that he might just as well do it on a weekday. This speech in its turn necessitated the reply that the man could only come on Sunday, as he was occupied all the week. Second qualification.

"What is your gardener's name, my dear?" "Putois" replied Madame Bergeret without hesitation. From the moment in which he received a name, Putois began to lead a kind of existence. When the old lady inquired where he lived, he necessarily became a species of itinerant workman—a vagrant, in fact. So now to existence had been added status.

When Madame Cornouiller decided that he should work for her too, he immediately proved to be undiscoverable. She made inquiries about him of all and sundry, to find that most of those she asked thought they had seen him, and others knew him, but were not certain where he was at the moment. The tax-collector was able to say with certainty that Putois had chopped firewood for him between the 19th and 23rd of October of the comet year.

The day came, however, when Madame Cornouiller was able to tell the Bergerets that she herself had seen him—a man of fifty or thereabouts, thin, round-shouldered, with a dirty blouse and the general appearance of a tramp. She had called "Putois!" in a loud voice, and he had turned round.

From this day onward Putois became ever more and more of a reality. Three melons were stolen from Madame Cornouiller. She suspected Putois. The police, too, believed him to be the culprit, and searched the neighbourhood for him. The Journal de Saint-Omer published a description of him, from which it appeared that he had the face of a habitual criminal. Ere long there was another theft on Madame Cornouiller's premises; three small silver spoons were stolen. She recognised Putois's handiwork. Henceforward he was the terror of the town.

When Gudule, her cook, was discovered to be enceinte, Madame Cornouiller jumped to the conclusion that she had been seduced by Putois, and was confirmed in her belief by the fact of the woman's weeping and refusing to answer her questions. As Gudule was ugly and bearded, the story occasioned much amusement, and in popular fancy Putois became a perfect satyr. Another servant in the town and a poor hump-backed girl being brought to bed that same year with children whose paternity was mysteriously concealed, Putois attained the reputation of a veritable monster.

Children caught glimpses of him everywhere. They saw him passing the door in the dusk, or climbing the garden wall; it was he who had inked the faces of Zoé's dolls; he howled at nights with the dogs and caterwauled with the cats; he stole into the bedroom; he became something between a hobgoblin, a brownie, and the dustman who closes little children's eyes. Monsieur Bergeret was interested in him as typical of all human beliefs; and, since all Saint-Omer was firmly convinced of Putois' existence, he, as a good citizen, would do nothing to shake their belief.

As to Madame Bergeret, she reproached herself sometimes for the birth of Putois; but, after all, she had done nothing worse than Shakespeare when he created Caliban. Nevertheless she turned quite pale one day when the maid came in and said that a man like a country labourer wished to speak to madame. "Did he give his name?" "Yes—Putois." "What?" "Putois, madame. He is waiting in the kitchen." "What does he want?" "He will tell no one but yourself, madame." "Go and ask him again." When the maid returned to the kitchen Putois was gone. But from that day Madame Bergeret herself began to have a kind of belief in his existence.

The story is both clever and of deep significance, it turns on the question of what an imaginary existence is. Putois' generation is the generation of a myth, and he exerts the influence which mythical characters do. No one can deny the rule of mythical beings over the minds of men, their influence on human souls. Gods and goddesses, spirits and saints, have inspired enthusiasm and terror, have had their altars, have counselled crimes, have, originated customs and laws. Satyrs and Silenuses have occupied the human imagination, have set chisels and brushes to work century after century. The Devil has his history, extending back for thousands of years—has been terrible, witty, foolish, cruel; has demanded human sacrifices; and has not only been worshipped by magicians and witches, but has, up to our own days, had his priests. France, however, has not the Devil alone in his mind; his thoughts range higher.

And he not only throws light in a bantering way on the formation of a myth, but also, and still more vividly, upon human verdicts. When Madame Cornouiller suspects Madame Bergeret of wishing to keep the vagrant gardener for herself, of not allowing other people to have any share in Putois, the writer remarks, as it were with a smile, that many historical conclusions which are accepted by every one are as well founded as this conclusion of Madame Cornouillers. Here, as elsewhere, France asserts that it is foolish to believe in the just judgment of posterity.

He has always thought it strange that Madame Roland should have appealed to "impartial posterity," without reflecting that if her contemporaries, who guillotined her, were cruel apes, there was every probability of their descendants being the same.

The world's history is the world's verdict, wrote Schiller. He is a naïve man who believes this. Posterity is just only to this extent, that the questions are of indifference to it; and as it is with the greatest difficulty that it can examine the dead, and as, moreover, it is itself not an impersonal thing, but an aggregate of more or less prejudiced human beings, the verdict takes shape accordingly. Historic justice is a Putois.

Fame is a Putois, an imaginary, impalpable being, that is pursued by thousands, and that melts into nothing just when it should display itself in full vigour—namely, after their death.

Everywhere we have imaginary, artificial existence, proclaimed to be real, and accepted as such. It is not at all necessary to confine ourselves to religion, where it is only too easy to discover Putois, whose huge shadow darkens theology in its entirety. Let us think of the illusions in politics, of the part played by titles in social life. Or let us remember the place occupied by imaginary existences in our own emotional life. Suppose that we could transfer to canvas the image of the beloved one which forms itself in the imagination of the lover at the moment when he sees all her supposed perfections, and afterwards place alongside of it the image of her which remains when love has evaporated and he has stripped her, one by one, of all the qualities which enchanted him—the description of the first picture would not seem less unreal than the description of Putois.

The reader who muses over the little story will feel how many ideas it sets in motion, and will, like the inhabitants of Saint-Omer, find traces of Putois everywhere.

The fault in most historical descriptions is that the pictures of the past are distorted in accordance with the significance which they have acquired for a later age. Gobineau makes Michael Angelo talk of Raphael as people did in the nineteenth century when they named them together. Wilde makes John the Baptist speak as he does in the Gospels, which were written, with an aim which led to distortion, long after his death. Wherever in modern poetry or art the figure of Jesus is treated, no matter in what spirit—let it be by Paul Heyse, by Sadakichi Hartmann the Japanese, or Edward Söderberg the Dane—He is the principal figure of His day, occupying the thoughts of all.

France, in his story, Judæas Procurator, has, in an extremely clever manner, indicated the place occupied by Jesus in the consciousness of a contemporary Roman. To any one who can read, the fact that the life and death of Jesus interested only a little band of humble people in Jerusalem, is sufficiently established by the circumstance that Josephus, who knows everything that happens in the Palestine of his