At the same time she obligingly referred her readers to some of the choicer passages in the original, such as Chapter X of "The Child of Pleasure," where she claimed that "ingenuities of indecency" had been gratuitously introduced.

For the guidance of those interested in such matters I may explain that, by a coincidence, the "ingenuity" in question is almost identical with that which was cited in the earlier part of _La Garconne_ as proof that Victor Margueritte was unworthy of the Legion of Honor.
After Ouida in England came the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Voguee in France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard tome on the Russian novel.

In the austere pages of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with mere filth.

The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean--in the literal, not the moral sense--scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W.D.Howells.Only in "Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly crude and professional person, using her career as a symbol of the Second Empire.

D'Annunzio has never described women with any other reason for existence but love, yet none of his heroines has poor Nana's uninspiring motives.