INTRODUCTION. V

less, as he repeatedly adraits, he never could do the work I exécute. He is no prose writer. His verses are exquisite, and remind one more of German than of French poets. As soon as we hâve gone over and corrected the work of the day, we discuss the work of the niorrow. The plan of the whole romance is decided on between us, before I put pen to paper ; 80 also is it clear to me what I am to do on the following day before that day begins. Hère it is that Chatrian's talent shows itself in its full greatness. He is a master of grouping ; he has a subtle eye for ail the ramifications of a plot ; he understands the relief in which the several characters are to stand. So we often sit together till midnight and after, pencil in one hand, note-book in the other, and exchange our thoughts half audibly. At one o'clock, the housekeeper has orders to corne in and tell us it is bed-time. If we do not stir, she puts the lamp out. Sometimes we are so full of our subject that we cannot go to bed, and we sit on till three o'clock in the dark. If the housekeeper finds that we are not in bed at two o'clock, she has orders to make a racket in the room, to bang the door, knock over the chairs, rattle the fire-irons to drown our conversation and drive our ideas out of our heads."

This literary copartnership was dissolved about a year before Chatrian's death, in September, 1890, and was f ollowed by an unfortunate lawsuit in regard to literary property.

The position which Erckmann and Chatrian occupy in French literature and history is unique. They worked a field which no one had worked before, and which no one has worked since with the same purpose. After having written some taies and a drama or two that met with little success, they deliberately set to work to use the material furnished mostly by the First Republic and Napoleonic periods for a séries of national romances. In a style at once clear and flowing and with painstaking fidelity to the truth of history, they made the events of thèse periods live again. We