price of excess), and nobody who ever talked about bed-books has succeeded in leaving out Montaigne from his list.  My luggage cost much less than usual.  I positively looked forward to reading Montaigne.  Yet when the first night in a little French hotel arrived, and I had perched the candle on the top of the ewer on the night-table in order to get it high enough, I discovered that instead of Montaigne I was going to read a verbatim account of a poisoning trial in the Paris Journal.  That is about three weeks ago, and I have not yet opened my Montaigne.  I have, however, talked enthusiastically to sundry French people about Montaigne, and explained to them that Florio’s translation is at least equal to the original, and that Montaigne is truly beloved and understood in England alone.

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It was on the second day of my holiday, in another small provincial town in Central France, where I was improving my mind and fitting myself for cultured society in London by the contemplation of cathedrals, that I came across, in a draper’s and fancy-ware shop, a remaindered stock of French fiction, at 4-1/2d. the volume.  Among these, to my intense disgust, was a translation of a little thing of my own, and also a collection of stories by Leonide Andreief, translated by Serge Persky, and published by Le Monde Illustre.  Although I already possessed, in Montaigne, sustenance for months, I bought this volume, and at once read it.  A small book by Andreief, “The Seven that were Hanged,” was published in England—­last year, I think—­by Mr. Fifield.  It received a very great deal of praise, and was, in fact, treated as a psychological masterpiece.  I was disappointed with it myself, for the very simple reason that I found it tedious.  I had difficulty in finishing it.  I gather that Andreief has a great reputation in Russia, sharing with Gorky the leadership of the younger school.  Well, I don’t suppose that I shall ever read any more Gorky, who has assuredly not come up to expectations.  There are things among the short stories of Andreief (the volume is entitled “Nouvelles”) which are better than “The Seven that were Hanged.”  “The Governor,” for example, is a pretty good tale, obviously written under the influence of Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan Ilyitch”; and a story about waiting at a railway station remains in the mind not unpleasantly.  But the best of the book is second-rate, vitiated by diffuseness, imitativeness, and the usual sentimentality.  Neither Andreief nor Gorky will ever seriously count.  Neither of them comes within ten leagues of the late Anton Tchehkoff.  I think there must be young novelists alive in Russia who are superior to these two alleged leaders.  I have, in fact, heard talk of one Apoutkine, in this country of France, and I am taking measures to read him.

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