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rather than as a man entirely in control of himself who tries consciously to develop a life consistent with his character. He is incapable of compromise, and there is in him more than a touch of masochism, even of the will to self-destruction. Like Buridan's ass, he finds himself between two equidistant piles of hay, incapable of making a choice between his Jewish and Westernized selves. In the event he chooses neither, but pursues the purity which eludes him with Ariane, the wife of the ineffectual Adrien Deume. She will be his partner in Perfect Love, the living proof that the will can overcome the spoiling power of existence. He knows he cannot fail to make Ariane love him, and the knowledge leads him to despise himself, Ariane and whatever purity they might one day achieve. His defeat may be magnificent, but it is inevitable. Yet though this defeat was announced at the end of Solal , Cohen was in no hurry to bring him to it. Mangeclous closes as Solal prepares for his campaign. He dons a white beard, blacks his teeth, and climbs into the filthy coat which he bought from Jeremie. Solal the contemptuous idealist is ready for battle.
    Belle du Seigneur is Cohen's baobab tree in all its glory. He guides us through the tangled roots — the same characters reappear, the same ritual of revolt is re-enacted — but he also invites us now to linger over the lushness of the upper foliage, which is filled with new personalities, fresh dramas and wider dimensions. The action once more begins in early spring, with Solal taking his first extravagant steps in the long seduction of Ariane. Soon the Valiant, summoned once more by cheque, will arrive in Geneva, where their engaging but feckless optimism serves as a counterpoint to Solal's anguish . . .
    But Belle du Seigneur is not a novel to be read for the plot. Though there are moments of high tension and drama, the forward march of the action is regularly delayed by diversions to the point where it seems as if Cohen was trying to see how slowly he could pedal his bicycle without falling off. For long periods time stands still (the action covers a mere twenty-seven months, in fits and starts), and the world which unfolds before us is oddly insulated against history.
    There are few echoes of contemporary events — Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, the election of the Popular Front government in Paris — for Belle du Seigneur generates its own closed and claustrophobic atmosphere. A few cheeky taunts are lobbed at the 'square-jawed' Duce, but even the Hitler menace is evoked obliquely and, as in chapter 54, in allegorical terms. Cohen makes his opposition to Nazi brutality abundantly clear, but he ensures that we see it as merely the latest outbreak of the persecution to which Jews have been subjected throughout their history. Cohen's stance is moral rather than political, and this may explain why the story does not proceed beyond 1937 and into the war. Of course, it may simply be that in Cohen's mind his fictional world had assumed its definitive mood and shape by 1938. But, had he extended the time-scale, it seems reasonable to think that the horrors of the Holocaust could not have been kept at arm's length in quite the same way and that Cohen's generous, conciliatory humanism would then have been harder to sustain. As it is, he is able to stand back and point to the folly of intolerance and oppression without being accused of special pleading or of relying on Nazi atrocities to stir the reader's sympathies. Cohen's purpose was not to be achieved by locating the struggle for idealism in a particular setting, for he intended his message of tolerance to be timeless.
    Paradoxically, this lack of historical specificity in no way diminishes the sense we have of the solid reality of the world of Belle du Seigneur. On the contrary, the minutiae of everyday living are lovingly recorded through the eyes and thoughts of characters obsessed with their immediate selves and