has come to appreciate Defoe's stark, passionless realism, he will, if he have any imagination, discern a strength and grim impressiveness in this simplicity, which is lacking in the conscious art of other story-tellers. In such a narrative as Defoe's History of the Plague, where the tremendous facts speak for themselves without any need for emphasis, this style is seen at its best.
Mirbeau's Celestine, after many changes of masters and mistresses, few of whom are credited with any estimable traits, comes at last into the service of a miserly woman and a hen-pecked husband, where her life soon becomes a torment. In this curious household, she is fascinated against her will by a rugged and uncouth coachman, whom she suspects to be guilty of a peculiarly revolting murder. Just as Defoe, in his own version of Roxana, (which appears to have been continued by some inferior hand) leaves her, on the last page, uncertain whether the too-faithful Amy had carried out her threat of putting her troublesome daughter out of the way, so the author of the Journal never tells us whether Joseph was actually the murderer of little Claire. The mystery that hangs about the man is far more dreadful than certainty of his guilt would be. To Celestine the doubt, while it repels for a moment, comes gradually to cast a horrible spell over her mind. The strength and invincible cunning of the man seem to dominate her utterly, until, when she feels at length convinced that he is the criminal, yet cannot force him to confess, she is mastered altogether, and throws herself into his arms. 'Chez moi', she says, 'out crime, le meurtre principalement, a des correspondences secrètes avec l'amour. . . . Eh bien, oui, là! un beau crime m'empoigne comme un beau male.' Joseph plans and carries out with consummate address, a robbery of the Rabour mansion, which enables him and Celestine to set up as well-to-do tradespeople at Cherbourg, and is felt to be but the right measure of poetic justice on their detestable employers.
This is by no means the only episode in which crime is the theme of Mirbeau's story. The fact is, the naturalist almost inevitably deals with the subject of crime. Defoe's characters are made criminals by circumstances; all four of those treated of in the group of pseudo-biographies under discussion were the victims of social injustice. Singleton was stolen as a child, and sold to the Gypsies; his foster-mother was hanged, and he was thrown helpless on the world. He goes to sea, becomes in the natural course of events a thief, and being mixed up, through no fault of his, in a mutiny, turns pirate. "Colonel" Jack is a London waif, without father or mother, or even a surname. He runs wild about the City, herds with thieves, and is an expert thief himself before he learns that stealing is not an honest trade. In the struggle for existence, these characters simply follow the path of least resistance. The picture of submerged London in those days, and the further account of the criminal
