There is in the Rosnys the distressing habit, common to all the more recent French writers, with few exceptions, of endeavouring to be pedantic, to be involved, to express an idea barbarously and bewilderingly instead of harmoniously and clearly; to say _épiderme_ instead of _peau_, _véridique_ instead of _vrai_, _prunelles_ instead of _yeux_; to use the jargon of science, the abomination of foreign or technical idioms; to turn away from the natural, the direct, the usual, the obvious, and seek an appearance of profundity in what is merely a confusion of sounds. These affectations, these efforts, spoil many of the pages, and weary the most attentive reader in many of the chapters; as does also the incessant tendency to find similes of the most bizarre and eccentric kind, such as the comparison of dead leaves to the fur of animals; of a simile 'frail as the downy blow-ball of dandelion-seed'; of a sky 'of a powdery blue, with the horizon of an aquarium'; of a heart beating 'like a pear oscillating in a breeze,' and many others as far-fetched, as incongruous, and as grotesque. The excessive use of simile, however apt and exact, is always a fault; but similes as absurd and as strained as are most of those employed by the Rosnys, become a deformity of style, annoy the mind, and disagreeably abstract and distract the thoughts.
A too long, too technical, and too involved description is an inventory which leaves no concrete whole upon the reader's mind; it is a mere conglomeration of items. Take, as an instance, this description of Dargelle's physiognomy; and be it remembered that we never know who or what Dargelle is, how he came by his vast fortune, or anything, indeed, about him, except that he is _un pauvre riche_, a capitalist, one supposes, rich by inheritance. Here is the personal description of him:--
'A fat face, sad, meditative; his cheeks fell in; they were flabby. The forehead was a half-circle, with three deep wrinkles, the temples inflamed. The brow was vast but undecided, despite heavy eyebrows above violent eyes. The lips of a wild beast; a short beard which had never grown; flat hair, forming a little patch behind the brow and advancing laterally to the ears. The whole a Finnish face, very pale, with a disposition of the skin to become scaly. The nose long, broad, very irregular, between the snub and the aquiline, the end raised, the bridge bowed. Hardly any back to the head; the neck, like a Celt's, running straight up to the crown. The ears folded backward, stiff, cartilaginous,' etc., etc., etc.