"Coup de Grace" is a far less substantial book than "Hadrian's Memoirs." It is less ripe in wisdom, less mature in expression, less subtle and various in its psychological insights, less rich in narrative interest, less comprehensive in its scope.

All this may be due, in part, to the fact that in the one book the author is probing the mind of a great and fascinating Roman emperor, who inherited an empire that was a world, while in the other book she is probing the mind of a young man, unknown to history, who is shallow, egotistical, even repellent. But more important, as a key to the differences between these two works of fiction, is the fact that "Coup de Grace" … was actually written more than ten years before "Hadrian's Memoirs." During those years Marguerite Yourcenar developed greatly, and elegantly, as a literary artist.

Yet it is obvious that these "autobiographical" narratives are from the same hand, for they exhibit likenesses as well as differences. In each a man examines his life and seeks to explain himself to himself—and to others….

Erick von Lhomond, wounded in Franco's service during the Spanish Civil War, finds himself … in the railway station at Pisa, waiting … for the train that will take him back to Germany; he begins to tell the story of his experience while fighting with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in the Baltic province of Kurland, and his story becomes a revelation of the kind of man he is.

Erick, like Hadrian, is given to restraint and understatement: when he deals with passion he does so dispassionately. His manner, like Hadrian's is grave. His story, like the Roman's has the classic virtues of sobriety and economy, and a remarkable evenness of emphasis. Indeed, the modulations of the narrative tone are hardly perceptible.

[Like Hadrian, Erick is a homosexual.] It is because Erick loves Conrad that he is unable to return the passionate love of Conrad's sister, Sophie; and it is upon the hinge of Erick's inability to love Sophie that the tragedy of "Coup de Grace" revolves….

In a prefatory note Madame Yourcenar says that "Coup de Grace" relates a true story, derived from the oral account of the principal character concerned," and that in it she has wished to present "a self-portrait, as it were, of a certain type of soldier of fortune; international, and such as is known in our time." What she has done, coldly, dryly, is to draw the likeness of an absolute egotist whose character has been warped by sexual inversion. In Erick we can believe; it is harder to believe in Sophie, while Conrad is only a name. Interesting as it is for its own sake, "Coup de Grace"—an almost pure example of the roman démeublé—is even more interesting as a precursor of "Hadrian's Memoirs."