Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/170

158 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. familiar letters find a ready welcome. Franfois Coppee's letters to his mother and sister, 1862- 1908, published by Jean Monval, are pleasant reading, and prove that a man may, on becoming celebrated, remain simple and modest and content to live ' dans sa famille.' After the death of his father and the marriage of his younger sister, Coppee continued to live with his mother, and after her death with his sister, whom he only sur- vived a week. He inhabited the same house for forty years. He himself changed little, and at the zenith of his fame remained a modest war office official. His health was delicate, and he often went to the country and sometimes travelled abroad, and it was when away from home that he wrote these letters. After the success of ' Le Passant' (1869) he was introduced to the Princesse Mathilde, and went to stay with her at Saint- Gratien, where he met Merimee., Gautier, Renan, Flaubert, Dumas fils, Augier, and the Goncourts, and he gives a lively description of the visit. He travelled after the war in Germany, and in a real spirit of prophecy writes in one of his letters (1873): ' Un beau jour on sera tout surpris en Europe d'apprendre que la Prusse est devenue une grande puissance navale.' The love affair which caused him never to marry is here related. He fell in love with a Scandinavian girl of seventeen, but the mother, who was a widow, thought his attentions were meant for her, and the situation becar ie so awkward and complicated that Coppee was forced to withdraw. The outcome of the crisis, from the literary standpoint, was < L'Exilee '