Cosmopolis Volume 4

Cosmopolis, Volume 4, concludes the 1892 novel by Paul Bourget (1852-1935), the French psychological novelist of the fin de siècle. The final volume resolves the catastrophes of the international Roman colony: the duel and its aftermath, the exposure of the financier Justus Hafner’s corruption on the eve of his daughter’s noble marriage, the death that shatters the Countess Steno’s circle, and the fate of the pure-hearted Alba, the novel’s sacrificial innocent. The observer Dorsenne draws Bourget’s moral: the cosmopolitan world, detached from nation, faith, and soil, breeds moral anarchy beneath its polished surface. The novel’s conservative diagnosis of rootlessness anticipated the nationalist turn of Bourget’s later career. Volume 4 completes one of the major French society novels of the 1890s. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.