and wormy tales, all written in a colorless style and
containing not the faintest hint of an outlook on life nor an
appreciation of human nature. When I have waded through one of these
books its insipid descriptions and interminable harangues go instantly
out of my mind, and the only impression that remains is one of surprise
that a man can write three or four hundred pages when he has absolutely
nothing to reveal to us--nothing to say!"

"If it's all the same to you, Des Hermies, let's speak of something
else. We shall never agree on the subject of naturalism, as the very
mention of it makes you see red. What about this Mattei system of
medicine? Your globules and electric phials at least relieve a few
sufferers?"

"Hmph. A little better than the panaceas of the Codex, though I can't
say the effects are either lasting or sure. But, it serves, like
anything else. And now I must run along. The clock is striking ten and
your concierge is coming to put out the hall light. See you again very
soon, I hope. Good night."

When the door closed Durtal put some more coke in the grate and resumed
a comfortless train of thought aggravated by this too pertinent
discussion with his friend. For some months Durtal had been trying to
reassemble the fragments of a shattered literary theory which had once
seemed inexpugnable, and Des Hermies's opinions troubled him, in spite
of their exaggerated vehemence.

Certainly if naturalism confined one to monotonous studies of mediocre
persons and to interminable inventories of the objects in a drawing-room
or a landscape, an honest and clear-sighted artist would soon cease to
produce, and a less conscientious workman would be under the necessity
of repeating himself over and over again to the point of nausea.
Nevertheless Durtal could see no possibilities for the novelist outside
of naturalism. Were we to go back to the pyrotechnics of romanticism,
rewrite the lanuginous works of the Cherbuliez and Feuillet tribe, or,
worse yet, imitate the lachrymose storiettes of Theuriet and George
Sand? Then what was to be done? And Durtal, with desperate
determination, set to work sorting out a tangle of confused theories and
inchoate postulations. He made no headway. He felt but could not define.
He was afraid to. Definition of his present tendencies would plump him
back into his old dilemma.

"We must," he thought, "retain the documentary veracity, the precision
of detail, the compact and sinewy lan