Esthete

PAULUS Fy--Helene Mullins and Marie Gallegher--McBride ($2.00). Ronald Firbank and Daisy Ashford might well have collaborated to produce this picture of the perfect esthete in his home. Paulus was a teacher of French, a student of the graces. With his cat, the sympathetic Cez, he dwelt in a little gem of an apartment, surrounded by precious bibelots. Tragedy came into his delicately ordered life with the death of Cez and the suicide of Mimi, whom he knew only through her letters, but whom he did not have to know in order to love. Others of his loves were Fan-Fan and Mary. Unhappily, Fan-Fan grew fat and coarse, Mary entered a convent and disappointingly turned out to be not a virgin, after all. Life began to seem very futile to Paulus. He became a monk to be near Mary. Very soon he was released from the obnoxious life of the monastery by a professional call from Death. Arrived in Heaven, Paulus meets God. "You are a man after my own heart, Paulus Fy," says God. They embrace, and the book ends.

The book is about the last word in flippant sophistication. The co-authors (rumored to be one and the same person) toss a theme somewhat lighter than a bubble about their pages, grazing matters sacred and profane in its progress.