They simply repeat the saccharine Feuillet and the saline Stendhal.

Their novels are dissertations in school-teacher style.
They don't seem to realize that there is more spiritual revelation in that one reply of old Hulot, in Balzac's _Cousine Bette_, 'Can't I take the little girl along ?' than in all their doctoral theses.

We must expect of them no idealistic straining toward the infinite.

For me, then, the real psychologist of this century is not their Stendhal but that astonishing Ernest Hello, whose unrelenting unsuccess is simply miraculous!" He began to think that Des Hermies was right.

In the present disorganized state of letters there was but one tendency which seemed to promise better things.