern, the real 'inner history.' And for them
the _inedit_ of life consists in the noting of the sensations; it is of
the sensations that they have resolved to be the historians; not of
action, nor of emotion, properly speaking, nor of moral conceptions, but
of an inner life which is all made up of the perceptions of the senses.
It is scarcely too paradoxical to say that they are psychologists for
whom the soul does not exist. One thing, they know, exists: the
sensation flashed through the brain, the image on the mental retina.
Having found that, they bodily omit all the rest as of no importance,
trusting to their instinct of selection, of retaining all that really
matters. It is the painter's method, a selection made almost visually;
the method of the painter who accumulates detail on detail, in his
patient, many-sided observation of his subject, and then omits
everything which is not an essential part of the _ensemble_ which he
sees. Thus t