capacity; they are haunted by dark powers, instincts of ambiguous passions; they are too lucid to be quite sane in their extravagances; they have not quite systematically transposed their dreams into action. And his heroines, when they are not, like L'Eve Future, the vitalised mechanism of an Edison, have the solemnity of dead people, and a hieratic speech. Songe, des cœurs condamnés à ce supplice, de ne pas m'aimer! says Sara, in Axël. Je ne l'aime pas, ce jeune homme. Qu'ai-je donc fait à Dieu? says Elën. And their voice is always like the voice of Elën: "I listened attentively to the sound of her voice; it was tactiturn, subdued, like the murmur of the river Lethe, flowing through the region of shadows." They have the immortal weariness of beauty, they are enigmas to themselves, they desire, and know not why they refrain, they do good and evil with the lifting of an eyelid, and are innocent and guilty of all the sins of the earth.
And these strange inhabitants move in as strange a world. They are the princes and châtelaines of ancient castles lost in the depths of the Black Forest; they are
