Produced by David WidgerCOSMOPOLISBy Paul BourgetWith a Preface by JULES LEMAITRE of the French academyPAUL BOURGETBorn in Amiens September 2 1852 Paul Bourget was a pupil at theLycee Louis le Grand and then followed a course at the Ecole des HautesEtudes intending to devote himself to Greek philology He howeversoon gave up linguistics for poetry literary criticism and fictionWhen yet a very young man he became a contributor to various journalsand reviews among others to the Revue des deux Mondes La RenaissanceLe Parlement La Nouvelle Revue etc He has since given himself upalmost exclusively to novels and fiction but it is necessary to mentionhere that he also wrote poetry His poetical works comprise Poesies1872876 La Vie Inquiete 1875 Edel 1878 and Les Aveux 1882With riper mind and to far better advantage he appeared a few yearslater in literary essays on the writers who had most influenced hisown developmentthe philosophers Renan Taine and Amiel the poetsBaudelaire and Leconte de Lisle the dramatist Dumas fils and thenovelists Turgenieff the Goncourts and Stendhal Brunetiere saysof Bourget that no one knows more has read more read better ormeditated more profoundly upon what he has read or assimilated itmore completely So much reading and so much meditation even whenaccompanied by strong assimilative powers are not perhaps the mostdesirable and necessary tendencies in a writer of verse or of fictionTo the philosophic critic however they must evidently be invaluableand thus it is that in a certain selfallotted domain of literaryappreciation allied to semiscientific thought Bourget stands todaywithout a rival His Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine 1883Nouveaux Essais 1885 and Etudes et Portraits 1888 are certainlynot the work of a week but rather the outcome of years of selfcultureand of protracted determined endeavor upon the sternest lines In factfor a long time Bourget rose at 3 am and elaborated anxiously studyafter study and sketch after sketch well satisfied when he sometimesnoticed his articles in the theatrical feuilleton of the Globe andthe Parlement until he finally contributed to the great Debatsitself A period of long hard and painful probation must always belaid down so to speak as the foundation of subsequent literary fameBut France fortunately for Bourget is not one of those places wherethe foundation is likely to be laid in vain or the period of probationto endure for ever and everIn fiction Bourget carries realistic observation beyond the externalswhich fixed the attention of Zola and Maupassant to states of themind he unites the method of Stendhal to that of Balzac He is alwaysinteresting and amusing He takes himself seriously and persists inregarding the art of writing fiction as a science He has wit humorcharm and lightness of touch and ardently strives after philosophy andintellectualityqualities that are rarely found in fiction It may wellbe said of M Bourget that he is innocent of the creation of a singlestupid character The men and women we read of in Bourgets novels areso intellectual that their wills never interfere with their heartsThe list of his novels and romances is a long one considering the factthat his first novel LIrreparable appeared as late as 1884 Itwas followed by Cruelle Enigme 1885 Un Crime dAmour 1886 AndreCornelis and Mensonges 1887 Le Disciple 1889 La Terre promiseCosmopolis 1892 crowned by the Academy Drames de Famille 1899Monique 1902 his romances are Une Idylle tragique 1896 LaDuchesse Bleue 1898 Le Fantome 1901 and LEtape 1902Le Disciple and Cosmopolis are certainly notable books The lattermarks the cardinal point in Bourgets fiction Up to that time he hadseen environment more than characters here the dominant interest ispsychic and from this point on his characters become more and morelike Stendhals different from normal clay Cosmopolis is perfectlycharming Bourget is indeed the pastmaster of psychologicalfictionTo sum up Bourget is in the realm of fiction what Frederic Amiel isin the realm of thinkers and philosophersa subtle ingenious highlygifted student of his time With a wonderful dexterity of pen a veryacute almost womanly intuition and a rare diffusion of grace about allhis writings it is probable that Bourget will remain less known as acritic than as a romancer Though he neither feels like Loti nor seeslike Maupassanthe reflects                  JULES LEMAITRE               de lAcademie FrancaiseAUTHORS INTRODUCTIONI send you my dear Primoli from beyond the Alps the romance ofinternational life begun in Italy almost under your eyes to which Ihave given for a frame that ancient and noble Rome of which you are soardent an admirerTo be sure the drama of passion which this book depicts has noparticularly Roman features and nothing was farther from my thoughtsthan to trace a picture of the society so local so traditional whichexists between the Quirinal and the Vatican The drama is not evenItalian for the scene might have been laid with as much truth atVenice Florence Nice St Moritz even Paris or London the variouscities which are like quarters scattered over Europe of the fluctuatingCosmopolis christened by Beyle Vengo adesso da Cosmopoli It isthe contrast between the rather incoherent ways of the rovers of highlife and the character of perennity impressed everywhere in the greatcity of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose thespot where even the corners speak of a secular past there to evoke somerepresentatives of the most modern as well as the most arbitrary andthe most momentary life You who know better than any one the motleyworld of cosmopolites understand why I have confined myself to paintinghere only a fragment of it That world indeed does not exist it canhave neither defined customs nor a general character It is composedof exceptions and of singularities We are so naturally creatures ofcustom our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around onefixed axis that motives of a personal order alone can determine us uponan habitual and voluntary exile from our native land It is so now inthe case of an artist