always a world in which we are magnetized to feel at
home. It is consistent with its own amazing laws; the laws of the
incredible Balzacian genius. Profoundly moral in its basic tendency,
the "Human Comedy" seems to point, in its philosophical undercurrent,
at the permanent need in our wayward and childish emotionalism, for
wise and master-guides, both in the sphere of religion and in the
sphere of politics.

32. GUY DE MAUPASSANT. LE MAISON TELLIER. MADAME TELLIER'S
ESTABLISHMENT. _Any translation, preferably not one bound in paper or
in an "Edition de Luxe."_

Guy de Maupassant's short stories remain, with those of Henry James
and Joseph Conrad, the very best of their kind. After "Madame
Tellier's Establishment" perhaps the stories called respectively "A
Farm Girl" and "Love" are the best he wrote.

He has the eternal excellencies of savage humanity, savage sincerity,
and savage brevity. His pessimism is deep, absolute, unshaken;--and
the world, as we know it, deserves what he gives it of sensualized
literary reactions, each one like the falling thud of the blade of a
murderous axe.

His racking, scooping, combing insight, into the recesses of man's
natural appetites will never be surpassed. How under the glance of his
Norman anger, all manner of pretty subterfuges fade away; and "the
real thing" stands out, as Nature and the Earth know it--"stark,
bleak, terrible and lovely." His subjects may not wander very far from
the basic situations. He does not deal in spiritual subtleties. But
when he hits, he hits the mark.

33. STENDHAL (HENRI BEYLE). LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR. _Either the
original French or any translation, if possible with a preface; for
the life of Stendhal is of extraordinary interest_.

Stendhal is one of those who, following Goethe and anticipating
Nietzsche, has not hesitated to propound the psychological
justifications for a life based upon pagan rather than Christian
ethics. A shrewd and sly observer, with his own peculiar brand of the
egoistic cult, Stendhal lived a life of desperately absorbing
emotions, most of them intellectual and erotic. He made an aesthetic
use of the Will to Power before even Nietzsche used that singular
expression. In "Le Rouge et le Noir" the eternal sex-struggle with its
fierce accompaniment of "Odi et Amo" is concentrated in the clash of
opposing forms of pride; the pride of intellect against the pride of
sex-vanity.

No writer has ever lived with more contem