The Crimson Bookshelf

MR. F. L. LUCAS of Cambridge University made the translation of Madame Mauron's book, and wrote the introductory essay.

To say that the character sketches of types to be discovered in a Provencal commune are "delightful" is to use an adjective over-worked by many previous reviews, yet the word is none the less apropos. The book is delightful, even in the sense they have attached to it, but it is also satirical. Mont-Paon, where Madame Mauron served as school-teacher and Mayor's secretary, was endeavoring, as only French communes can endeavor, to resist the advance of industrialism. Yet one by one the mechanical conveniences of the XXth century worm their insidious way into "backward" Mont-Paon, and Madame Mauron's satire is directed at their disturbing traditional modes of social behavior. By implication, of course, Madame Mauron is satirizing modern society in general, for she does poke fun at the enormous amount of red-tape caused by modern notions of efficiency. Bureaucrats will not like her book, for they are her especial butt. If anything, she is too severe on the bureaucrats, and that severity defines the limits of her profundity, as a social critic. Shallow as her perception may seem to profounder social critics, it will be for most readers adequate enough, and at least readable, and for some it will be, since it recalls "Tartarin de Tarascon," the kind of nepenthe which they both need and desire in these days that are trying men's souls.