Antiquity could not have produced _Beauty and the Beast_.
It is true that at the period at which we have arrived the predominance of the grotesque over the sublime in literature is clearly indicated.

But it is a spasm of reaction, an eager thirst for novelty, which is but temporary, it is an initial wave which gradually recedes.

The type of the beautiful will soon resume its rights and its role, which is not to exclude the other principle, but to prevail over it.

It is time that the grotesque should be content with a corner of the picture in Murillo's loyal frescoes, in the sacred pages of Veronese, content to be introduced in two marvellous _Last Judgments_, in which art will take a just pride, in the scene of fascination and horror with which Michelangelo will embellish the Vatican, in those awe-inspiring represervations of the fall of man which Rubens will throw upon the arches of the Cathedral of Antwerp.

The time has come when the balance between the two principles is to be established.