202 WINTER SUNSHINE 



handed, against hunger and frost and their fiercei 

 brute embodiments — do I recognize a hardihood 

 and a ferity whose wet-nurse, ages back, may well 

 have been this gray shit of the woods. 



It is this fierce, untamable core that gives the 

 point and the splendid audacity to Erench literature 

 and art, — its vehemence and impatience of restraint. 

 It is the salt of their speech, the nitre of their wit. 

 When morbid, it gives that rabid and epileptic ten- 

 dency which sometimes shows itself in Victor Hugo. 

 In this great writer, however, it more frequently 

 takes the form of an aboriginal fierceness and hun- 

 ger that glares and bristles, and is insatiable and 

 omnivorous. 



And how manv times has Paris, that boudoir of 

 beauty and fashion, proved to be a Avolf's lair, 

 swarming with jaws athirst for human throats! — 

 the lust for blood and the greed for plunder, sleep- 

 ing, biding their time, never extinguished. 



I do not contemn it. To the natural historian 

 it is good. It is a return to first principles again 

 after so much art, and culture, and lying, and cliau- 

 vi7iisme, and shows these old civilizations in no 

 danger of becoming effete yet. It is like the hell 

 of fire beneath our feet, which the geologists tell 

 us is the life of the globe. Were it not for it, 

 who would not at times despair of the French char- 

 acter? As long as this fiery core remains, I shall 

 believe France capable of recovering from any disaster 

 to her arms. The " mortal ripening " of the nation 

 is stayed. 



