We never know whose fault it is when good or bad things happen, and we don't really know whether we ought to be angry or to be sorry with people who do harm. Wicked people are like a thunderstorm, don't you think? And a lazy woman is like a hot room. Both are unhealthy, but they cannot help it." Marguerite Audoux does not say these things to be clever. She says them quite simply, and they express her natural way of thought, which is simplicity and purity itself. She wrote her book when and how she could, on scraps of cheap paper, and she does not know herself, now, whether she hoped to have it published when she wrote it. She did hope for publication when she had finished it, but that was because she was hungry. I met a friend just outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs when it doesn't understand, and says, "But I don't know. The thoughts come, and I write them down. I only wish that I could spell them better." When the committee of the Vie Heureuse was voting on her book before awarding her the 200 pound prize for the best book of the year, somebody suggested the possibility that she had had help with it. Madame Severine was sent to fetch the manuscript. It was passed round, examined, and no more doubt was possible. I hope you will find the pleasure in reading Marie Claire that I found in translating it. I should like to say quite earnestly--and perhaps a little shamefacedly, because we hate saying these things out loud--that when I had read it I felt awed. The book had worked upon me. Do you remember the impression made on you by moonlight upon the snow in the country? You must be quite alone to feel it. The purity of it all makes you wish that you were a cleaner man or woman, and, till you rub shoulders with people again, you mean to try hard to be cleaner and better. Marie Claire made me feel just exactly like that. JOHN N. RAPHAEL.