sis: 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Gift of 
 Mrs. Andrew S, White 
 
 UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY 
 

 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CArLORO 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.« A. 
 
 3 1924 U1U 9HJ) 410 
 
BV THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 1780 to i860 
 
 Contents 
 The kinds of Criticism— Crabbe— Hogg (Ettrick Shepherd)— Sydney Smith- 
 Jeffrey — Hazlitt — Moore — Leigh Hunt — Peacock — Wilson (Christopher North) — 
 De Quincey — Lockhart — Ptaed — Borrow. 
 
 London : PERCIVAL & CO. 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 FRENCH NOVELISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PERCIVAL AND CO. v 
 KING STREET, CO VENT GARDEN 
 
 Kantian 
 1891 
 
 URIS LIBRARY 
 
 .INN n fi 1983 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924010985418 
 
PREFACE 
 
 All the essays in this volume, with one 
 exception, originally appeared in the Fort- 
 nightly Review, to the editors and publishers 
 of which periodical I owe my best thanks for 
 permission to reprint them. The one excep- 
 tion is the essay on Lesage, which appeared 
 as the introduction to a reprint of the trans- 
 lation (known as Smollett's) of Gil Bias, pub- 
 lished some ten years ago by Mr. Nimmo, 
 whose license to reproduce I have, also 
 thankfully, to acknowledge. Of the others, 
 the opening essay, which has been very con- 
 siderably remodelled, appeared in February 
 1888, that on Anthony Hamilton in October 
 1890, A Study of Sensibility in September 
 1882. The series of eight articles on more 
 recent novelists, which here reappear in 
 
vi Preface 
 
 chronological order, ^ were first published, with- 
 out such arrangement, in the year 1 878. They 
 were, I believe, tolerably well received, and I 
 have been frequently asked to reprint them. 
 Their original plan, including the selection 
 of the special subjects, was not wholly my 
 own, but was suggested to me by Mr. John 
 Morley, the then editor of the Review, when 
 he asked me to undertake them. If I had 
 been left entirely to myself, I might have put 
 in less translation and more analysis and 
 criticism properly so called ; while in one or 
 two instances I might have postponed authors 
 who actually appear to others who do not. 
 But Mr. Morley's editorial judgment was as 
 sound as his bearing of the editorial sword 
 was mild, and I have no doubt that he knew 
 best. 
 
 It has been a subject of, I trust, not wholly 
 fatuous satisfaction to me, in re-reading these 
 essays after many days, to find very little 
 
 ^ That on Sandeau originally stood first, whence the 
 general remarks at the beginning of it. I have left them 
 as they were in 1878, though the growth of "Naturalism" 
 has affected them in the sense now indicated by the opening 
 essay. 
 
Preface vii 
 
 change in my view of their subjects, and 
 to discover that, except mere addition, the 
 least alteration was required in the case of 
 the most important of all, though I had there 
 indulged most in criticism proper. Very 
 little had appeared in English about Flaubert 
 when I wrote on him in the spring of 1878, 
 and still less was generally known (except by 
 those personally familiar with French literary 
 society) about his habits and character. The 
 publication of his correspondence after his 
 death, the memoirs of M. Maxime du Camp, 
 those of MM. de Goncourt, with other matter, 
 have entirely changed this .since, and almost 
 all novel-writers and novel-critics who pride 
 themselves on sharing the " Modern Spirit " 
 look on Flaubert very much as poets and 
 poetical critics in England forty or fifty years 
 ago looked on Shelley. If I have found 
 little or nothing to change in my own view, 
 it is, I trust, not merely the result of having 
 early made up a bundle of prejudices. I have 
 taken, I think, more than one occasion to 
 point out how wide in my view is the gulf 
 between Flaubert and Naturalism, and I need 
 
viii Preface 
 
 add nothing on that head here. The quiet 
 and equable talent of Jules Sandeau had 
 already, long before his death and before I 
 wrote, given its full measure, but in the case 
 of Octave Feuillet (who died while this 
 volume was passing through the press) there 
 might have been some apprehension that a 
 judgment passed twelve years earlier would 
 prove itself inadequate to the author's steady 
 and remarkably maintained production.^ But 
 here again, though I found something to add, 
 I found little to alter. 
 
 I cannot of course pretend that there is 
 any other unity of subject in this volume than 
 that which the title puts forward, or that all its 
 contents were originally intended to appear 
 together. The French novel, however, is so 
 remarkable and tempting a subject that even 
 comparatively desultory excursions over parts 
 of it, if conducted on uniform principles, can 
 hardly fail to be interesting, and should 
 
 ^ Since M. Feuillet's death it has been said, on his own 
 authority, that his birth was put ten years too early, and 
 that he was a much less late-writing novelist than I, with 
 others, have assumed. If this is so, it is odd that the 
 statements to the other effect remained so long unchallenged. 
 
Preface ix 
 
 possess some critical edification. It is, 
 moreover, a subject on which, as I have 
 explained in the opening essay, I have had 
 rather exceptional opportunities of judging 
 contemporary development, while no part 
 of the older history has remained quite 
 unexplored by me. The advantage of the 
 combined study of literature is at least 
 this, that one is less likely to mistake the 
 ephemeral for the permanent, or to think that 
 Hugo and Gautier are going to perish be- 
 cause the little schools of the day regard 
 them as rococo and vieuxjeu, compared to a 
 Baudelaire-c^a;^^ like M. Paul Verlaine, or a 
 de-poetised Senancour like M. Edouard Rod. 
 I am disposed, taking old and new together, 
 to think that French novel -writing has 
 been slightly overpraised as regards general 
 literary art, while there is at the present 
 moment what seems to me a most singular 
 misapprehension of the particular kind re- 
 garding it. I refer to the opinion frequently 
 now expressed that French novelists are 
 superior to English in the delineation of 
 "passion." Or, as it has been put even 
 
X Preface 
 
 more widely, that "every race but our own 
 treats life with singular candour." I own 
 that I have little sympathy with this talk. 
 That as to passion is the merest confusion 
 between passion itself and certain actions 
 which are sometimes the expression of passion 
 and sometimes not. There is of passion itself 
 more in a page, nay, in a paragraph of Esmond 
 than in all French fiction, save Manon Les- 
 caut. La Nouvelle Hdlo'ise, and La Morte 
 Amoureuse. The talk about candour is to 
 me still more surprising. It is as though, 
 to use a homely metaphor, a butcher were 
 to say to his customer, "Sir, I must deal 
 candidly with you. I cannot let you have 
 your pound of steak without insisting that 
 you shall inspect the whole process of pole- 
 axing, dressing, and cutting up." But I have 
 said something on this head in the first essay, 
 and I need not go over it again. Something 
 which I have also said elsewhere, but have 
 not here reprinted, may perhaps more legiti- 
 mately find a place. In both France and 
 England I see a considerable flagging in the 
 kinds of the novel proper, and what energy 
 
Preface xi 
 
 there is appears to me to be diverted into 
 the simpler romance. No romancer of talent 
 equal to that of several whom we possess in 
 England has yet shown himself in France ; 
 but not a few are trying their hands. The 
 simple extravagance, the natural impossi- 
 bilities, the kindly enormities of the romance 
 are what we all want after the last forty years 
 of analysis, which has left nothing worth 
 analysing. The new romance will in its 
 turn, no doubt, give rise and place to the 
 new novel. Thackeray follows Scott and 
 Flaubert Dumas quite naturally. They always 
 have done so (with differences), and always 
 will. All that I have to add in commending 
 this book to the reader is. May my days be 
 prolonged so that I may see the new Scott 
 and the new Dumas, and be glad of them ! 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. The Present State of the French Novel i 
 
 II. Anthony Hamilton ... 31 
 
 III. Alain Ren^ Lesage ... 66 
 
 IV. A Study OF Sensibility . . . 112 
 V. Charles de Bernard . . . 164 
 
 VI. Alexandre Dumas . . . 197 
 
 VII. Theophile Gautier . . . 225 
 
 VIII. Jules Sandeau .... 263 
 
 IX. Octave Feuillet . . . . 295 
 
 X. Gustave Flaubert . . . 334 
 
 XI. Henry Murger . . . . 381 
 
 XII. Victor Cherbuliez . . . 419 
 
 INDEX 459 
 
I 
 
 THE PRESENT STATE OF THE 
 FRENCH NOVEL 
 
 (1890) 
 
 It has frequently been observed by critical 
 persons who have dealt with French 
 
 ^^^Q^g^*^^ literature, that its long arid scarcely 
 interrupted course illustrates the de- 
 velopment and morphology of literary kinds, better 
 than almost any other literature is able to do. 
 In few cases, if in any, is this remark better 
 illustrated than in the case of fiction — even of 
 prose fiction, the history of which is in most other 
 nations so short and so late. It is tolerably certain 
 that the prose romance originated, with hardly 
 any foreign stimulus, in France, or at any rate 
 in French-speaking countries, by the latter part of 
 the twelfth century. Some Italian aid may have 
 been required to turn the indigenous vetse fabliau 
 into the prose conte, but this influence — as later 
 with that of Spain in the seventeenth century, of 
 Germany and England in the nineteenth — was 
 mastered and absorbed by the strong literary 
 
 B 
 
2 Essays on 
 
 genius of the people. And always as we go on — 
 through the curious and versatile work 
 of which the chief instance is Rabelais' novel. 
 great book ; through the transformed 
 romance of the early seventeenth century, with 
 its increased observation of actual life (which 
 sometimes became, as- with Sorel, Furetifere, and 
 Scarron, almost direct observation) ; the rise, 
 with a great foreign posterity, of romance of yet 
 another kind under Lesage ; the half-burlesque, 
 half-satirical contes of Hamilton and the eighteenth 
 century tale-tellers ; the sensibility novels of the 
 same period ; and lastly, after the old government 
 and the old order had changed, the immense 
 outburst of prose fiction, which, induced directly 
 by the influence of Scott, has lasted from 1830 
 till the present time, — we find the same manifest 
 and manifold sympathy between almost all kinds 
 of prose fiction and the genius of the French 
 nation. Full proof of and full comment on this 
 must be sought elsewhere, though, in reference to 
 considerable parts of the history, it will be found 
 in the present volume. In this particular essay 
 or chapter I deal only with the most immediate 
 and actual side of the matter — the present state 
 and prospects of the French novel. Since I 
 wrote, in the Fortnightly Review for the year 1878, 
 the articles which will be found later, on the chief 
 French novelists of the century, wide gaps have 
 been made in the list of those who were even then 
 living. Sandeau is gone, and Flaubert, and About ; 
 
French Novelists 3 
 
 M. Droz has long given up the practice of those 
 delicately indelicate stories of which 
 "^^^^^^^^ Monsieur, Madame, et Biy, and Entre 
 . Nous are the very model, has passed 
 from gallantry to devotion, and has in Tristesses 
 et Sourires become edifying though not dull. 
 M. Cherbuliez has not abandoned the novel, 
 but has, since his academicianate, given him- 
 self more and more to politics, and has 
 certainly done nothing equal to Meta Holdenis or 
 the Roman d'une Honnete Femme. Of all the 
 veterans, M. Feuillet alone is now writing; and 
 though his later works have shown no loss of 
 delicacy and some gain in healthiness, he is past 
 the age of masterpieces, and not much more, 
 masterly or not masterly, can be expected from 
 him. 
 
 It can hardly be said that the place of these 
 masters, or at least of the best of them, has been 
 taken ; but substitutes of a kind have of course 
 arisen, and not a few writers, who at the former 
 date were comparative novices, have either gained 
 a wider popularity or have at any rate increased 
 their volume of work. M. Zola, M. Daudet, 
 M. Andr6 Theuriet, M. Ohnet, Madame Henry 
 Gr6ville, M. Paul Bourget, M. Guy de Maupassant, 
 the group of followers in Drozian steps, of whom 
 the chief are M. Armand Silvestre, "Gyp," and 
 the " Vicomte Richard O'Monroy," together with 
 a few others, deserve some individual mention, 
 and we may then proceed to classify them a little. 
 
4 Essays on 
 
 and to indicate some general critical considera- 
 tions. 
 
 ITT . 1 • -^1 L T THE FRENCH 
 
 We must begm with such a Jove as novel. 
 the subject affords, the naturalist Zeus, 
 the dirt-compeller. The popularity of M. Zola does 
 not indeed surprise me, for there has always been a 
 very considerable demand for obscene books ; and 
 when customers can get them without let or 
 hindrance at a moderate price, and with no loss 
 of reputation if they are seen carrying them away, 
 it is not to be supposed that the demand will be 
 greatly lessened, at any rate for a time. Of 
 course I admit that M. Zola is not a caterer for 
 Holywell Street, pure and simple. No competent 
 critic of literature can refuse admiration to much of 
 the Contes a Ninon, or to such an admirable story 
 as that "Attaque du Moulin," which opens the 
 Soirees de Midan, a story yielding to hardly 
 anything of its kind in French, and worthy in its 
 different style to be ranked not far below the 
 " Prise de la Redoute " of M^rim^e, which is the 
 Wandering Willie's Tale (only not supernatural) of 
 French literature. Again, the first part — the first 
 hundred pages or so — of LCEuvre could not, in 
 its style, be very much better than it is. But M. 
 Zola obviously has not the faculty of writing a 
 long story that shall be a story, and according to 
 the wont of many other men of talent who are 
 not men of genius, he is perpetually trying to do 
 by the wrong means what he cannot do by the 
 right. His wearisome nonsense of "documents," 
 
French Novelists 5 
 
 his working in (with a delightful unconsciousness 
 of the bitter satire which his master 
 ^™QygL.'^" Flaubert had already poured on the 
 practice in Bouvdrd et P^cuchei) of 
 a kind of small encyclopaedia of elaborate 
 information into each book, his photographs of 
 the ugly and disgusting, his actual obscenity 
 itself, are all (and all, I repeat, no doubt un- 
 consciously) attempts to get at the secret of the 
 interesting, attempts to secure customers, very 
 much as the legendary barber offered a glass of 
 pine-apple rum to everybody who would come 
 and be shaved, or as some shopkeepers put 
 packets of doubtful sweetmeats into parcels of 
 more doubtful tea. His purely literary merits — 
 intense realisation of object, vivid if coarse phras- 
 ing, and sometimes, but much more rarely, a 
 knack of seizing snatches and scraps of character 
 — would secure him a very small audience without 
 his illegitimate attractions ; and though I admit, 
 of course, that it does not follow that every one 
 who admires M. Zola admires him directly and 
 consciously for his filth, it is undeniably his filth 
 which makes him popular. I do not know any 
 really competent literary critic of any European 
 country who admires M. Zola, without such large 
 restrictions and deductions as render his admira- 
 tion almost worthless. And, indeed, it would be 
 odd if it were otherwise, for M. Zola's process is 
 the negation of the first rule of literature, which is 
 that what is presented shall be presented not 
 
6 Essays on 
 
 merely as it is, but transformed, and, if I may 
 say so, (^wrealised. He is a strong 
 
 , , , i- i -L t. THE FRENCH 
 
 and a capable artist who has gone novel. 
 about to break the rules of art, 
 and in that old contest we know which is the 
 victor. In his latest works. La Terre, Le Rive, 
 La Bite Humaine, M. Zola has exhibited not 
 merely what may be called the qualities of his 
 faculty, but also the defects of his method, perhaps 
 more remarkably than ever. La Terre was by 
 common consent his farthest excursion, and is per- 
 haps the farthest excursion possible, on the quest 
 after a representation of man and nature which 
 shall be not disrealised but disidealised, which shall 
 be confined to the merely ugly, base, and low, to 
 the study of degradation and deformity, and to 
 the study even of these things from what may 
 be called the purely police-court and reporter point 
 of view. The curious book called Le Rive, 
 whether it was or was not a mere bravado to 
 show how the method could be applied without 
 what is commonly called coarseness, illustrated 
 its defects as well as Germinal or La Terre itself. 
 La Bite Humaine, a relapse into the older style, 
 was, by common consent, one of the least in- 
 teresting of what some call the master's works. 
 Indeed, M. Zola's procedure could hardly fail to 
 pall. Whether there is, besides a great vigour of 
 speech and an undoubted faculty of photographic 
 representation, any properly literary quality left in 
 him, is a question on which I am at issue with a 
 
French Novelists 7 
 
 few, though very few, critics of importance. But 
 his system of getting up, exactly 
 
 THE FRENCH 4.1, u t- • • r 
 
 NOVEL. ^^ though he were gomg m for a 
 competitive examination, the tech- 
 nicalities of some subject, is bound to disgust 
 sooner or later all readers who have even an 
 unconscious sense of literary fitness. It is horti- 
 cultural botany in La Faute de VAbbd Mouret, 
 perhaps the best of all his books, the book in 
 which he had gained complete command of his 
 pen, and had not yet denied art and deserted the 
 ideal ; medical matters in Pot-Bouille and La Joie 
 de Vivre ; ecclesiology in Le Rive ; railway terms 
 in La Bite Humaine ; other things elsewhere ; — but 
 whatever it is, the most it can do is to produce a 
 sham appearance of that reality which is only to be 
 reached by inventive skill and artistically heightened 
 representation. Much more frequently it can 
 only weary and disgust. Also, though he is much 
 stronger than his masters in part, les deux Goncourt, 
 he does not possess that rather sickly but still 
 curious refinement of style which may possibly pre- 
 serve them long after he has passed away. Fbr 
 pass away he must, having neither of the two and 
 the only two lasting qualities of literature. One 
 of these is style, the other is the artistic presenta- 
 tion of matter. The first he probably could not 
 have attained, except in a few passages, if he would ; 
 the second he has deliberately rejected, and so the 
 mother of dead dogs awaits him sooner or later. 
 M. Alphonse Daudet is a very different person, 
 
8 Essays on 
 
 though I have never myself been able to share the 
 admiration with which some people 
 
 ... rr-i . f 1.1. \ THE FRENCH 
 
 regard him. The two (now three) novel. 
 Tartarins and such stories of his as the 
 "Ch^vre de M. Sdguin" (an imperishable thing), 
 can never be praised or read too much. Tartarin 
 himself is one of the figures which will not die, 
 and I really do not know that he has had an 
 equal in this immortality since Jerome Paturot, 
 while his creator considerably exceeds Reybaud 
 in purely literary skill. But professed Daudetists 
 would think scorn of any one who regarded his 
 idol as the creator of Tartarin, and the charming, 
 ill-fated, too symbolical she-goat. They rest his 
 fame on the " great works," on the series from Le 
 Petit Chose (if indeed they would admit Le Petit 
 Chose, which I think nearly the best of the whole) 
 to L'Immortel. My own attitude to this Daudet 
 cult is, I am sorry to say, the dissidence of dissent. 
 Jack and Fromont Jeune et Risler Atni are better 
 than their followers, but the imitation of Dickens, 
 which is flagrant in them and in their successors, 
 even down to Port Tarascon, is a grave fault. The 
 taste oiLes Rots en Exile is abominable ; that of Ze 
 Nabab as bad or worse ; that of Numa Roumestan 
 not much better. For all appeal principally to the 
 low and vulgar interest of " books with keys," 
 books in which living persons are supposed to be 
 sketched and satirised. And then we come to 
 that curious pair L Avangiliste and Sapho, where 
 the naturalist griffe seems to have impressed itself 
 
French Novelists 9 
 
 well on M. Daudet's sHoulder. But his faults 
 rose to a climax which seems never 
 ^"^Q^^J^^*^ likely to be surpassed in L'Immortel. 
 The French Academy is not so 
 sacred a body that it may not be attacked 
 and satirised, and it may possibly be true that M. 
 Daudet so mixed his facts and so invented his 
 fictions that he did not directly, and in such a 
 manner as could be brought home in a court of 
 law, or even a court of honour, accuse one actual 
 academician of having gained his place by sending 
 his wife about to be kissed by aged literary 
 libertines, or another of insulting the daughters 
 of academic aspirants, when, to gain grace for 
 their fathers, they act as his amanuenses. But he 
 managed adroitly enough to give the whole book a 
 flavour of personal scandal of the kind, and so to 
 secure its popularity with those who like such 
 scandal. This, as it seems to me, is a baser and 
 more unliterary thing than personalities even as out- 
 rageous as those of our own worst days of journal- 
 ism. Other faults of his are so much the fault of 
 naturalism in general, that what I shall have to 
 say on naturalism generally will almost apply to 
 them. Its dulness appears most in L'^vangSiste, 
 its dirtiness most in Sapho, though both, especially 
 the second, are redeemed in some measure by 
 the fact that M. Daudet, unlike M. Zola, and to 
 an extent not reached by any of the younger 
 French novelists, can conceive a human being, and 
 not merely a Frenchman, first dwarfed to a Parisian, 
 
10 Essays on 
 
 and then dwarfed further to a Parisian according 
 to certain fancies and fashions. It 
 
 ,,,,,,. .r. THE FRENCH 
 
 IS undoubtedly his power over the novel. 
 human that has got him (and so far 
 deservedly) his popularity. But it is lamentable 
 to think how little use he has made of that popu- 
 larity, how he has prostituted it to vulgar personal 
 curiosity and other things nearly (nothing is quite) 
 as bad. That Tartarin will save him I do not 
 doubt, but it will be so as by fire. 
 
 That extraordinary, or at first sight extra- 
 ordinary phenomenon, the popularity of M. Ohnet, 
 first escaped and then puzzled Frenchmen much 
 more than it did English critics — an incident 
 merely illustrative of old proverbs about lookers- 
 on. Of late, no doubt, M. Jules Lemattre and 
 other lively and sprightly writers have taken up 
 the pen of protest ; but I should like to be quite 
 sure that the enormous sale of the books — the 
 batch of six or seven has reached, I believe, 
 collectively much more than a thousand editions — 
 has not stirred up active jealousy to the help of 
 sluggish criticism. Serge Panine and Le Maitre 
 de Forges very early struck not acuter but less 
 interested judges as possessing all the qualities 
 which obtain and deserve a real and immediate 
 popularity. What Mr. Lewis Morris is in Eng- 
 land to a perfect poet in the abstract and to the 
 best poets of the day in the concrete, that M. 
 Georges Ohnet is, exactly, to a perfect novelist in 
 the abstract and to the best or most prominent 
 
French Novelists 1 1 
 
 novelists of the day in the concrete. The remark 
 that popularity of this sort depends 
 ^" NOVEL '^^ °'^ the writer being slightly, but 
 not impressively or insolently, above 
 his audience — above them at a height to 
 which they can easily rise, while such little effort 
 as the rising gives them excites a pleasurable 
 sense of effort, intelligence, and virtue — is a 
 commonplace of the more abstract criticism. It 
 is excellently exemplified by M. Ohnet, who has 
 the further gift of mixing his attractions with 
 great skill and impartiality. He has a style on 
 which experts look down, but which is a little 
 above the ordinary newspaper writer. His stories, 
 not immoderately interesting, have a certain 
 attraction of plot ; his characters, not quite alive, 
 are a long way above the mere mannikins of the 
 average novelist. He does a little cautious but 
 stimulating indecency, has a touch of " document," 
 and blends it (a wondrous mixture !) with a touch 
 of romance. And so he hits that many-winged 
 bird the public on all its wings. He has met 
 indeed a terrible enemy in the implacable and 
 redoubtable " Gyp," who with a pen far skilfuller 
 than his and the expertise of a lady, has made 
 equal merriment of his French and his manners, 
 of his emotions and his ideas of high life ; but this 
 does not interfere with the thousand editions. 
 To be crowned by the Academy, and yet write 
 a scene describing in full the advantage which a 
 French gentleman takes when a French lady is 
 
1 2 Essays on 
 
 thrown on his hospitality, is indeed to score with 
 both barrels. Such a success would, 
 
 , , . , . ., , ... . THE FJIENCH 
 
 no doubt, be impossible either at a novel. 
 time when there were many good 
 novelists, or when those who were good were 
 very good ; but M. Ohnet just attains the happy 
 and contemptible mean between a number of 
 extremes, and he has his reward. Naturally 
 the extremes are all very angry, which need not 
 disturb us. 
 
 No other novelist can touch the popularity, 
 as evidenced by editions, of these three writers 
 and of M. Feuillet when he still writes. Of the 
 rest, there is no one who seems to me welcomed 
 so much below his desert as M. Andrd Theuriet. 
 He has more than once got into considerable 
 circulation, but it has usually been, J will not say 
 by pandering, but by descending to the popular 
 taste for a certain sort of incident, as in Sauva- 
 geonne and Au Paradis des Enfants, though the 
 latter, as it seems to me, is the weakest book he 
 has written. But if he will not give them a 
 seduction or an adultery, his French readers leave, 
 in third or fifth or seventh editions (which is 
 equivalent with us to a difficult sale of the first), 
 stories which, in a certain pure and unaffected 
 style, in straightforward and unhesitating but 
 cleanly grasp of character, and, above all, in 
 sympathetic but not too florid description of 
 nature, are surpassed by no work of the day. 
 Richard Jefleries himself could not have bettered 
 
French Novelists 1 3 
 
 M. Theuriet's treatment of the woods of his be- 
 loved Lorraine or the plains of the 
 
 THE FRENCH T • UM • ..■ r i 
 
 NOVEL, ^oire ; while in conception of human 
 life, not in the least squeamish but 
 not limited to certain sides only, no living 
 French novelist except M. Daudet is his 
 superior. Scarcely so much can be said of 
 Madame Henry Grdville, and the reason is very 
 clear : no mortal can write novels as this clever 
 lady has been writing them for the last ten years 
 and write them good. But her Russian stories 
 are not (as I believe is sometimes thought in 
 England) her only good ones, and in such books 
 as Rose Rozier and Citd Menard, the capacity 
 which has been unluckily frittered away is evident 
 enough. 
 
 In coming to M. Paul Bourget and M. Guy de 
 Maupassant I come to dangerous ground. Both 
 are representative figures of the newest school of 
 novel-writing in France, and both are exceedingly 
 clever men. I think myself that M. de Maupas- 
 sant is the most really gifted writer, both in prose 
 and verse, that has appeared in France for more 
 than twenty years ; and I am sure that the country 
 has not in that time had a more careful, learned, 
 and accomplished craftsman — in verse and prose — 
 than M. Bourget. But one devil seems to me to 
 have entered into M. de Maupassant, and two 
 devils — two very bad devils indeed — into M. 
 Bourget. Both seem to think it absolutely neces- 
 sary to transgress into subjects popularly known 
 
14 Essays on 
 
 as "forbidden" — a phrase which, in France at 
 least, seems to mean that a popular 
 
 , , . , , , .1 THE FRENCH 
 
 writer is forbidden to take up any novel. 
 other. One seems to think it neces- 
 sary to treat those subjects, and all subjects, 
 with that dreary analysis, falsely so called, which 
 the New World has sent with the Colorado beetle, 
 and the phylloxera, and a hundred other plagues, 
 to punish the rashness of Columbus and the crimes 
 of his followers of all nations. Now as for Devil 
 No. I it is awkward' speaking. I profess myself 
 to be absolutely free from squeamishness. I still 
 think the condemners of Baudelaire's condemned 
 poems fools for their pains. I am still a faithful 
 lover of Madeleine de Maupin, and I think, to 
 come to close quarters, M. de Maupassant's own 
 Boule de Smf one of the most finished and delight- 
 ful pieces of tragic comedy that our age has 
 produced. But if we are to be " pagan," let us in 
 the first place for Heaven's sake remember that 
 the pagan Pantheon was a Pantheon ; that your 
 Greek did not worship the god who rhymes to 
 " bedrape us " all day long and every day in the 
 year. And let us in the second place remember 
 that both that disproportioned deity and his 
 comelier mother were in their original functions 
 and capacities "very merry, laughing, quaffing, 
 and unthinking" divinities, quite good-natured, 
 unless people blasphemed them (which I have not 
 the least intention of doing), and busy in their 
 rather irregular fashion with making people happy 
 
French Novelists 1 5 
 
 and comfortable. " Our Lady of Pain " is quite 
 a modern invention ; she never gave 
 
 THE FRENCH _ • ■ .1 1 j i- 1. 
 
 NOVEL P^'" ^" ^"^ °^" times to any one 
 who did not go out of his or her 
 way to resist or slight her deity. Now these two 
 things your modern pagan novelists, and especially 
 those two very clever ones of whom I am more 
 particularly speaking, do constantly neglect. M. 
 de Maupassant is quite independent of his favourite 
 motive as a mere stimulus, but he seems to drag 
 it in as if it bewitched him. He can write on 
 little else ; nor should I care if his writing on 
 little else gave us always or often such true 
 and strange tragedy as in M. Parent ; such ad- 
 mirable satire and tragi-comic portraiture as in 
 the little masterpiece already inentioned ; even 
 such Aristophanic comedy as Les Sceurs Rondoli. 
 But it does not. In most of his longer works and 
 many of his shorter pieces, though there is gener- 
 ally vigorous writing and constantly a creative or 
 interpretative touch (for M. de Maupassant, as has 
 been said, is a poet), the naturalist dulness and 
 the naturalist dirtiness strive for the mastery in a 
 monotonous wrestle. Once indeed, and fortunately 
 of late, though his work since has not kept the 
 level, M. de Maupassant has shown what he can 
 do, — what French novel-writing, when it throws off 
 the naturalist and pessimist yoke, will do, — in the 
 admirable novel oi Pierre et Jean. This is itself 
 not exactly a story for the young person, but it 
 is handled in such' a manner that, as in all great 
 
1 6 Essays on 
 
 handling of such or any other matters, the mere 
 attraction of the " improper " is not felt 
 at all. Pierre's mother might never have ™^ovel.'^" 
 misconducted herself, his friend of the 
 brasserie might be a rosiere of the purest kind for 
 all that the reader cares, except as these things 
 bear on the story. I have no hesitation in calling 
 Pierre et Jean the best French novel which has 
 been written since 1870. 
 
 As for M. Bourget, he is never exactly dirty, but 
 he appears to be under a complete obsession of 
 erotic ideas — under a kind of ndvrose, to use the 
 appropriate slang. In one of his stories (I think 
 L Irreparable was published before M. Ohnet, 
 greatly daring, conceived the idea above referred 
 to) a gentleman of fashion and family plays the 
 complete part of Lovelace to a young girl who 
 is guest in his own house. In another a French 
 visitor to England relates, with a frankness which 
 must certainly charm English girls who have 
 extended their usual welcome to French visitors, 
 the strange thoughts which came to him when 
 a young lady played tennis with him, walked with 
 him, talked to him, and in other respects behaved 
 as any English girl would. And then M. Bourget 
 is an " analyst," — Heaven help him ! — a lowest 
 depth from which it may be Aphrodite herself, 
 recognising a good though erring servant, has 
 saved the author of Boule de Suif. In the pre- 
 face to one of his books M. Bourget describes how 
 he and Mr. Henry James held stupendous and 
 
French Novelists 1 7 
 
 terrible converse in the "hospitable AtkencBum." 
 A meeting of two clever and agreeable 
 
 THE FRENCH . /. ^ i i 
 
 NOVEL. Persons IS, of course, not stupendous 
 and terrible in itself, but the notion of 
 the author of L' Irriparable talking to the author 
 of the Portrait of a Lady is full of form 
 and fear. If it had only been Mr. Howells, 
 the thing would have been completer still, and the 
 poor old novel of the past could hardly have got 
 over that duumvirate. 
 
 For analysis (to give it its own word) is 
 perhaps even a worse spirit than naturalism. I 
 make these remarks certainly in no hostile spirit 
 to M. Bourget, for whose talents I have a great 
 respect, and to whom I am indebted for exceed- 
 ingly amiable notice of certain work of mine. 
 But the analytic method seems to me to stand to 
 the photographic method in the relationship of 
 something that is almost always bad to something 
 that is sometimes good. There are times and 
 seasons, as I have admitted above, when M. Zola's 
 system produces, for a brief space at any rate, 
 work that could hardly be surpassed in merit by 
 any other method. It is rather in his indis- 
 criminate (or, as some would say, his very dis- 
 criminating) choice of subjects, and in his stint- 
 ing himself of other and far better methods, that 
 the naturalist goes wrong. The analyst, as he is 
 understood by the American, French, and to, some 
 extent Russian schools, who derive at farther or 
 nearer stages from Balzac and Stendhal, is in this 
 
 
 
1 8 Essays on 
 
 worse off than the naturalist pure and simple, 
 that instead of mistaking a partial for 
 a universal method, he takes for a^^^^^^j^ 
 complete method what is not strictly 
 a method at all. The painful copying of an 
 actual scene or action sometimes results in 
 something that is at least an integral part of a 
 story. The elaborate dissection of motives and 
 characters can only result in something that stops 
 short of being even part of a story — that is only 
 preliminary to part of a story. To illustrate the 
 comparison forcibly if grotesquely, the naturalist 
 is as one who is supposed to supply a complete 
 meal and offers nothing but dry bread. The 
 analyst offers mere dough — something which, 
 valuable and indispensable as a stage in a process 
 of manufacturing the eatable, is not yet eatable 
 at all. It is fair to M. Bourget to say that he 
 himself has never been guilty of the utter futility 
 of some of his American contemporaries {not of 
 Mr. Henry James). It is difficult for a French- 
 man to rise to the modern conception that a tale 
 ought to tell nothing. 
 
 Few words must suffice for the group of tale- 
 tellers of whom I have mentioned the three chief. 
 They are sometimes very naughty, but I own to 
 a weakness for them. For Rabelaisian fun M. 
 Armand Silvestre has scarcely had a superior 
 since the master himself; though (without that 
 master's excuse and apparently out of pure relish 
 for the thing) he is often simply nasty. At these 
 
French Novelists 19 
 
 times he makes me ill. If he would only, now 
 that he has laid down his Parnassian 
 
 THE FRENCH , i / j • ^ 
 
 NOVEL, trumpet (and. a very nice trumpet; 
 too, it was), take in hand some 
 other instrument than that which plays such 
 an important part in the choruses of M. de 
 Pourceaugnac I But Moli^re's infatuation for it, 
 if sufficiently unintelligible to an Englishman, 
 had excuses which are not open to M. Silvestre. 
 The pleasant lady who calls herself " Gyp " is a 
 little monotonous in her perpetual handling of the 
 " triangle," but at any rate she is never unladylike, 
 and nearly always amusing. Also she has one 
 grand distinction — she has invented in her Eve a 
 type, or rather an individuality, which is of the 
 rarest in French novels — the young girl, who is 
 neither a model of innocence on the way to 
 become something not at all innocent, nor a 
 Hoyden, nor a Lydia Languish. That she may 
 have been imagined not least as a foil to the frail 
 dames around her, is quite conceivable, but that 
 hardly detracts from her excellence. Moreover, 
 " Gyp " is of the right race and lineage of the 
 conteurs who have made France famous. She is 
 not for the wise ones, for the grave or the precise 
 ones, but she is for those who can laugh, not 
 foolishly — and little there is nowadays in the 
 literature of any nation which is for such. The 
 allegorically and poetically named viscount is, I 
 think, on the whole inferior to M. Silvestre and 
 Madame de Martel. His later books are certainly 
 
20 Essays on 
 
 inferior both to them and to himself; but Le 
 Capitaine Parabfere and his brother 
 plungers are excellent company for the^^g^EL.^*^ 
 most part, when the reader is not 
 a serious person and does not want serious 
 persons for his companions. They are a merry 
 family, these children of the Vie Parisienne and 
 of M. Droz, though they are, perhaps, never quite 
 so good as their father was in the days of old. 
 
 In the great company of novels and novelists 
 which is present to the memory, there are not a 
 few books and not a few authors (independent ol 
 the minor naturalists, of whom presently) deserving 
 of some mention. There is a whole group oi 
 Provengal novelists, of whom M. Noel Blache is 
 one of the best, and who have given to the 
 southern provinces something of the same pro- 
 minence in recent French novel -writing thai 
 Brittany used to enjoy in the heyday of the 
 Romantic movement. Indeed, most provincial 
 districts have their groups of painters in words 
 one of the most remarkable of whom is the authoi 
 of a singularly powerful series (JLe Forestier, Li 
 Marinier, Le Berger), dealing with the districts 
 north and south, but especially south, of the 
 seaward course of the Loire. The author, M 
 Jules de Glouvet, as his pseudonym went, has 
 since obtained a not wholly happy notoriety in his 
 profession of lawyer. The warmest admirers o: 
 M. Viard may exclaim at me for putting " Pierre 
 Loti " only in this category. Certainly Le Mariagi 
 
French Novelists 2 1 
 
 de Loti is a very charming, though an extremely- 
 affected book of its kind : and there 
 
 THE FRENCH . - . j, t c^ , j ■ 
 
 NOVEL. ^""^ passages m Aztyadi, Le Spaht, 
 Mon Frere Yves, P/ckeur d'Islande, 
 which display great cleverness. But I have 
 myself far too little affection for " precious- 
 ness," either in French or English, to care very 
 greatly for a style which, though very closely 
 connected with some styles now popular with us, 
 seems to me to fail in all the best qualities of 
 prose — simplicity, sanity, proportion, and, in the 
 proper sense, grace. Attention has been recently 
 drawn in England to the charming fiction and the 
 urbane criticism of M. Anatole France, whose 
 chief novel is Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. M. 
 France, like a majority of the best writers of the 
 day, is an old Parnassian (they were very nearly 
 Quatre-vingt Rimeurs, as M. de Banville altered it, 
 in the three brave galleys of '66, '69, and ^^6, 
 but few there are that abide by the oar now), and 
 his prose shows the old practice in its style, as 
 well as a faculty quite independent of such practice 
 in the matter. I, at least, also think that the 
 best work of a much better -known poet, M. 
 Coppde, is in prose fiction. M. Jean Ricard 
 made his appearance some years ago, with a lurid 
 but very powerful little story entitled Pitchoun! 
 (the southern for " little one ") ; his later work 
 has not quite fulfilled its promise. In France, 
 as in England, considerable attempts have been 
 made to resuscitate the Dumasian romance — a 
 
22 Essays on 
 
 praiseworthy attempt which has not hitherto beer 
 crowned with any very great success. 
 Perhaps M. Paul Mahalin (of whose ■^•'^^^^^_''" 
 cheerfully -named HStellerie Sanglante 
 it cannot be said that the title, like the 
 Honourable Mrs. Boldero, ^^prommy pas payy ") is 
 the chief of them. Of the eminent M. Fortune 
 du Boisgobey, in whom, to a not inconsiderable 
 English body of clients, French novelists appeal 
 to be summed up, I desire to speak with a\. 
 respect. Novels which devote themselves to the 
 elaborate detection of crime appear to have e 
 singular fascination for some people — me thej 
 remind unpleasantly of a newspaper ; but that is 
 a mere personal matter, and has nothing to dc 
 with criticism, which has only to pronounce the 
 now veteran author very good of his kind. Bui 
 to go through the various novels and novelists o: 
 whom and which memory, direct or refreshed 
 reminds me would be a long and, I fear, to readers 
 a tedious process. Let me only mention among 
 books some years old, M. Henry Cochin's singu- 
 larly original and delicate story of a strange case 
 of mental aberration (the belief of an old Professoi 
 that time is going backward), and among those 
 which are younger, M. Pierre Giffard's remark- 
 ably strong and, despite its resemblance to the 
 Roman Comique, fresh Tournie du Pkre Thomas 
 a book not for school-girls. If I do not put or 
 a level with these M. Leon de Tinseau's verj 
 pleasant LAttelage de la Marquise, it is because M 
 
French Novelists 23 
 
 de Tinseau has unluckily gone on writing things 
 by no means equal to his first attempt. 
 jjQ^gj^ M. Ferdinand Fabre's stories of French 
 clerical life have their fervent ad- 
 mirers ; M. Georges Duruy and M. Henry 
 Rabusson follow M. Feuillet, with great talent 
 if not with great charm ; and of a far older 
 writer, M. Catulle Mend^s, another Parnassian, 
 all one can say is, that Providence has given him 
 a quite extraordinary faculty of writing and grace 
 of imagination. " Instead of which," to use 
 once more the famous old joke, "he goes about" 
 writing things which in England would be promptly 
 seized by the police, and which, even in France, 
 must have some difficulties with that body. I 
 need hardly go further ; though I have missed a 
 few noteworthy writers and a great multitude of 
 what the private lingo of the critic, who very 
 likely would do no better, but who has at least 
 the resolution to do no worse, calls circulating 
 library novelists, often commendable, often inter- 
 esting, but seldom extraordinarily good. 
 
 " I don't call this very popular pie," said the 
 disdainful (but even in its disdain, democratic) 
 voice of. the little boy whom Mr. Grant White 
 met in an obscure New York eating-house, and 
 who thus expressed his disapproval of the sample 
 of the national viand placed before him. To this 
 scion of democracy " popular " meant " good." It 
 does not mean the same to me ; and I am bound 
 to admit that in the literal sense M. Ohnet, M. 
 
24 Essays on 
 
 Zola, M. Daudet, and others do furnish "popular 
 pie'' to the novel -readers of France. 
 But I can by no means admit that™^^^™''" 
 it is pie as good as has been fur- 
 nished by any generation (taking a literary 
 generation at some twenty years) since about 
 1820, or a little later, when the example of Scott 
 stirred up French novelists to try fiction on a 
 somewhat larger scale and with a somewhat wider 
 appeal than the tales and novelettes which had 
 satisfied France from the disappearance of Le- 
 sage. It is the peculiarity of novels more than 
 of any other literary kind, that they are usually 
 produced, when they are good, in schools ; and of 
 no country is this so true as of France. We 
 generally think of the Romantic novel as ex- 
 emplified only, and it would be quite a sufficient 
 "only," by the great names of Dumas, Balzac, 
 Bernard, Mdrimde. But round these great ones 
 many minor writers were grouped, and such books 
 as — to take one style only — Feval s Fie des (Treves 
 and Achard's Belle-Rose were as good as all but 
 the best of Alexandre. To my taste at any rate 
 the hills have sunk in level notably since those 
 days, while the plains have hardly risen, and I can 
 see at least part of the reason. A Frenchman, 
 unlike an Englishman or a German, rarely does 
 good work except in a school, and the only school 
 of much strength nowadays is the school of M. 
 Zola. I have said something of the chief, I may 
 now say something of the followers. Except M. 
 
French Novelists 25 
 
 de Maupassant (who is a free lance, and whom 
 I have sometimes suspected of playing 
 
 THE FRENCH ,-, ,. ^s^i i, 
 
 NOVEL, tricks on his master), they are but 
 a feeble folk. M. Zola was right, 
 indeed, in protesting in a rather Johnsonian 
 manner against the rebuke administered to him 
 by some rebellious pupils the other day. They 
 certainly did not carry much weight either for 
 eminence in the school or for eminence in letters. 
 But of the orthodox Zolaists, who is there of whom 
 any sane criticism can say, having read him, any- 
 thing that is good ? The same suspicion of farce 
 indeed attaches to some of them which, as I have 
 said, attaches in my mind to M. Guy de Maupassant. 
 When they expatiate (with ample documents) on 
 the immense relief which a person who is suffering 
 from dysentery experiences in returning from 
 casual quarters to his own chambers, when they 
 parody the famous scene in Pot-Bouilh by 
 elaborately describing the birth of a calf (both 
 these instances are textual and comparatively 
 harmless), it is really difficult to think that they 
 are not, in more senses than one, M. Zola's merry 
 men. Sometimes (the greatest farceur of all of 
 them, M. J. K. Huysmans, is the best instance) 
 they have something of their master's vigour ; but 
 none of them has anything of his occasional 
 grasp of actual character, and all exaggerate the 
 absurd pessimism which is the characteristic of 
 such philosophy as he professes. Whether this 
 world is the best of all possible worlds is a 
 
26 Essays on 
 
 complicated, religious, and philosophical question. 
 No doubt it has in it toothache, 
 gout, bad wine, bad weather, bad™^™^^*^" 
 poets, puiifery, political charlatans, 
 American cheese, advanced thinkers, spelling 
 reformers, and many other evil beasts and 
 evil things. But it is certainly not such a 
 bad world as the Zolaists, with a mono- 
 tonous and unimaginative unanimity, make out. 
 I have hinted before that the objection to the 
 new French morality or immorality is not so 
 much that it is immoral, as that it is utterly 
 unamusing and unpleasant. "Loveless, joyless, 
 unendeared," are three words which Milton might 
 have written after reading any novel of the school, 
 except one or two of M. de Maupassant's, when 
 he forgets that he is a naturalist and remembers 
 that he is a man of genius. I remember one 
 book in particular (it is unnecessary to mention 
 it by name, especially as the unlucky author has, 
 1 believe, since been shot in a press duel, the most 
 irrational and unheroic, as practised in France, 
 of all encounters, even in the eyes of men who 
 rather believe in duelling). It gave an account 
 of the life of a French schoolboy. He was a 
 dirty, immoral, and dull little schoolboy ; but the 
 most dreadful thing about him was his entire 
 failure to get any pleasure out of his misbehaviour. 
 The word for the book and the boy both was 
 assommant, which, if I recollect aright, was what 
 the poor little wretch found Scott to be. " Almost 
 
French Novelists 27 
 
 thou persuadest me to be a Christian," said a 
 famous character, whether ironically 
 NOVEL. °'' "°* ^'^ learned dispute. Those 
 of us who do not require persuasion 
 may, on this point at least, if we have 
 some charity, recognise this one virtue in the 
 latest school of French novel. It must surely 
 not almost but altogether persuade any reason- 
 able reader tha;t whatever royal road there may 
 be to happiness, the rejection of conventional 
 religion, conventional morals, and conventional 
 propriety is not that road. 
 
 To sum up, then, the French novel does not 
 appear to be in any more healthy condition than 
 the English ; indeed, it may be said to be in a 
 much less healthy condition. Taking it all round, 
 the superiority of workmanship, of which it has 
 been usually said that they order these things better 
 in France, has for a long time been gradually dis- 
 appearing in all branches of literature, and in none 
 so much as novel-writing. As a literary cause of 
 inferiority, I do not think that any deserves to be 
 ranked higher than the opposite of that cause 
 which, according to some good people, has 
 weakened our own novel — the absence of con- 
 sideration for the young person. Doubtless it is 
 not good to write always in the fear of Mr. Pod- 
 snap, but it is a great deal worse to live in a 
 perennial state of saying, "Who's afraid of Mr. 
 Podsnap ?" " Be virtuous, and have done with it," 
 said Mr. Carlyle, with not altogether unjustifiable 
 
28 Essays on 
 
 temper, to the sentiment-praters of the eighteenth 
 century. " Be vicious and have done 
 with it" is what I feel inclined to™^^^^^"" 
 say to the praters of the other 
 thing in the nineteenth. It may perhaps appear 
 to some people that I harp too much on 
 this string ; they would not think so if they had 
 read, say, a couple of hundred French novels every 
 year for the last decade. A hunger and thirst 
 after Mrs. Trimmer, an unholy affection for 
 Hannah More, are the natural results of a long 
 course of reading about plain and fancy adultery, 
 diversified only by a few far from brilliant excur- 
 sions in the manner of M. Belot and M. Bonnetain. 
 The horrible conventionality of invariably falling 
 in love with some one else than one's husband, 
 the intolerable infringement of the rights of man, 
 which says, " Thou shalt not love thine own wife," 
 might surely have been perceived by such 
 devotees of liberty (in print) as the descendants of 
 the men of '89. 
 
 I should not, however, be indisposed to see 
 something of a political explanation in the matter, 
 which, it need hardly be said, is only part of a 
 larger matter, to wit, the steady descent of French 
 genius ever since the final overthrow of the old 
 monarchy in 1830. For sixty years, as nearly 
 as may be, it has been more and more difficult for 
 any Frenchman of genius and feeling to take an 
 interest in the political institutions of his country ; 
 and much debated as the connection of politics 
 
French Novelists 29 
 
 and literature is, it is simply an historical fact 
 that almost all periods of great 
 NOVEL, literary development have been periods 
 of great national prosperity or of 
 brilliant national struggle. The age of Pericles, 
 the age of Elizabeth, the age of Augustus, the 
 age of the great Spanish poets, the age of Louis 
 Quatorze, the age of that great English fight 
 against anarchy and tyranny combined which 
 some affect to regret, have been the chief literary 
 ages of the world. Now in France, since 1830, 
 every Government of every form has been more 
 inglorious in the beginning and more unfortunate 
 in the end than that before it. For a moment it 
 seemed as if the great disaster of 1870 might 
 bring about something better, but it notoriously 
 has done nothing but plunge the nation deeper 
 than ever in government by mediocrities and dis- 
 honesties. The movement of 1830 itself was 
 notoriously an attempt to do without politics in 
 literature altogether, and to this was probably due 
 its short-lived character. 
 
 I never knew in history any example of a 
 people who appear to have lost that art of enjoy- 
 ment which is really the art of life, so much as the 
 French, judged by their literature and their politics 
 both. At the present day the common French 
 remark, " Have we laughed ?" has been set down 
 by some humorists as a proof that to be amused 
 is a rare and strange thing among the people. 
 That is a joke or an over-refinement ; but certainly 
 
30 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 the nation, for all its cafds and its theatres, its 
 exhibitions and its popular fetes, is 
 both in itself and in its current litera- ^^q^^^'^" 
 ture, for the most part, a profoundly 
 dismal one. Of its old beliefs, the belief 
 that it is being betrayed by everybody survives 
 almost alone, coupled with a certain belief in 
 money-making. It does not take its politics, or 
 its pleasures, or its literature with the slightest 
 relish ; and there is no truer copybook maxim 
 than that what you do not do with a relish you 
 do not do well. 
 
II 
 
 ANTHONY HAMILTON 
 
 There are one or two persons in literary his- 
 tory who have the curious distinction 
 HAMfLTON °^ being known to quite different 
 classes of readers through different 
 works or sets of works, and Anthony Hamilton 
 is one of them. Sometimes the author of 
 the Mdmoires de Grammont seems to have quite 
 overshadowed the author of the Quatre Facardins 
 and its companion tales ; sometimes the reverse is 
 the case. In England, as is natural, the tales have 
 been for the most part eclipsed by the memoirs ; 
 in France the contrary, though less universally, 
 has happened. Dealing in the main with an 
 English subject, edited sumptuously in the last 
 century by Horace Walpole, with a famous gallery 
 of illustrations, a favourite study and source of 
 quotation with many English authors of the first 
 rank, the Grammont memoirs have all the ad- 
 vantages that are not purely literary; and, for 
 a time at any rate (perhaps only for a time), these 
 
32 Essays on 
 
 usually outweigh the advantages that are purely 
 literary. The best way is, as in 
 all such cases, to like both, and to ha™lton. 
 like the author in all his aspects. 
 He is a very interesting person looked at from 
 the historical side of literature, no doubt ; but he 
 is altogether charming by himself, and without 
 any historical considerations whatsoever. He 
 would have been equally charming, except that 
 he would certainly not have written so well, if he 
 had written after Voltaire instead of before him, 
 if the BMier had been the offspring instead of the 
 father of the Taureau Blanc. Four nations share 
 the credit of him. Scotland boasts itself on his 
 extraction, Ireland on his birth, England on his 
 education and nationality, France on his language 
 and literary training. There is something of the 
 best of all four in him, though undoubtedly the 
 French and Irish elements predominate. 
 
 The details of Hamilton's life have not been 
 preserved in any great abundance, and, if they had 
 been, it would be unnecessary to recount them 
 here at length. He was certainly a cadet of the 
 Abercorn branch of the house of Hamilton, but 
 his exact parentage is differently stated, owing, 
 apparently, to some confusion of titles in the 
 French accounts, and of proper names in the 
 English. He seems to have been in reality the 
 third son of Sir George Hamilton, who was the 
 fourth son of James, first Earl of Abercorn. He 
 was born in Ireland (Voltaire, with whom nobody 
 
French Novelists 33 
 
 else agrees, says at Caen) in or about the year 
 1646. His family is said to have 
 HAMILTON, taken refuge in France after the 
 death of Charles I. — more probably 
 after the Irish successes of Cromwell — and 
 Anthony lived there until the Restoration. 
 A year or two afterwards the Chevalier de 
 Grammont made his appearance at the English 
 Court, and after various flirtations, bestowed his 
 rather compromising attentions on Hamilton's 
 sister Elizabeth. Every one knows the story of 
 Grammont's sudden disappearance from London, 
 of his being caught up at Dover by the brothers, 
 Anthony and George, with the polite question, 
 " Chevalier, n'avez-vous rien oublid a Londres ? " 
 and of the obliging answer which was at once 
 returned, " Pardonnez-moi, Messieurs, j'ai oubli^ 
 d'6pouser mademoiselle votre sceur." It is perhaps 
 needless to say that Hamilton himself does not 
 tell the story. But though it does not look like 
 the beginning of a prosperous marriage, appear- 
 ances were deceptive. Miss Hamilton, if her 
 brother's description and the extant portraits may 
 be trusted, was extremely pretty ; and though the 
 ladies of the French Court did not like her, she 
 was a favourite with the men, and apparently 
 retained, as far as they were retainable, the 
 affections of her remarkable husband. Anthony 
 Hamilton often visited his sister and the brother- 
 in-law, whose historiographer he became ; but 
 during Charles the Second's reign and James 
 
 D 
 
34 Essays on 
 
 the Second's (during the latter he enjoyed 
 some preferment in Ireland) England 
 was his headquarters. The Revolu- 1^1™!°™!?. 
 tion established him finally in France, 
 where he formed part of the melancholy Court 
 of St. Germains. After a time the Duchesse 
 du Maine impressed him for the wit combats of 
 her famous miniature court at Sceaux (the " Court 
 of Seals," as an English wiseacre once translated 
 it). In his later days he became devout, in 
 accordance with the general tendencies of his 
 family. His sister had already, with great diffi- 
 culty, succeeded in superinducing a very peculiar 
 sort of piety over her husband's very mundane 
 temperament. According to a not too trustworthy 
 tradition, which reposes on the very doubtful 
 authority of the younger Crebillon, this estimable 
 quality of the Hamilton family had disastrous 
 results for literature. Manuscripts, containing in 
 especial the conclusion of the Quatre Facardins, 
 were, it is said, destroyed by the author's niece as 
 immoral, and contrary to religion. Hamilton 
 himself died an old man on the 6th August 
 1720. Like his sister, he was not wholly popular 
 in France. The French had made up their minds 
 that a witty person ought to be gai, and Hamilton 
 had the peculiarly English habit of saying the 
 most humorous and sometimes the most cutting 
 things with a perfectly grave countenance. There 
 IS nothing surprising in this ; it is rather surpris- 
 ing that, considering how fully this peculiarity is 
 
French Novelists 35 
 
 reflected in his works, those works themselves 
 should have been so popular in France 
 
 ANTHONY « ■*■ A 
 
 HAMILTON. ^^ *°^y ^^'^^ ^^^" ^"d Still are. 
 But the perfection of the language, 
 in which the severest critics have found no 
 trace of solecism, doubtless propitiated readers, 
 although Hamilton's English manners provoked 
 a jealousy in personal intercourse. 
 
 His works, which, as usual at the time, were 
 known in manuscript for some time before they 
 were printed, and which (also as usual at the 
 time) are in some cases unfinished, are not very 
 bulky, but at least as far as the prose is con- 
 cerned, there is no alloy in them. First come the 
 Mdmoires de Grammont, which were published at 
 Cologne in 17 13, some years after Grammont's 
 death. Then (taking Renouard's edition) come 
 the tales Fleur d&pine, Le Bdier, Les Quatre 
 Facardins, ZMyde, and L'Enchanteur Faustus. 
 The first three appeared in 1730, the others later; 
 and unpublished poems and fragments continued 
 to be added in different editions during the 
 eighteenth century. These with some letters fill 
 a third volume, to which in some copies is added 
 a completion by the Duke de Ldvis of the un- 
 finished tales of Les Quatre Facardins and Z^n^yde. 
 The whole fills (omitting the L^vis part) some 
 twelve or thirteen hundred smallish octavo pages, 
 a respectable but not alarmingly ponderous literary 
 baggage. 
 
 Of this work I have already hinted that the 
 
36 Essays on 
 
 most considerable single example and the most 
 generally popular is not, in my opinion, 
 by any means the best. TYi^ M ^moires ^^^1^^^, 
 de Grammont form a remarkable docu- 
 ment for English history and for social history. 
 The book generally is agreeable reading to 
 those who like personal scandal about dis- 
 tinguished persons, and some of its stories, 
 such as those of the Chevalier's Turin escapades, 
 and the history of George Hamilton's bootless 
 journey to Bretby in quest of the Countess of 
 Chesterfield, are intrinsically amusing. The hero 
 was no doubt a typical personage ; and though, 
 except wit and good manners, it is difficult to 
 discern what merits he had, he must have had 
 some to acquire something like the devotion of 
 two such men as Saint-Evremond and Anthony 
 Hamilton. But inveterate though modern pre- 
 judices find it difficult to excuse his cheating at 
 .cards. The end of the book, too, goes off into 
 details of intrigues such as the Temple-Hobart 
 business, which are extremely complicated, and in 
 which it is difficult to feel much interest. In 
 fact, the historical importance of the volume, 
 frivolous as it is in appearance, is altogether 
 superior to its literary merit. If Hamilton, an 
 Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a fervent 
 Jacobite, had not shown us what a scoundrel 
 Richard Talbot was, we might have accepted the 
 ingenious contention of some Irish historians that 
 he was a maligned and virtuous patriot. No one 
 
French Novelists 37 
 
 historical passage enables us so thoroughly to 
 understand the Dorimants and the 
 HAMILTON. Vainloves of Restoration comedy as 
 the famous scene in which the Duke 
 of York's favourites undertook at a suggestion 
 to swear away Anne Hyde's character — and 
 their own. But, quite contrary to Hamilton's 
 general habit, the matter of the book is' far 
 superior to the manner. The author allows him- 
 self hardly any of that play of delicate verbal 
 humour which irradiates every page of the Contes. 
 It is not even certain that the words in which he 
 refers to Grammont's youthful military exploits, 
 " Les r^cits qu'il en a si souvent faits n'ont rien 
 diminud de leur dclat," have the zest of ironic 
 insinuation which would pretty certainly attach 
 to them if they occurred in Fleur d'Apine or 
 the Facardins. Hero-w6rship of the unheroic is 
 proverbially damping to the genius, and Hamilton 
 never seems to have worked himself into the 
 really sublime mood of ethical paradox in which 
 Saint-Evremond contemplated persons like Gram- 
 mont and Mademoiselle de Kdroualle. It would 
 be agreeable if we could take the whole of the 
 M^moires as an ultra-Swiftian piece of Swiftian 
 satire, in which case they would make one of the 
 capital books of literature ; but to affect to find 
 anything of the sort in them would be to avow a 
 faculty for mare's -nesting. From beginning to 
 end there is hardly one of the sudden flashes — 
 sparing but necessary — which reveal an ironic 
 
38 Essays on 
 
 intention of this kind. Indeed, the tradition 
 which will have it that much if 
 not most of the book was composed HrMn°TON. 
 at Grammont's own dictation, is not 
 only intrinsically worthy of credence, but will 
 account for many of its peculiarities, and for the 
 absence from it of Hamilton's best qualities. 
 That it is an amusing book need not be said, but 
 may be shown to anybody who does not know 
 it by a translation of the story of the great card- 
 sharping party. Grammont and his faithful 
 Achates, Matta (a rather mysterious personage, 
 who is said to have been related to Brant6me, 
 and deserves the relationship, inasmuch as he is 
 one of the pleasantest figures in the book), have 
 exhausted their resources in lavish entertaining, 
 and the question is how to raise the wind. The 
 Chevalier, who has already discovered how to 
 gain and retain the favours of fortune, treats the 
 question very seriously, Matta with an unseemly 
 levity — 
 
 " Joking," said the Chevalier, " would be suitable if you 
 had the least idea what to do. Moreover, one had need 
 be really witty to poke ftin at everything, as you try to do. 
 The deuce is in it ! You will still be joking without 
 remembering that the state of the case is serious. Listen. 
 I am going to-morrow to headquarters. I shall dine with 
 the Comte de Cam&an, and I will ask him to supper." 
 
 " Where ? " said Matta. 
 
 " Here," answered the Chevalier. 
 
 " You must be mad, my poor friend. This is one of 
 your Lyons projects [Grammont had been piteously rooked 
 
French Novelists 39 
 
 there by a Swiss horse-dealer]. We have neither money 
 nor credit. You know it ; and to set matters 
 
 ANTHONY . , ^ ^ ^ . „ 
 
 HAMILTON. "S^* y°^ ^^"* *° ^"'^ ^ supper." 
 
 " O man of costive brain ! " said the 
 Chevalier. "Is it possible that after we have foregathered 
 so long not a touch of imagination has come to you ? The 
 Comte de Camdran plays at quinze ; so do I. We want 
 money ; he has plenty of it. I will order an excellent 
 supper ; he shall pay for it. Call your maitre d'h&tel to 
 speak to me, and don't trouble yourself about anything 
 except certain precautions which it is good to take in such 
 a case." 
 
 " How ? " quoth Matta. 
 
 "In this "way," said the Chevalier, "for I see that one 
 must explain the very clearest things to you. You command 
 the foot-guards here, don't you ? At nightfall you will make 
 Sergeant La Place take fifteen or twenty men, fully armed, 
 and station them, lying down, between here and head- 
 quarters." 
 
 " What ! " cried Matta, " an ambuscade ? I really think 
 — God forgive me ! — that you are proposing to rob this 
 unlucky Savoyard. If you mean that I am not with 
 you." 
 
 " Poor creature ! " said the Chevalier. " The truth is 
 as follows. We shall probably win his money; and the 
 Piedmontese, though excellent fellows, are somewhat sus- 
 picious and mistrustful. He commands the cavalry. You 
 know that you can never hold your tongue, and you are 
 capable of letting fly some awkward joke to tease him. 
 Suppose he were to imagine that he is being cheated, and 
 be annoyed at it, who knows what may happen ? For he 
 generally has a dozen troopers at his heels. Therefore it 
 is good to take some means to put ourselves in the right, 
 however angry he may be at his losses." 
 
 " Embrace me, dear Chevalier ! " cried Matta, holding 
 his own sides with laughter. " Embrace me ; you are too 
 admirable! I thought, like a fool as I was, when you 
 spoke of taking precautions, that there was nothing to do 
 but arrange a table and some cards, or perhaps to provide 
 
40 Essays on 
 
 some false dice. I never should have thought of ordering 
 up a detachment of infantry as supports to 
 a man who was playing quinze. You are ^'^'^'^^'^ 
 certainly a great soldier already." 
 
 The plan is carried out, the dupe falls into the 
 snare, Grammont deliberately cheats, and Matta, 
 not altogether liking what is going on, drinks 
 deeply in order to send himself to sleep. 
 
 At first they only staked three or four pistoles, as if for a 
 joke ; but Cam&an, having lost three or four times, staked 
 higher, and the game became serious. He lost again, and 
 became noisy ; the cards were thrownabout the room, and 
 the noise waked Matta. His head being dizzy with sleep 
 and hot with wine, he began to laugh at the excitement of 
 the Piedmontese, and instead of consoling him — 
 
 " Faith, my poor Count," said he, " if I were in your 
 place I would play no more ! " 
 
 " Why ? " said the other. 
 
 " I don't know," said Matta ; " but I feel that your bad 
 luck won't change." 
 
 " We will see," said Cam^ran, and he called for fresh 
 cards. 
 
 " See away," said Matta, and went to sleep again ; but 
 not for long. Every pack was equally unlucky for the 
 loser ; he got nothing but the marked cards, and finally he 
 even showed fifteen. It did him no good. Thereupon he 
 cried out again. 
 
 " Did I not tell you so ? " said Matta, waking up with a 
 start. " It is no good getting in a rage — you will lose as 
 long as you play. Believe me, the shortest follies are the 
 best. Leave off, for may the devil fly away with me if it is 
 possible for you to win." 
 
 " Why ? " said Camdran, who began to lose his temper. 
 
 "You want to know?" said Matta. "Faith! because 
 we are cheating you." 
 
 Then said the Chevalier de Grammont, shocked at a 
 
French Novelists 41 
 
 joke which was all the more out of place that it looked like 
 
 ANTHONY '™*'^' " ^° y°" think, M. Matta, that it is very 
 
 HAMILTON, ^"^'^s'"? f°' ^ i"an who is playing with such 
 
 " bad luck as M. le Comte to have your dull 
 
 jokes dinned into his ears ? For my part, they bore me 
 
 so that I would throw up the cards this moment if he had 
 
 not lost so much." 
 
 Nothing piques a man more than such a hint as this. 
 So Cam^ran, regaining his temper, told Grammont to let 
 M. Matta talk if he did not mind ; for his own part, it did 
 not annoy him at all. Then the Chevalier treated him 
 much more poUtely than the Swiss at Lyons had treated 
 himself, for he played on credit as much as he liked. 
 Camdran was so much obliged to him for this that he lost 
 fifteen hundred pistoles, and paid them the next day. As 
 for Matta, he received a good scolding for his incontinence 
 of tongue. But the Chevalier got no satisfaction out of 
 him, except that he could not find it in his conscience to let 
 the poor Savoyard be cheated without warning. " Besides 
 which," said he, "it would have been great fun to see a 
 set-to between my infantry and Camdran's troopers in case 
 their master had cut up rusty." 
 
 Such was the heroism of Saint-Evremond's hero 
 (" H^ros " and " Philosophe " were their names for 
 each other), and it may be admitted that it has 
 some qualities of the heroic. The story shows 
 him at his best, for it is admitted by his pane- 
 gyrists that he was much less fortunate in love than 
 at play, despite his adoption of the same amiable 
 methods of assisting and correcting fortune by 
 intercepting letters and suborning servants. 
 
 In the Contes an entirely new and on the 
 whole a much more satisfactory development of 
 Hamilton's genius begins. Their original dates 
 are in all cases very uncertain, though Le Bdier 
 
42 Essays on 
 
 and ZMyde contain some chronological in- 
 dications, and L'Enchanteur Faustus, 
 by a reference to an Irish Lord Hamilton. 
 High Admiral of Elizabeth as the 
 "trisaleul de madame votre mfere," shows itself 
 to have been written very late in Hamilton's 
 life. They are, as printed in the edition which I 
 follow, five in number, though some of the mis- 
 cellaneous works to be noticed presently class 
 themselves with them. From the mere point of 
 view of literary history they are sufficiently in- 
 teresting. They are in artificial literature the 
 principal result of the mania for fairy tales of one 
 kind and another which Perrault from the side of 
 indigenous folklore, and Galland from that of 
 translation of oriental originals, made fashionable 
 at the end of the seventeenth century in France. 
 For details of the less-known practitioners of this 
 late and not least charming growth of coterie 
 literature, I must refer readers to M. Honore 
 Bonhomme's Cabinet des Fdes, for the subject, 
 though tempting, is much too large to be dealt 
 with here. Another side issue may be indicated 
 by mentioning that the tradition of Lesage 
 having collaborated in Galland's translation (a 
 tradition for which I know no solid foundation) 
 may possibly by some ingenious inquirer be 
 connected with the fact that Lesage undoubtedly 
 dramatised the subject of Hamilton's "Last Night" 
 Fleur d'Epine in La Princesse de Carizme, though 
 the treatment is wholly independent. Hamilton 
 
French Novelists 43 
 
 himself is enough for us here. Of the five tales, 
 only the three first require detailed 
 
 ANTHONY • 
 
 HAMILTON, "notice. UEnchanteur Faustus, which 
 has been imitated in English, is 
 a lively legend of the calling up of ancient 
 beauties before Queen Elizabeth and her com- 
 ments on them. But it is short and of no 
 extraordinary merit. Hamilton's ignorance of 
 history, or his indifference to it, could hardly be 
 better illustrated than by the audacious com- 
 placency with which he makes Jane Shore, instead 
 of Eleanor of Guienne, the murderous rival of Fair 
 Rosamond. After this, the establishment of Essex 
 and Sidney as contemporary favourites of Eliza- 
 beth hardly deserves mention. Zdn^yde has a 
 very sprightly setting, some parts of which are as 
 good as anything that Hamilton has done ; but 
 the actual story, excepting the episode of Albofl^de, 
 is a conte a dormir debout made up of Merovingian 
 legends and Roman history. It probably has (as 
 all the tales are said to have) a satirical reference 
 to personages of the time, but is intrinsically 
 devoid of even the slightest interest. It is, more- 
 over, unfinished, or rather it is hardly begun. 
 Supposed to be told by a nymph of the Seine, 
 its real attraction lies in the characteristic 
 badinage with her and her attendant maidens, 
 and in the very remarkable introduction which, 
 as giving probably the best picture in existence 
 of the court of St. Germains, must be here 
 translated-.— 
 
44 Essays on 
 
 You ask me, madame, for a long letter and some Court 
 news : you shall have both. I will not talk 
 to you of the situation of the palace, for you ■'^"'''hony 
 
 . HAMILTONt 
 
 know it. But with all its magnificence it is 
 the least suitable to us of any palace in the kingdom. 
 For the chateau is so poorly provided with room that 
 not more than thirty or forty priests and Jesuits have 
 apartments there. A single chapel and two oratories 
 in the building, the parish church and a few convents just 
 outside, these are the only exercising places for our piety. 
 This is but a makeshift, and in a summer's day the whole 
 business with its etceteras is done before sunset. No doubt 
 the view is enchanting, the walks marvellous, and the air so 
 fine that we could eat four meals a day. That is two more 
 than we ought to have, and we should be much better in some 
 marshy site where our senses and appetites might be dulled 
 by the constant environment of a thick fog. But do not think 
 that our life as it is, is intolerably lively. That is not my 
 meaning ; and you will see it when I tell you the life we 
 lead. 
 
 Although the most fastidious taste might content itself 
 with our ladies, and though, scant as is their number, beauty, 
 pleasant manners, wit, and good sense are brilliantly repre- 
 sented among them, as much cannot be said of the other 
 sex. We have had some difficulty to furnish gentlemen of 
 merit enough to make up the household of the Prince of 
 Wales ; the rest of us are men whom example has not been 
 able to make hypocrites — men rather given to despise others ; 
 but themselves much despised here, and perhaps not so 
 well known as elsewhere. 
 
 We appear to be g^iven up entirely to serious occupa- 
 tions and Christian exercises, for there is no room here for 
 any one who does not spend half the day in prayers, or at 
 least seem to do so. 
 
 The community of misfortune, which ordinarily serves 
 as a bond of union between those who suffer from it, appears 
 to have shed among us discord and ill-temper ; friendship, 
 of which great show is made, is often feigned ; hatred and 
 envy, though concealed, are sincere, and while in public we 
 
French Novelists 45 
 
 put up prayers for our neighbour, we pull him to pieces at 
 our leisure in private. 
 
 ANTHONY - 
 
 HAMILTON Sincere affection, surely the most excusable of 
 ' weaknesses, is held here as the least innocent. 
 As for gallantry, it reigns among us as in the days of 
 Amadis ; it breaks out constantly in some surprising adven- 
 ture, or else we begin by marrying, and then fall in love 
 and flirt quite at our leisure. . . . 
 
 How melancholy is the- use that we are reduced to 
 make of the consolations which fortune offers to make us 
 endure our exile ! A day or two ago I had been thinking 
 on this tiU my spirit was filled with many sombre vapours, 
 and to get rid of them I had recourse to the gardens. It 
 was a holiday, and by bad luck the vulgar had occupied 
 every path with muddy dogs, dirty children, and husbands 
 uglier than their wives. I gave place to the ignoble crowd 
 and sought refuge on the terrace. You know there is 
 nothing in the world grander or more spacious than this 
 great promenade ; but that day there was no room for me 
 and my annoys. First of all I found a Jesuit, a famous 
 proselytiser, between two Englishmen, a grenadier and a 
 dragoon. Both of them were deserters, but, as it seemed, 
 much more faithful to Calvin than to the Prince of Orange, 
 for the g'ood father was evidently exciting himself for 
 nothing with the most fervent protestations. In vain did he 
 try to prove to them in Italian that all English Protestants 
 must be damned. I perceived that he made no impression : 
 that some money would be needed to finish the conversion. 
 A little further I saw a most excellent man, who is also a wit ; 
 but I was very carefiil to avoid him, for not to mention that 
 he is a great arguer on ancient and modem politics, he 
 always has with him two large greyhounds, who, as soon as 
 they see a man, come at full speed and put their paws on 
 his shoulders out of pure politeness. May God receive the 
 soul of his Grace the late Archbishop of Paris ! He took up 
 the half of the terrace with his coach and eight. I got off 
 with a deep bow, which the good prelate did not see, so 
 deeply was he meditating his duty to the King at the assembly 
 of the clergy. I was beginning to praise heaven for the 
 
46 Essays on, 
 
 apparent freedom of the rest of the walk, when I saw coming 
 suddenly out of the wood the most savage and 
 inevitable beast that I know — it is a widow, ,*''™°1^, 
 
 , ,,,,.,. , . ' HAMILTON. 
 
 whose husband died of apoplexy m the 
 King's service, and who in a long black serge train sweeps 
 the corridors and the walks from morn to eve to ask 
 for a pension, or to find some one who knows some 
 one who is known by some lady who is good enough 
 to admit acquaintance with the reigning favourite, so as to 
 obtain her good offices. I remembered the trouble I had 
 had to get rid of her one day when she hooked herself on 
 to me ; and as she was coming straight towards me, I took 
 the only course left in this imminent peril. Choosing the 
 lowest place I rushed down the slope of the terrace, and 
 making my way downwards by a narrow and difficult path, I 
 never looked round till I found myself out of range and in 
 the midst of the beautiful meadows which border the Seine. 
 
 That this is a passage " for thoughts " will 
 hardly be denied, but as the thoughts are tolerably- 
 obvious there is no need to undertake the imper- 
 tinent task of thinking them for the reader. 
 
 The three longer tales rank higher, not merely 
 because of their length. They are certainly the 
 happiest examples extant of the application of 
 the fairy story to purposes of social and literary 
 satire. If any indignant Voltairian protests, it 
 can only be said that, admirable as Voltaire's tales 
 are, they are certainly to no small extent modelled 
 on Hamilton, and that, in the second place, despite 
 their abundance of wit, they are too much subor- 
 dinated to a special purpose, and do not display 
 anything like the same facility in pure narrative 
 as their models. The careless ease with which 
 Hamilton makes the most complicated threads of 
 
French Novelists 47 
 
 apparently independent stories combine to weave 
 the warp and woof of one central 
 HAMILTON. P^°*' '^ hardly to be matched else- 
 where, while in Voltaire the narrative 
 is for the most part a mere vehicle which 
 passengers enter and alight from without any 
 regard to a concerted and coherent story. It is 
 true that the most remarkable instance of Hamil- 
 ton's skill in this way, Les Quatre Facardins, is, 
 owing either to indolence or (if Cr^billon's story 
 is to be believed) to mere accident, unfinished. 
 But its affairs are left in perfect order, and the 
 web is quite free from fault up to the point where 
 the loom stopped. Very much of the side purpose 
 of these stories indeed escapes us, and it is doubt- 
 ful whether even the industry of the late M. 
 Fournier could have forged a complete key to 
 such intricate wards. But this hardly at all inter- 
 rupts or diminishes the pleasure of the reader, 
 which is maintained by the narrative skill already 
 mentioned, by the constant flow of urbane sarcasm 
 requiring no special and parochial interpretation, 
 and above all by the extraordinary ease and grace 
 of the style. This of course vanishes in transla- 
 tions, and cannot be fully relished without an 
 acquaintance with what came before it, just as the 
 form which Hamilton chose is not wholly intelli- 
 gible without some knowledge of the fairy-tale 
 literature, the heroic romances, and those other pro- 
 ductions of the immediately preceding time which 
 he half imitated and half satirised. But in this as 
 
48 Essays on 
 
 in other matters Hamilton's claim to distinction 
 is that, while the historic estimate dis- 
 tinctly increases the enjoyment of him (as HAMiLroiJ. 
 it does the enjoyment of all good litera- 
 ture) it is by no means necessary to that enjoyment. 
 No argument of either of the three is possible 
 in a small space. They are so crowded with 
 incidents, the incidents, according to the system 
 above hinted at, are so inseparable from the main 
 action, and the loop lines of digression (all of 
 which contribute again to the main trunk) are so 
 numerous, that anything like a sufficient argument 
 of either would be not very much shorter than 
 the tale itself In Fleur d'Epine the literally, not 
 metaphorically, murderous eyes of the Princess 
 Luisante are deprived of their destructive power 
 by the courage and address of a certain disguised 
 Prince, yclept Tarare, whose chief task is to rescue 
 the beautiful Fleur d'Epine from the clutches of 
 a sorceress. In Le Bilier (which was written to 
 please a fancy of Madame de Grammont, and 
 which is full of disguised local and personal 
 allusions) the giant Moulineau in vain besieges a 
 learned Druid and his lovely daughter Alie, by 
 the very untrustworthy help of a talking ram, 
 who is really an enchanted prince, the lover of 
 Alie, Les Quatre Facardins, the most ambitious, 
 and to my thinking the best, describes the adven- 
 tures of four personages, each of whom bears the 
 name of Facardin, and who for various causes have 
 to dree weirds of a more or less intricate and 
 
French Novelists 49 
 
 surprising nature. The intricacy of the narrative 
 in this last is remarkable. Here also 
 HAMILTON, chiefly if not solely appears that license 
 of allusion and description, which, with 
 Hamilton's followers, became one of the main 
 features of tales of this kind. It must be an ex- 
 traordinarily prudish critic who finds anything 
 alarming to his or even her modesty in Fleur 
 d'Epine or Le Bdier, at any rate with a little good- 
 will. In Les Quatre Facardins there is no harm 
 meant, and very little done. Yet a grave, precise 
 reader, not gifted with very acute faculty of 
 divination, would probably, on arriving at the 
 adventures of the amiable but too curious Cristal- 
 line, shut the book with very much the same face 
 which Mrs. Newcome assumed when she reached 
 a certain passage in Joseph Andrews. But Hamil- 
 ton, although he wrote fairy tales, never pretended 
 to write for children. 
 
 There are some people (of whom I do not in 
 the least blush to avow myself one) who rejoice 
 with exceeding joy in fairy stories merely as such. 
 We see so many people about the streets who are 
 as stupid as any giant without being giants at all, 
 that we rejoice to meet a giant in print, even if he 
 is stupid. We see so many damsels who are by 
 no means enchantingly beautiful or attractive, 
 whatever may be the excellence of their morals, 
 that we can quite pardon an excess of amiability 
 over strict propriety in these delightful damsels of 
 romance. The knives that write of themselves 
 
50 Essays on 
 
 like Planchette, but which, unlike that machine, 
 write very valuable intelligence and 
 not stupid stuff, please us. The nrMfLTON. 
 successful and heroic adventurer is 
 a distinct comfort after one's own adventures, 
 which are frequently unheroic and too often 
 unsuccessful. All the interesting impossibili- 
 ties of fiction have something of a positively 
 cheering character as challenges to the absolutely 
 uninteresting possibilities of life. Of course the 
 stories must be good. Hamilton's are admirably 
 good. They must not be too long ; a long story 
 of the kind should be written in verse. But the 
 longest of Hamilton's does not exceed a hundred 
 and fifty pages, very roomily printed. If, however, 
 they were merely well-told fairy stories, they would 
 hardly hold the place accorded to them in this 
 paper. Their special and peculiar charm, in- 
 dependent of their narrative merit, to some extent 
 also independent of (though closely connected 
 with) their admirable style, is the perpetual under- 
 current of satirical criticism of life — the special 
 function of light narrative prose — which they 
 cover and occasionally display. Not even the 
 Diable Boiteux is fuller of such touches, while, 
 though Lesage had a wider range and a firmer 
 touch than Hamilton, his expression is hardly 
 possessed of the same exquisite urbanity. Ham- 
 ilton never draws attention to his satire, never 
 prepares his readers for it by any chuckle of 
 his own, never goes back on it or emphasises 
 
French Novelists 5 1 
 
 it unduly, or lets it pass from a smile into a 
 grin. 
 
 HAMILTON. 
 
 " Le calife lui en donna sa parole : 
 
 et le sdnechal, qui aimait k travailler, 
 lui en expddia des lettres patentes." 
 
 " Sa taille [it is a prince who speaks] 6tait la 
 plus noble et la plus ais^e qu'on pflt voir et son 
 visage 6tait si charmant que son secretaire mdme, 
 accoutumd a le voir tous les jours, ne put 
 s'emp^cher de tdmoigner sa surprise et son admi- 
 ration." 
 
 "II y a des esprits indolents et sp^culatifs 
 qui passeroient des heures enti^res sans parler, 
 principalement quand ils sont seuls : mais pour 
 moi qui n'ai jamais su ce que c'dtoit que cette 
 ridicule oisivetd d'imagination qui fait rdver a 
 tous les objets qui se presentent en voyageant 
 sans ouvrir la bouche pour en raisonner, je me 
 parlais a moi-m^me quand je n'avais personne h. 
 qui parler." 
 
 Hamilton's blows are always of this kind, mere 
 scratches, as it were, but still scratches like that 
 famous one which happened to his own Facardin 
 of the Mountain, and going " from the right ear to 
 the left heel " of the person or clags at whom they 
 are delivered. Yet he is by no means a mere 
 cynic. His flashes of good sense, of chivalrous 
 spirit, are hardly less numerous, and not at all less 
 perfectly phrased, than his satiric touches, the 
 charm of which they decidedly heighten. 
 
 Two details as to the Contes axe worth giving. 
 
52 Essays on \ 
 
 The first is that Fleur d'^pine and Les Quatre 
 Facardins connect themselves by their 
 machinery avowedly with the Arabian HrMiLTON. 
 Nights. The second is that Le Bdier 
 is written alternately in verse and in prose. This 
 mixture, the origin of which may be perhaps sought 
 in Petronius, was not an original importation 
 of Hamilton's into French, for there were famous 
 examples before him. But his execution at- 
 tracted immense applause, and not a little of 
 his other work is couched in the same form, 
 a form which (beyond doubt directly from 
 him) commended itself to Voltaire and others. 
 The success of it was without doubt due to the 
 untranslatable word and not quite translatable 
 thing engouement, or fashionable fancy, which, as 
 we know from no small authority, was the charac- 
 teristic of French society from Louis XIV to 
 Louis XVI. In comparison with the appreciation 
 due to Hamilton's talent for uninterrupted prose 
 narration the approbation which it excites in 
 modern critics can hardly be other than luke- 
 warm. The whole scheme is artificial in the 
 extreme, and the quality of the verse portions is 
 not calculated to appeal very forcibly to any one 
 who has a distinct idea of the differences between 
 poetry and prose. It is very clever : the '' rimes 
 redoubles" as one of Hamilton's critics says, " are 
 singularly seductive." But it is like all French 
 poetry, with the rarest exceptions, from Thdophile 
 de Viaud to Andrd Chenier, merely the most 
 
French Novelists 53 
 
 exquisite prose cut into lengths and tipped with 
 rhymes. It may, however, be frankly 
 HAMILTON, admitted that contemporaries did not 
 so judge it. Hamilton's most famous 
 exploit in it is the " Epitre au Comte de Gram- 
 mont," which is usually printed before the M^moires, 
 but which really preceded the composition or 
 at least the publication of that book by several 
 years. This excited an extraordinary enthu- 
 siasm. Chapelle, who had a kind of seignoralty 
 over the style, Dangeau, and others rewarded the 
 author with congratulatory replies, and Boileau 
 himself, shaking off the morose disdainfulness of 
 which at the time (1705) even his natural inclina- 
 tion to flatter a man of rank but rarely got the 
 better, wrote to Hamilton a letter of mixed prose 
 and verse, in which a really genuine admiration 
 for the foreigner's admirable French is discoverable. 
 It is not surprising that such a reception encouraged 
 Hamilton to produce more work of the kind. 
 Most of his extant letters to Berwick (with whom 
 he was very intimate) are in the same style, and 
 there are numerous epistles to other persons, 
 sometimes written in his own name, sometimes 
 obligingly lent to other people. They are all 
 interesting, they all have his almost unfailing 
 characteristics of urbanity and wit, and they 
 contain many particulars, less striking indeed 
 than the introduction to ZMyde, but still attract- 
 ive enough, about the ways and manners of the 
 miniature Courts of St. Germains and Sceaux. 
 
54 Essays on 
 
 But as literature, they seem to me inferior to 
 those of the minor works, which are 
 
 r , , r 1 1 A ANTHONY 
 
 frankly prose or frankly verse. As Hamilton. 
 a poet, Hamilton suffers a good deal 
 from the limitations already described. His 
 unfinished, and indeed scarcely begun, verse tale 
 of The Pyramid and the Gold Horse, written 
 for Miss O'Brien, of the Inchiquin O'Briens, 
 is infinitely inferior to the prose Contes. An 
 attempted translation of Pope's essay on criti- 
 cism is not much better, though it has been 
 undervalued in France. But the minor poems 
 rank very much higher. They are for the most 
 part purely occasional, and of the kind which 
 severe persons may if they please term frivolous — 
 bouquets, chansons, impromptus, and what not. 
 But with the exception of Voltaire's verses to 
 Ulrica of Prussia (which I take to be the ne plus 
 ultra of verse that is not poetry), there is hardly 
 anything in French with which they may not 
 compare favourably, and every now and then a 
 far higher and really poetical vein asserts itself. 
 Oddly enough, it is particularly noticeable in the 
 few but charming rondeaux which Hamilton has 
 left. One of these, and the beautiful chanson 
 " Celle qu'adore mon coeur n'est ni brune ni 
 blonde " must be given, for they are Hamilton's 
 title-deeds to the name of poet. 
 
French Novelists 55 
 
 RONDEAU REDOUBLE 
 
 Par grand' bont6 cheminoient autrefois 
 Preux chevaliers couverts en fine armure, 
 
 Ores par monts, ores parmi les bois, 
 Redressant torts, et d^faisant injure, 
 
 Trouvoient par cas horions, meurtrissure ; 
 
 Par cas aussi sur fringants palefrois. 
 Dames prfes d'eux, friandes d'aventure. 
 
 Par grand' bont^ cheminoient autrefois. 
 
 Toujours mettoient amour dessous leurs lois, 
 
 Jeunes beaut^s de b&igne nature ; 
 Et voyoit-on bien regus chez les rois 
 
 Preux chevaliers, couverts de fine armure. 
 
 M&hui s'en vont, mis en ddconfiture, 
 Soulas, d^duits : et la gent k pavois 
 
 Plus ne s'^bat &. coucher sur la dure. 
 Ores par monts, ores parmi les bois. 
 
 Princesse, en qui le del met k la fois 
 Esprit sans fin, et grices sans mesure, 
 
 Vous seule allez du vieux temps aux abois 
 Redressant torts et d^faisant injure 
 Par grand' bontd. 
 
 SONG 
 
 Celle qu'adore mon cceur n'est ni brune ni blonde ; 
 Pour la peindre d'un seul trait, 
 C'est le plus charmant objet 
 Du monde. 
 
 Cependant de ses beautds le compte est bien facile : 
 On lui voit cinq cents appas, 
 Et cinq cents qu'on ne voit pas 
 Font mille. 
 
 Sa sagesse et son esprit sont d'une main celeste ; 
 Mille attraits m'ont inform^ 
 Que les Grices ont formd 
 Le reste. 
 
56 Essays on 
 
 Du vif &lat de son teint quelles couleurs sont dignes ! 
 Flore a bien moins de fraicheur, 
 Et sa gorge a la blancheur 
 Des cygnes. 
 
 EUe a la taille et les bras de Vdnus elle-m6me ; 
 D'H^b^ la bouche et le nez ; 
 Et, par ses yeux, devinez 
 Qui j'aime. 
 
 Of this last charming piece my friend Mr. 
 Austin Dobson, our sole heir and single of the 
 poets of the early eighteenth century, has given an 
 admirable translation — 
 
 She that I love is neither brown nor fair ; 
 And in a word her worth to say, 
 There is no one that with her may 
 Compare. 
 
 Yet of her charms the count is clear, I ween ; 
 There are five hundred things we see. 
 And then five hundred more there be 
 Not seen. 
 
 Her wit, her wisdom are direct from Heaven ; 
 And many a tender touch explains 
 How with the Graces what remains 
 Has thriven. 
 
 Her cheeks' fine hue what painter's brush would note ? 
 Beside her Flora would be wan. 
 And white as whiteness of the swan 
 Her throat. 
 
 Her supple waist, her arms, from Venus claim ; 
 Hebe her nose and mouth confess ; 
 And by her eyes alone you guess 
 Her name. 
 
French Novelists 57 
 
 The miscellaneous works in pure prose are few 
 
 but of very considerable value. They 
 
 t^!'3!1'^It are four in number. There is a dia- 
 
 HAMILTON. 
 
 logue, La Volupti, which obviously 
 follows on the track of Saint- Evremond, but 
 which is hardly a complete success, for abstract 
 subjects were not Hamilton's forte. There is 
 a Relation d'un Voyage en Mauritanie, a coterie 
 satire on the courtiers of the Duchesse du Maine, 
 to which Lord Houghton, no mean judge, has 
 given high representative rank, and which deserves 
 that rank. There is a Relation d'une Partie de 
 Ckasse, which, by the way, is not purely prose, 
 and should properly perhaps be classed with 
 the epistles, except that it is an obvious satire 
 upon them. For Hamilton had eminently that 
 faculty of self-ridicule which a Frenchman rarely 
 attains, and which M. Taine, while very properly 
 accepting it as a note of humour, regards at the 
 same time as something barbarous or semi- 
 barbarous. But the Relations Viritables de 
 Diff^rents Endroits d^Europe, of which this Partie 
 de Chasse is a kind of supplement, are most 
 admirable fooling. Written as they were while 
 newspapers were yet young, the satire is perfectly 
 just and true even at the present day, and it is 
 doubtful whether any one except Thackeray has 
 ever done anything quite so good of its class. 
 They are all devoted to the household of Berwick, 
 of which, as has been said, Hamilton was an 
 intimate. It is not easy to wind up the extracts 
 
58 Essays on 
 
 here given better than by a cento from this little 
 
 ^ ANTHONY 
 
 St. Germain-en-Laye, November Hamilton. 
 
 On the loth of this month Madame la Mar^chale de 
 Berwick took her leave of the Court, accompanied by a 
 numerous suite of gentlemen and ladies and by pouring rain, 
 which continued to escort her to Le Bourget. Here M. le 
 Marechal, her husband, joined the company as they sat 
 down to table. This contributed in no small degree to the 
 enjoyment of the magnificent repast, besides serving to 
 calm the anxiety of Madame la Mardchale after so long a 
 separation. 
 
 Chantilly 
 
 To-day, the nth of November, the cortege of M. and 
 Madame de Berwick having been descried on the heights 
 of Versine, between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, 
 a courier was despatched from this place to pay them 
 respects and offer them refreshments. As M. le Mardchal 
 was not present, my lady his spouse replied, and in answer 
 to the respects offered, observed to the courier that it was 
 the finest day in the world, an observation which was 
 indorsed by all the illustrious personages who were in the 
 coach. 
 
 Fitz-James 
 
 The Court Journal informs us that Brigadier Lord 
 Nugent, quartered at St. Omer on the service of his Majesty 
 the most Christian King, presented himself, as Madame le 
 Marechal was getting out of her carriage, with the Baron 
 de Fivier and many noblemen and gentlemen of the vicinity. 
 
 The next day (12th inst.) his lordship had several 
 interviews with his Excellency Field Marshal the Duke of 
 Berwick on the subject of the last campaign in Flanders, 
 where the minister, according to his custom, was pleased to 
 praise greatly the conduct and skill of the generals. 
 
French Novelists 59 
 
 After dinner on the same day he accompanied the 
 ladies in a superb cavalcade which they made 
 ANTHONY across the vast forest that extends at some 
 HAMILTON, distance from the palace of Fitz-James. His 
 lordship being mounted on one of the most 
 powerful horses to be found in the stables of his ex- 
 cellency, this contributed not a little to the admiration 
 which the inhabitants of the country manifested for his 
 imposing stature. 
 
 The ladies mounted on spirited and fleet coursers, 
 because of the ferocious beasts, charmed or rather dazzled 
 by their beauty seven or eight hundred hunters armed with 
 guns, who pursued the wild denizens of the surrounding 
 woods. It was considered sufficient to slay two wolves only 
 as an example to the others. 
 
 What frivolity ! some grave and precise persons 
 may exclaim, just as it is recorded that other 
 grave persons in France have complained that 
 Hamilton's Contes are remplis d' extravagances, a 
 charge which it is as impossible to deny as it is 
 not to laugh at it. Perhaps there is always some- 
 thing frivolous in satire, unless it thunders and 
 lightens after the fashion of Juvenal. The wise 
 man of the Stoics would not, it is certain, have 
 written solemn parodies of our friend the Court 
 newsman ; he would have proved to him that he 
 was unworthily employed, and have recommended 
 him to study the works of Epictetus. But 
 Hamilton was not a wise man of the Stoics, he 
 was a wise man of the Epicureans. As such, like 
 other wise men of the same party, he by no means 
 failed to show evidences of what, Stoics and 
 
6o Essays on 
 
 Epicureans alike consider noble qualities. Little 
 is known of his military services, ex- 
 cept that he was wounded and reaped Hamilton. 
 little glory at the rout of Newtown 
 Butler, but his reputation was untarnished in a 
 time when any failure to do the duty of a 
 soldier was fatal. Therefore it is difficult, consider- 
 ing his extreme familiarity with Berwick and the 
 fact that he was still in the vigour of life at the 
 Revolution, to explain his abstinence after that 
 date from military service on any other grounds 
 than an honourable unwillingness to serve against 
 his country's flag, and under that of his country's 
 enemy. Thoroughly French as is his tongue, 
 his heart was evidently English. His choicest 
 compliments are reserved for English beauties, 
 and none of the customary sneers against England 
 are to be found in his work. He bore his exile 
 without repining (for the harmless outbreak about 
 the extreme clericalism of St. Germains cannot be 
 called by that name), and yet it is evident that it 
 was not a matter of indifference to him. Even 
 the tenor of his actual work argues a consider- 
 able independence of spirit. At a time when 
 his great contemporary. La Bruyere, wrote les 
 grands suj'ets sont difendus, he set the example 
 of at least satirising abuses if he did not protest 
 against them. Some of the sharpest strokes of 
 the Contes are directed against absolute monarchs 
 and the dangers of absolute monarchy. It was 
 at the most despotic time of Louis XIV's reign 
 
French Novelists 6 1 
 
 that Hamilton drew the caliph in Fleur d'£pine, 
 who, finding the foolishest man in 
 HAMILTON. ^^^ dominions, " n'avait eu garde de 
 manquer de faire son premier ministre 
 d'une t^te comme celle-1^," who " ne savait 
 que la sienne [language] et m^me assez vulgaire- 
 ment," who, instead of shutting his daughter up, 
 "faisait faire et processions et prieres publiques 
 pour qu'il pWt au ciel de regarder en piti^ son 
 pauvre peuple ou d'empdcher que sa fille ne le 
 regardat." Fifty years later these things would 
 have been a mere commonplace, familiar to every 
 scribbler. They were not so in days when Boileau 
 and Bossuet led the choirs of flatterers, and when 
 exile or imprisonment awaited the independent. 
 Although the reputation of freethinking, which 
 Voltaire has by innuendo attributed to Hamil- 
 ton, rests upon no solid foundation, he conspicu- 
 ously refused to be a hypocrite at a time when the 
 two Courts of St. Germains and Marly vied with 
 each other in encouraging hypocrisy. None of 
 the monkey tricks of his brother-in-law, either at 
 play or in love, are charged against him, and the 
 worst that has been said of him is that he had a 
 sharp tongue, which (for our benefit) is fortunately 
 true. In short, if it were necessary merely to 
 bring witnesses to character and in extenuation a 
 very fair case might be made out for Hamilton. 
 
 But it is not necessary. It is not necessary 
 even, though it is not impertinent, to point out 
 that to Hamilton, an exile, shut out from active 
 
62 Essays on 
 
 employments and exposed to the danger of 
 sinking to the level of the tracasseries 
 and pettinesses of a mock court, what HAMfwoN. 
 has been called the humour -gate of 
 escape was almost the only one open. His work is 
 so excellent in itself, it was so powerful as example 
 and as precept, it summarised and anticipated 
 with such surprising exactitude the literary and 
 social ideals of four generations in French society, 
 that it needs no palliation from such arguments as 
 these. They may add to or vary its interest, but 
 they are by no means required as set-offs and 
 excuses. Chamfort called the Mimoires de ' 
 Grammont the " Br^viaire de la jeune noblesse," 
 and it is said that the too famous Due de Richelieu 
 deliberately modelled himself on Hamilton's and 
 Saint- Evremond's hero. Over this, as a consequence, 
 the moralist and the social historian must, of course, 
 wag in cadence their sympathetic heads. But it 
 would be absurd to regard Hamilton as a tempter 
 and seducer of youth. A foreigner of no wealth, 
 of no extraordinary rank, and holding no prominent 
 position in Church or State, does not create a 
 fashion. The most that can be said of him is 
 that with remarkable social observation, and con- 
 summate literary skill, he seized the type of the 
 French noblesse after the failure of the Fronde 
 had made independent political action impossible 
 to it, and the influences of the coteries had a little 
 softened the ferocity of its manners, and enshrined 
 that type in a memorable book. This would have 
 
French Novelists 63 
 
 been a great achievement of itself, but it was 
 not by any means Hamilton's only 
 
 ANTHONY TT 1 1-'i 1 -i 1 
 
 HAMILTON. °"^- "^ ^'^° "'*^' ^"" '* ™^y °^ 
 
 said determined, the tone of polite 
 literature in France for a century. He was, no 
 doubt, indebted to Saint-Evremond in prose, and 
 to Voiture, Chapelle, and others in verse, but he 
 altered the tone of the one and improved the ex- 
 pression of the others. Saint-Evremond has all 
 the seriousness of the seventeenth century when 
 he deals with serious subjects : Hamilton sets the 
 fashion which, in dealing with these same serious 
 subjects, the eighteenth century followed. It might 
 not, except for verse and prose " of society," have 
 followed it but for Voltaire, but the influence of 
 Hamilton himself on Voltaire is altogether beyond 
 dispute. It is in these gossiping memoirs, these 
 idle tales, these occasional and impromptu madri- 
 gals and copies of verses that the note was struck, 
 the chord touched which continued to echo and 
 vibrate till it died with Andrieux and Xavier de 
 Maistre, within easy memory of living man. 
 
 But, after all, the chief pleasure to be found in 
 Hamilton is, as was said at the beginning, purely 
 intrinsic. The reader who knows and cares nothing 
 about his personal character and fortunes, nothing 
 about his literary influence, nothing about the far- 
 ranging, social, and historical importance of his 
 types and standards of manners and of morals, of 
 thought and of style, cannot miss it, unless he 
 indeed be one of the unlucky foxes who have lost 
 
64 Essays on 
 
 their tails, who more probably were born Manx 
 foxes, and who, possessing no sense 
 of humour themselves, cannot under- HAMfLTON. 
 stand what enjoyment the possession 
 or the manifestation of it can give to others. 
 The wonderful clearness of his style, its brill-, 
 iancy, its easy flow, and the rapid evanescent 
 ebullitions of wit and satire and humour which 
 break through it from time to time, may be com- 
 pared by a conceit not out of keeping with the 
 time and subject to those mineral springs where 
 the white water, as it slips over rock and through 
 green borders of grass and weed, is suddenly 
 broken from time to time by little explosions of 
 air, which catch the ear almost more readily than 
 the eye. Nothing can be less boisterous than 
 Hamilton's merriment. Sometimes that merri- 
 ment is very sharply edged. No doubt many 
 people besides Chaulieu agreed in the sentiment 
 which that easy-going Abbd expressed in some of 
 not the worst of his own verses — 
 
 Mais trfes-bien nous serions passfe 
 Des brocards qu'avec la fleurette 
 Votre Muse, en fine coquette, 
 Tout doucement nous a glissfe. 
 
 though it is doubtful whether they would all have 
 added, like Chaulieu, that they were 
 
 Bien loin d'en 6tre courroucds. 
 
 But whether he is rallying general or particular 
 follies, the steel is always polished, the glissade 
 
French Novelists 65 
 
 always equally dexterous, the motions of this 
 " fine coquette de muse " equally grace- 
 HAMiLTON ^^ ^"^ rhythmic. Though there is 
 license there is never polissonnerie, as 
 there is in too many of his followers. Though 
 there is evil-speaking, both of dignities and others, 
 it is the most agreeable evil-speaking, the most 
 elegant scandal in the world. There are people, 
 as every one knows, who will give tens of thousands 
 of pounds to fit a boudoir with furniture and 
 pictures, the chief interest of which is that they 
 help to recall the long dead life, the long perished 
 activity and circumstances of the fine gentleman 
 and fine lady period of the days of Louis and of 
 Anne. To any one who knows how to taste and 
 to view literature, Hamilton's works, at a consider- 
 ably cheaper rate and with much less trouble, 
 give the finest flavour, colour, and form of that 
 chapter of the past. 
 
Ill 
 
 ALAIN REN^ LESAGE 
 
 A CRITIC of whom I desire to speak with all 
 respect — the late Rector, of Lincoln — 
 said that " mere style cannot confer '^^LESAGEr 
 immortality upon any book apart from 
 its contents." The context from which this 
 remark is taken deals with the Provindales and 
 Pens^es of Pascal, concerning which Mr. Pattison 
 thought that the former are but an ephemeral 
 pamphlet, the latter are for all time. So startling 
 a judgment makes the reader a little inclined to 
 dogmatise hyperbolically in his turn, and to say 
 that there is nothing perennial but style. This, 
 indeed, would be merely running from one ex- 
 treme to another ; nevertheless, there is more 
 truth in it than in the other exaggeration. For the 
 attitude of men's minds changes singularly, from 
 one time to another, with regard to mere " con- 
 tents " ; it changes very little with regard to the 
 expression of those contents. This is, perhaps, 
 nowhere seen more clearly than in the case of 
 
Essays on French Novelists 67 
 
 very voluminous authors whose works are pre- 
 served in unequal remembrance. When 
 
 ALAIN REN]^ 
 
 LESAGE. ^^^" cases are examined, it will gener- 
 ally be found that the reason for the 
 preference which posterity has expressed has 
 been almost entirely due to literary merit. Be- 
 tween the merit of the contents of Defoe's different 
 novels there is not very much to choose ; yet no 
 one who speaks with competence will question 
 that the literary art of Robinson Crusoe is, on the 
 whole, far superior to that of Moll Flanders and 
 Colonel Jack. So, in the not wholly dissimilar 
 case of our present author, the contents of Estd- 
 vanille Gonzales and The Bachelor of Salamanca 
 are not much less interesting, if they are less 
 interesting at all, than those of Le Diable Boiteux 
 and Gil Bias, while Guzman dAlfarache has per- 
 haps a positive advantage over much of the latter. 
 But Lesage was never so well inspired from the 
 literary point of view as in the two works which 
 have been justly deemed his masterpieces, and in 
 this lies the justice of the selection. 
 
 The reasons of the inequality of Lesage's work 
 are to be sought in the same cause which, in all 
 probability, accounts for such inequality in most 
 cases. Where men never write below themselves, 
 it will almost invariably be found that their work 
 has either been thrown off in the heyday of youth, 
 or, if spread over a long course of years, has been 
 written for pleasure merely — at any rate, without 
 any immediate pressure of want. Pegasus, as one 
 
68 Essays on 
 
 of the greatest of English writers in our time has 
 put it, must, in the unhappier cases, be 
 too frequently spurred, and will not '"''^^iGr* 
 always answer to the spur. Now the 
 long life of the author of Gil Bias was anything 
 but one of ease. He had few patrons, and was 
 not of a temper to have many. Literature, un- 
 fortunately, was stick, crutch and all to him, and 
 he was unlucky in his law affairs, a fact which 
 probably accounts for the continual satire he 
 pours on law and lawyers. Yet, by birth, at any 
 rate, he belonged to the profession. His father, 
 Claude Lesage, was at once Advocate, Notary and 
 Greffier (Registrar) of the Royal Court of the 
 small district of Rhuys, the out-of-the-way penin- 
 sula which bounds the Morbihan on its eastern 
 side. Alain Ren^ was born on the 8 th of May 
 1668 (his rtiother being by name Jeanne Brenu- 
 gat) at Sarzeau, the chief town of the district, 
 which, it may be well to remind readers, was also 
 the locality of the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys, 
 the very uneasy refuge of Abelard after his cala- 
 mities. It is not a little characteristic of the 
 peculiar bent of Lesage's genius, that it shows 
 hardly any local colour, though Brittany has, of 
 all French provinces, left most mark on her 
 children as a rule, and though Lesage's birth- 
 place lay in perhaps the most striking part of the 
 Duchy. But Lesage left his native province 
 young ; he never, so far as I know, returned to it, 
 and he very probably had unpleasant associations 
 
French Novelists 69 
 
 connected therewith. The father's triple office was 
 profitable enough, but he died when his 
 
 ALAIN REN^ 
 
 LESAGE. ^°" ^^^ young, and the property he 
 left him was dissipated or embezzled 
 by a dishonest guardian, a personage of frequent 
 occurrence in those days, and one whom Lesage 
 smites again and again in his novels. That the 
 boy was at school at Vannes, the neighbouring 
 episcopal city, until 1686, is known; but this is 
 almost all that is known about his youth, and 
 then he disappears for some eight years. It has 
 been supposed that he may have held some small 
 post in the financial department of the province, 
 or that he may have continued his studies at 
 Paris, the latter being by far the more probable 
 hypothesis. Anyhow, in 1692, he was admitted 
 as an advocate at the Bar of Paris. But he 
 apparently got no clients, and when he was six- 
 and -twenty he took to himself a wife, Marie 
 Elisabeth Huyard. She is said to have been 
 remarkably beautiful, and they lived for many 
 years together, it would seem, happily enough ; 
 but she had no fortune ; she was only a tradesman's 
 daughter, and his marriage can hardly have added 
 to the young lawyer's resources. Falling in with 
 an old schoolfellow, Danchet, who had already 
 made some mark in literature, he was recom- 
 mended by him to seek the same refuge for the 
 destitute. His coup d'essai, a translation of the 
 letters of Aristaenetus, which appeared in 1695 
 (he had been married in August or September 
 
70 Essays on 
 
 1 694), has made his biographers and critics rather 
 merry. He certainly might have done 
 better, but it is doubtful whether the ^^^^^^^"^ 
 oddity of the choice — comparatively 
 worthless as the book is — struck that age as it 
 strikes ours. The indiscriminate reign of the 
 classics, early and late, good and bad, genuine 
 and spurious, was not yet over, and many a 
 young man of letters had made his dibut with 
 work not intrinsically better. Lesage, however, 
 had no luck — ^he had not much at any period 
 during his life — and the book fell flat. A more 
 useful adviser in every sense, however, fell to his 
 lot in the person of the Abbd de Lyonne. 
 Lyonne not merely gave him, or procured him, a 
 pension or annuity of six hundred livres — no 
 despicable assistance to modest housekeeping at 
 that time, when living at Paris was extraordinarily 
 cheap — but recommended him to study Spanish 
 literature, of which he himself was a great lover. 
 Three-quarters of a century before, this literature 
 had been greatly admired and largely borrowed 
 from in France, but the age of the great writers 
 of Louis the Thirteenth's time and his son's had 
 put it out of fashion. Lesage began by simple 
 translation or adaptation, and, as in the case of 
 Aristsenetus, he was not too fortunate in his 
 models. In drama, at least, he did not go far 
 wrong, choosing Rojas, Lope de Vega, and Cal- 
 deron for his originals, and producing plays which 
 were sometimes acted. But a version of the 
 
French Novelists 7 1 
 
 worthless New Don Quixote of Avellaneda was 
 sorry work for the future author of Gil 
 LESAGE. Bias. The play which he conveyed 
 from Calderon — Don Char Ursin — had 
 some merit; and in 1707, being then hard upon 
 his fortieth year, he scored two great successes. 
 His little piece of Crispin Rival de son Mattre 
 appeared, and was loudly and deservedly ap- 
 plauded, while the Diable Boiteux obtained still 
 greater favour. It ran through several editions 
 in the year, and many legends of the usual char- 
 acter are told about its success. The most char- 
 acteristic, and probably the truest, is that Boileau 
 found his footboy with a copy, and declared that 
 if such a book stayed a night in his house the boy 
 should not stay another. Lesage was already 
 hailed as a Moliere Redivivus, and this of itself 
 was sufficient to irritate Boileau in his sour old 
 age. But it would probably have been sufficient 
 for that vigorous but narrow critic that the book 
 was not in any style which he had himself re- 
 commended, or which he could understand. For 
 Boileau was the incarnation of the merely French 
 spirit of literature in its most contracted form ; 
 Lesage, as we shall see, was not specially or 
 primarily French at all except in his wit, the very 
 quality which the author of the Namur Ode was 
 least qualified to appreciate. Lesage, however, 
 had not yet arrived at his apogee. Despite his 
 theatrical successes he was never on very good 
 terms with the players of the regular theatre, and 
 
72 Essays on 
 
 a small piece — Les Etrennes — was refused by 
 them at the beginning of 1708. The 
 author took it back, set to work on it, ^^^ESAGEr 
 and refashioned it into Turcaret, the 
 best French comedy, beyond all doubt, of the 
 eighteenth century, and probably the best of its 
 kind to be found outside the covers of Moliere's 
 works. It is in connection with Turcaret — the 
 success of which was very great, though the 
 powerful class offended by it did not conceal their 
 displeasure — that one of the few personal and 
 characteristic anecdotes we possess of Lesage is 
 told. He had been asked to read his play to a 
 fashionable company at the Duchess of Bouillon's, 
 and, being delayed by law business, was late. 
 The Duchess — let it be remembered that it was 
 some half-century before all Paris interested itself 
 in the quarrel of two " miserable scribblers who 
 live in garrets " — rebuked him with some asperity 
 for keeping her an hour waiting. " Eh bien, 
 Madame," replied the poet ; " je vous ai fait 
 perdre une heure, je vais vous en faire gagner 
 deux ; " and he put his manuscript in his pocket, 
 and, resisting all entreaties, went away. The 
 anecdote rests on the authority of C0II6, who, in 
 such a case, is fairly trustworthy, and it probably 
 explains why Lesage's life was one of struggle. 
 Though his independence was, most likely, natural 
 and usual, it is said to have been made more 
 touchy on this particular occasion by the fact that 
 he had lost the case which had detained him. 
 
French Novelists 73 
 
 However this may be, his dissatisfaction with the 
 Maison de Molihre soon assumed a still 
 
 ALAIN REn£ i- r i r r i 
 
 LESAGE. more active form, and for five -and - 
 twenty years the best living comic 
 dramatist of France gained his bread chiefly by 
 writing for the stage of the Foire, the irregular but 
 licensed booths set up during fair time. Lesage 
 is said to have written no less than twenty- 
 four farce-operettas, as they may perhaps best be 
 termed, for these boards, and the total number 
 which he wrote for them as whole or part author 
 is sometimes put at sixty-four and sometimes at 
 a hundred and one. It was about the time that 
 he took to this occupation (in which he was kept 
 in countenance by not a few writers of talent, if not 
 of genius, notably by Piron) that Gil Bias appeared 
 in 171 5. This, his greatest work, was scarcely 
 so popular as Le Diable Boiteux, and it was long 
 before it was finished, while the number of editions 
 during the thirty years of* the author's life was by 
 comparison surprisingly small. Among the few 
 positive statements that we have about Lesage's 
 literary gains is one to the effect that a hundred 
 pistoles had been advanced to him as prepayment 
 for the last volume several years before it was 
 completed. It does not of course follow that 
 this was the whole price. The two first parts, as 
 has been said, appeared in 171 5, the third in 
 1724, the fourth in 1735. Thus Lesage evi- 
 dently took time about his greatest work, though 
 he was compelled to do much else in a hurry. 
 
74 Essays on 
 
 His productions were suiificiently miscellaneous, 
 though most of them had to do with 
 the vein of literary ore which had been ■*^lesage.^ 
 so fortunately indicated to him. A 
 version of Guzman d^Alfarache, much altered and 
 improved ; I'Histoire d'Estivanille Gonzales ; and 
 Le Bachelier de Salamanque, were the chief of 
 these, while he also translated the Orlando Inam- 
 orato. A curious collection of imaginary letters, 
 called the Valise Trouvh, and some minor works, 
 came from his pen ; besides which he was at the 
 close of his life occupied on a collection of anec- 
 dotes which appeared after his death. He also 
 superintended a collection of his TM&tre de la 
 Foire, as he had previously one of his regular 
 pieces. One work not yet mentioned, the Life 
 and Adventures of M. de Beauchine, Captain of 
 Flibustiers, brings him curiously near to Defoe, 
 especially as in this, not less than in the English 
 case, a groundwork of actual memoirs is said or 
 supposed to have existed. From his children 
 Lesage had both trouble and profit. The eldest 
 was bred a lawyer, but became an actor and was 
 disowned by his father. The second took orders, 
 obtained a canonry at Boulogne, and became the 
 mainstay of the family. Worn out by seventy 
 years of life and thirty or forty of literary work, 
 Lesage about 1740 retired with his wife and 
 daughter to the city where his son lived, and 
 spent there his remaining years, dying on the 
 17th of November 1747. A very curious and 
 
French Novelists 75 
 
 interesting letter from the Count de Tressan is in 
 existence, giving an account of him in 
 
 ALAIN RENE v • 1 i. J n- -1 
 
 LESAGE. "'^ '^^'y l^st days. Iressan is known 
 to all students of French literature as 
 having laboriously dressed the stories of the 
 Chansons de Gestes in eighteenth -century gar- 
 ments for the readers of the Biblotheque des 
 Romans — to which act we owe Wieland's Oberon 
 — and as having, in ignorance of the existence of 
 the original, bravely extemporised a Chanson de 
 Roland, which stands, perhaps, in more absurd 
 contrast to the true Chanson than any other con- 
 jectural restoration does to any other original. 
 But he had a real interest in literature, and seems 
 to have been amiable enough at this time. He 
 was a military officer of high standing in the 
 days of Fontenoy, and after that battle was for 
 some time at Boulogne, where he used to visit 
 Lesage. " The old man (he was then about 
 seventy-seven) was," says Tressan, " in a state of 
 half torpor till midday, but he then revived, and 
 was fairly in possession of his faculties till sun- 
 down " — a fact from which the philosophic Count 
 makes some large inferences in proper eighteenth- 
 century style. But, even when most wide awake, 
 Lesage was very deaf, and nothing would induce 
 him to put his trumpet to his ear when persons 
 he disliked were his interlocutors, though it went 
 up readily enough when any one he liked ap- 
 proached. This is the last of the very few pieces 
 of personal gossip which we have about him, 
 
76 Essays on 
 
 and it proves satisfactorily that a hard worker and 
 a great benefactor of his species, who 
 
 , , . . 1 • ^- • J i ALAIN RENE 
 
 had not in his time enjoyed too many lesage. 
 of the gifts of fortune, at any rate 
 passed his last years in peace and in such comfort 
 as might be. His wife outlived him but a very 
 short time, and died at the age of eighty. 
 
 If an author is to be judged only by those 
 works whose popularity has stood the test of 
 time, Lesage need only be considered as the 
 author of Crispin Rival de son Mattre, of Tur caret, 
 of Le Diahle Boiteux, and of Gil Bias de Santil- 
 lane. His other prose works are, indeed, of con- 
 siderable bulk, but they are for the most part 
 distinguished by the merits of the more celebrated 
 pieces in a less prominent, and by the faults in a 
 more prominent, degree. His Guzman d'Alfarache 
 is chiefly interesting as a specimen of remaniemeni, 
 a process which has been more often applied 
 in modern times to dramatic work than to prose 
 fiction, and which, perhaps, in the case of prose 
 fiction, has never been so well managed as here. 
 M. de Beauchine has, as has been already men- 
 tioned, some interesting points of resemblance to 
 the methods of Defoe. Le Bachelier de Sala- 
 manque has a certain interest, because of its 
 connection with the theory or hypothesis of a 
 lost Spanish original of Gil Bias. If Lesage 
 himself may be trusted, there was certainly such 
 an original in the case of the Bachelor, and one of 
 the many suppositions tending to deprive him of 
 
French Novelists 77 
 
 the credit of his greatest work supposes that both 
 were extracted or rehandled from the 
 * LESAGE. same work. Estivanille Gonzales is, 
 perhaps, the least attractive of all, while 
 it is also one of the least original, and the trans- 
 lations from the Italian, etc., need not delay us. 
 Among the minor works the chief are : first, a 
 lively and well-written little dialogue, called Une 
 Journie des Parques, which has had the luck to 
 be oftener reprinted than most of Lesage's opus- 
 cula ; secondly, the already-mentioned collection 
 of imaginary letters called La Valise TrouvSe ; 
 and, lastly, the collection of anecdotes which was 
 the author's last work and which was not pub- 
 lished until after his death. Of Lesage, however, 
 it is truer than of most writers, that he is best 
 seen in his best work. His pot-boilers usually 
 have something of his easy style and much of his 
 pleasant subacid wit, but they fail,, as a rule, to 
 show the power of truthful character -drawing 
 which was his greatest merit, and their wit itself 
 degenerates into mere smartness more frequently 
 than could be wished. 
 
 Somewhat more notice must be given to his 
 work for the ThMtre de la Foire, not merely 
 because it has considerable intrinsic merit, but 
 because of its volume, of the constant labour 
 spent on it for full a quarter of a century by the 
 author, and Isist, but not least, because of its 
 curious form. The pieces which were played at 
 the fairs of Paris were very popular, and their 
 
78 Essays on 
 
 popularity was the subject of constant jealousy 
 on the part of the regular actors of the 
 ThMtre Franqais, though the other two ^'^^^^^^^^ 
 branches of the legitimate drama, the 
 opera and the ComMie Italienne, were sometimes 
 more or less in alliance with their little sister. 
 Not a few of Lesage's pieces deal directly with 
 the vicissitudes of la Foire. The plays represented 
 on these boards were a curious mixture of the 
 commedia dell' arte and the old French farce. 
 Harlequin in particular is an almost invariable 
 character, though the full complement of Pierrot, 
 Scaramouche, Colombine, etc., only occasionally 
 appears. The plays were of three kinds. One 
 of these was drama reduced to nearly its simplest 
 terms. There was no speaking on the stage and 
 the actors confined themselves to pantomime in 
 dumbshow, while two little cherubs sat up aloft 
 with a long roller of wood, from which, from time 
 to time, they unrolled placards on which short 
 songs, set to popular airs, were inscribed. These 
 songs were sung by the audience, assisted by the 
 actors and orchestra. Here, of course, the author's 
 work was limited to the conception of the action, 
 the expression of it by stage directions to the 
 actors, and the composition of the songs. A 
 second kind of piece was the Vaudeville proper, 
 in which the whole play is written in lyrical 
 couplets. In the third and most elaborate, ordinary 
 prose dialogue is mixed up with songs. This last 
 sometimes attained considerable dimensions and 
 
French Novelists 79 
 
 was divided into acts. These popular pieces 
 were, throughout the eighteenth century, 
 
 ALAIN RBN^ 
 
 LESAGE. composed by authors whose literary 
 standing was by no means low — such 
 as Lesage, Piron, C0II6, and many others — and 
 when a piece had a particular vogue it was not 
 unfrequently transferred, at the command of some 
 great personage, to the boards of the opera. Our 
 author, as has been said, wrote a very large 
 number of these curious compositions in all the 
 three styles just described. Their literary value 
 is, of course, far from great, but they display a 
 good deal of invention, a command of easy verse, 
 and much less indulgence in the besetting sin of 
 the fair theatre, license of language, than most of 
 their fellows. La Princesse de Carizme, one of 
 the longest, and possessing something like a plot, 
 is also one of the best. It rests on the well- 
 known story of a princess whose beauty turns all 
 who behold her mad. But, on the whole, the 
 pieces which deal with the rivalry of the Foire 
 and the graver dramatic institutions are, perhaps, 
 the most amusing. The contrasted display of 
 the ComMie Frangaise, her solemn tragic airs and 
 the mannerisms of her lighter mood, with the 
 impudent coquettishness of the personified Foire, 
 gave Lesage a good opportunity, of which he did 
 not scruple to avail himself The contrast, of 
 course, is an old one, and something like it had 
 been frequently brought with success on the 
 popular stage, even in early times. La Querelle 
 
8o Essays on 
 
 des TkMtres has something in it which reminds 
 the reader of the old morality of Science 
 
 J, rr.. • c lA. • I. ALAIN RENE 
 
 et Anerye. The music of the pieces, too, lesage. 
 has its interest, because it shows the 
 remarkable conservatism of the French populace 
 in these matters. Nowadays new airs are a 
 sine gud non for a comic opera that is to be suc- 
 cessful. Lesage's pieces are all written to a few 
 score tunes, which remained on duty during the 
 whole eighteenth century, and may be still seen 
 at the head of Stranger's songs a hundred years 
 and more afterwards. But it must, of course, be 
 understood that only regular students of literature 
 can be recommended to attack Lesage's Thidtre 
 de la Foire. It has received some mention here 
 chiefly because most of his critics have been 
 content to give second-hand judgments of it, and 
 a second-hand judgment in matters literary has a 
 habit of going farther and farther from the truth 
 as it passes from pen to pen. 
 
 The two pieces of Lesage which, if they have 
 not actually kept the stage, have at least secured 
 their place in collections of the French drama, 
 demand a longer mention. I say if they have 
 not kept the stage, for I have no positive know- 
 ledge as to the question whether Crispin and 
 Turcaret have of late years been represented. 
 They are certainly amusing enough to read, and 
 Turcaret is something more than amusing. Crispin 
 Rival de son Maitre is a much less ambitious piece 
 than Turcaret. It is, in fact, only a longish farce 
 
French Novelists 8i 
 
 in one act, but in a great number of scenes. 
 Something of what an English critic 
 
 ALAIN REN^ 
 
 LESAGE. °"*^^ ^^""y unjustly called the " exagger- 
 ated manner of Molifere" may be 
 observed in it. Indeed, this phrase of Hazlitt 
 has a good deal of truth when applied to this 
 little piece ; it is Moli^re's manner exaggerated 
 by recourse to the Spanish style of comedy, from 
 which the great playwright had refined and puri- 
 fied his own. There is the usual impecunious 
 and unlucky lover, but the ' usual valet, instead of 
 backing his master, enters with another valet into 
 a wild plan for marrying the heroine himself 
 By playing into each other's hands the two rascals 
 succeed for a time in hoodwinking the father, and, 
 by gross flattery, in winning over the mother to 
 their side. The scheme is upset by the simple 
 fact that the father of the suitor whom Crispin 
 personates soon appears, and by the still simpler 
 one that the master, of course, recognises and 
 identifies his servant. But the intrigue, impossible 
 as it is, is very briskly kept up, and the short 
 bustling scenes hardly allow the audience to 
 reflect on the improbability of the thing. The 
 dialogue is full of brilliancy, rather resembling 
 Congreve than Moli^re, and this, being unques- 
 tionably the best of its kind that a Parisian 
 audience had heard for a generation, probably 
 secured the popularity of the piece. Turcaret is 
 a much more important production. It has the 
 full five acts of a regular comedy, and, though its 
 
 G 
 
82 Essays on 
 
 plot is rather loose, the ruin and discomfiture of 
 the financier Turcaret give a sufificient 
 
 ™, i- i • II ALAIN RENE 
 
 unity to It. The action, too, is well ^esage. 
 sustained, but the merit of the piece — 
 a merit for which it stands almost alone in the 
 French comedy of the eighteenth century — lies 
 in the striking projection of the characters and 
 the lively natural traits with which they are 
 drawn. The objection which has been made to 
 these characters — that they are rather partial than 
 complete sketches of human nature — applies to 
 all French drama and to almost all artificial 
 comedy, whether French or English. But it 
 would not be easy to find a French play, out of 
 Molifere, in which so many figures stand out so 
 strikingly from the canvas, as is the case in 
 Turcaret. The financier, ashamed of the lowness 
 of his origin, ruthless to his debtors, and a swindler 
 in his dealings with his associates, but capable of 
 being bubbled of his money in the most open 
 fashion by a great lady who condescends to per- 
 mit his addresses ; his wife, an incarnation of 
 vulgar provincial vice, as desperately jealous of 
 her husband as she is shamelessly unfaithful to 
 him ; the chevalier who exploits Turcaret's mistress 
 just as that mistress exploits Turcaret ; the baron- 
 ess, not too scrupulous to plunder her suitor so 
 long as she believes his addresses to be honour- 
 able, but generous enough and not wholly cor- 
 rupted ; the reckless marquis, who has at least 
 the advantage over his friend, the chevalier, that 
 
French Novelists 83 
 
 he is not a knave : all these personages, in them- 
 selves mere stock characters of the 
 LESAGE. oldest date, are made .to live and 
 breathe by touches of Lesage's genius. 
 The most often-quoted scene of the play, where 
 Madame Turcaret, introduced to the baroness's 
 salon, gives an account of the diversions of 
 Valognes, where " on lit tout les ouvrages d'esprit 
 qu'on fait a Cherbourg, ^ St. Lo et k Coutances, 
 qui valent bien les ouvrages de Vire et de Caen," 
 is a masterpiece of its kind, and not much less 
 can be said of the adroit servility of the waiting- 
 maid Lisette. Frontin, her lover, has the defect 
 of all the valets who descend from the Menandrian 
 comedy — the defect of exceeding improbability — 
 but he is not more improbable than Moli^re's 
 Scapins and Gros Rends, and, indeed, not so 
 improbable as some of them. It is also noticeable 
 that, though the dialogue of Turcaret is as full of 
 witticisms as any reasonable man can desire, it has 
 not the fault which is frequently noticeable in 
 French manner-comedies and almost always in 
 English — the fault of letting mere wit combats 
 occupy the characters to the detriment of the 
 dramatic interest of the play. Everything in Tur- 
 caret tends duly to its end. There are few things 
 more surprising, and perhaps, it may be added, 
 less satisfactory, in connection with the theory 
 that a subsidised and established theatre tends 
 to encourage the production of works of genius, 
 than the fact of the subsequent disagreement 
 
84 Essays on 
 
 of the players with Lesage. It is almost incon- 
 ceivable that the man who wrote such a 
 play should not have had it in him to *^lesage. 
 write others of equal, if not greater, 
 goodness. But, as we have seen, Lesage had no 
 opportunity of improving upon Turcaret or re- 
 peating his success, being almost immediately 
 diverted from the regular theatre to the Foire, 
 where, whatever he may have done, he certainly 
 did not work for posterity. His dramatic career, 
 indeed, was that of Moli^re reversed. The earlier 
 writer began with a long apprenticeship to farce- 
 writing and then turned his attention to regular 
 comedy, the other began with regular comedy 
 and was afterwards driven to farce. When one 
 considers the special opening which drama presents 
 to a man who, like Lesage, prefers to work on the 
 inventions of others rather than to spin everything 
 out of his own brains, his abandonment of it seems 
 much to be regretted. Perhaps, however, on the 
 whole the world has not lost ; for where a play 
 gives amusement now and then to hundreds, a 
 novel gives it constantly to thousands, and it is 
 extremely improbable that the very best work 
 that Lesage could ever have produced in the way 
 of drama would have added to the sum of human 
 enjoyment as much as Gil Bias has added. 
 
 It has already been observed that Lesage'3 
 fashion of dealing with his originals when he 
 wrote prose fiction sometimes resembled the usual 
 manner of dramatic authors. If, however, this 
 
French Novelists 85 
 
 latter manner resembled the conduct of the author 
 of Le Diable Boiteux in the composition 
 
 ALAIN RENi r i-L- 1 il l /■ 1 • • 
 
 LESAGE. °' ™'^ work, the charge of plagiarism, 
 which is constantly brought against 
 dramatists, could hardly stand. The Diable Boiteux 
 of Lesage and the Diablo Cojuelo of Luis Velez de 
 Guevara stand to each other in a very curious 
 relation. At first the later work looks almost 
 like a translation of the earlier ; for two chapters 
 it is a translation and very little more. But 
 suddenly Lesage seems to have felt his own 
 power and strikes off on an entirely new path. 
 Neither the course of the story, nor the conclusion, 
 nor even the great majority of the episodes and 
 detached anecdotes in the Diable Boiteux are 
 derived, even by suggestion, from Guevara, while 
 the simplicity of the French style and the un- 
 broken stream of lively narquois narration contrast 
 as strongly as anything can do with the euphuism 
 of Guevara and the singular encomiastic digres- 
 sions on all sorts of personages which figure 
 so largely in the Diablo Cojuelo. The substance of 
 the book is made up partly, no doubt, of anec- 
 dotes borrowed from divers Spanish sources, 
 partly of more or less historical gossip about 
 French men and women of the author's own 
 time — Dufresny the comic author. Baron the 
 actor, Ninon de L'Enclos, are usually specified as 
 figuring — partly of inventions of Lesage's own. 
 As most people know, or ought to know, the 
 plot is suflSciently simple. A young student, for 
 
86 Essays on 
 
 whom an ambush has been laid by his perfidious 
 mistress, escapes by way of the roof, 
 
 , , . . , ■ UU ■ ALAIN RENE 
 
 makes his way mto a neighbounng ^esage. 
 garret, which happens to be the labor- 
 atory of a magician, and is besought by a voice 
 out of a phial to deliver the speaker from durance 
 by breaking the bottle. The request is complied 
 with, and the imprisoned sprite turns out to be 
 Asmodeus, Ddmon de la Luxure. Here almost 
 all borrowing from Guevara ceases. In the 
 Spanish the new confederates journey to different 
 parts of Spain, and the incidents of the story are 
 mainly supplied by the efforts of envious devils to 
 recapture Asmodeus. In the French the general 
 plan is based on an exertion of the power of 
 Asmodeus, whereby he unroofs the houses of 
 Madrid and exhibits the fortunes of the inmates 
 to the student, Don Cleofas, while an additioucil 
 human interest is imparted by a fire, in which the 
 good-natured and grateful demon takes the shape 
 of Cleofas in rescuing a young lady of high birth, 
 and thereby secures for his liberator a prosperous 
 marriage. As a connected story, the original, 
 despite its digressions and episodes, perhaps has 
 the advantage, though the ultimate decision on 
 this point must be left to those who, unlike the 
 present writer, can speak with equal authority on 
 Spanish and on French literature. Lesage's pre- 
 eminence must be sought in the scattered traits 
 of wit and knowledge of human nature which he 
 sprinkles liberally over his work, and in the brisk 
 
French Novelists 87 
 
 and vigorous style wherein the book is written. 
 This latter is the real charm of the 
 LESAGE. Diabh Boiteux. Lesage took something 
 from La Rochefoucauld, something and 
 perhaps more from Saint-Evremond, and, availing 
 himself of the general improvement in French 
 prose style which had resulted from the school- 
 mastering of the academic critics, from Balzac to 
 Boileau, produced a mixture of singular pungency 
 and elegance. Couched as the whole work is in 
 the form of a lengthy dialogue between the demon 
 and Don Cleofas, the author has availed himself 
 of the characteristics of his characters in a suffi- 
 ciently artful fashion. The petulance of the 
 student never allows the good demon to engage 
 uninterrupted in too long a narration, but con- 
 stantly recalls him to this or that interesting 
 incident, which makes a digression in the midst 
 of the histories and prevents any feeling of 
 longueur from stealing on the reader. Now this 
 is a feeling which the general plan of the French- 
 Spanish Roman d'Aventures adopted by Lesage 
 was only too much calculated to produce. The 
 pedigree of stories of this kind was a long one. 
 They arose unquestionably, on the one hand, 
 from the prose Greek romances to which the 
 Byzantine period gave rise, and on the other 
 from the incomparable romances of chivalry, to 
 use the usual though rather indiscriminate term 
 of which France must claim the invention. To 
 do the Chanson de Geste, the oldest form of the 
 
88 Essays on 
 
 latter variety, justice, digression was not among 
 its faults. But from the first the 
 
 ^ , i. U ALAIN REN£ 
 
 Greek prose romance seems to have lj-sage. 
 been liable to it, and from the date of 
 the Romans d'Aventures, which express in a way 
 the union of the two, it was a crying sin of the 
 western romance, whether it was written in verse 
 or in prose. Everything by degrees became 
 sacrificed to length, and the easiest way of 
 attaining length was by indulging in numerous 
 episodic excursions. Moral disquisitions, personal 
 panegyrics, sentimental discussions on points of 
 amatory law, which the earlier seventeenth century 
 had endured, were impossible at the time when 
 Lesage wrote, and he confined himself solely to 
 the story within a story which his English fol- 
 lowers, Smollett and Fielding, adopted from him, 
 and which lasted even to the days of Scott, with 
 the advantage to literature of producing what is, 
 perhaps, the best short tale in any language — 
 Wandering Willie's legend in Redgauntlet. By 
 that time, however, the necessity of connecting 
 the digressions definitely and directly with the 
 general story had forced itself on the consideration 
 of the romancer. Lesage's age was less critical, 
 and his episodes might be cut out without damag- 
 ing such central story as he has, but with a woful 
 consequence to the total interest and attraction of 
 the book. What saves Le Diable Boiteux is, 
 let it be once more repeated, the smartness of the 
 satire, the acuteness of the observation of life, and 
 
French Novelists 89 
 
 the pure fluent style in which the whole is 
 embodied. The one means which has 
 LESAGE. always been able to move a French 
 audience or body of readers has been 
 the untranslatable m-alice; and Lesage possessed 
 the secret of this in an eminent degree. But he 
 had more than this — he had also the faculty of 
 informing his malicious side-hits at human nature, 
 with a certain breadth and truth in which Voltaire 
 himself fails except when he is at his very best, 
 and the gift of never going out of his way for 
 a gibe, a mistake too common among French 
 authors. The fantastic setting ; the absence of 
 any attempt to get into the pulpit and preach, 
 while a certain subtle under-flavour of moralising 
 reconciled the most moralising of all centuries ; 
 the urbanity of the style, and the allusions, artfully 
 scattered here and there, to personal adventures 
 and personal gossip, were quite sufficient to 
 attract contemporaries. That the popularity of 
 the Diable Boiteux has been more than ephemeral 
 shows — let us repeat it, for it cannot be too often 
 repeated — that observation of Nature, embalmed 
 with due preparation of art, is never likely to lose 
 its hold upon men ; if it were, adieu to literature. 
 The good qualities of Turcaret and the Diable 
 Boiteux appeared in far more striking measure 
 and co-ordinated far more skilfully in the great 
 work by which, and perhaps by which only, 
 Lesage is now directly known to the general 
 reader of any country. Of the general merits of 
 
go Essays on 
 
 Gil Bias it is necessary to say very little. Nor is 
 it necessary to add in this particular 
 place, anything to what has been said '^^^lesage.'' 
 and will be said of the comparatively 
 half-hearted estimation in which his countrymen 
 have held the writer of this masterpiece. In 
 French histories of literature Lesage holds but a 
 subordinate place, and he is sometimes treated as 
 second in the race to Defoe, though it is hardly 
 necessary to say that the first and best of the 
 great Englishman's romances is younger than 
 Gil Bias by nearly five years. Argument and 
 abstract are equally superfluous. How Gil Bias 
 left his scarcely unwilling kin, how he learnt by 
 bitter experience not to trust too much to 
 flatterers, how he fell among thieves, among the 
 minions of the law, among actors (on whom 
 Lesage took a terrible vengeance in this book 
 for the treatment they had accorded to him), 
 even those to whom the pleasure of reading 
 the book, in whole or even in part, is yet to come, 
 know, in virtue of a thousand quotations and 
 allusions in every kind of literature. Of the 
 latter parts of the book, which show in the author 
 some such an idea as that by which Dickens, 
 either before or after the fact, excused the trans- 
 formation of Mr. Pickwick's character, perhaps 
 less is known by those who have not actually 
 read it. Only one episode — the famous and, 
 indeed, immortal relapse of Gil Bias into youth- 
 fulness in the matter of the Archbishop of 
 
French Novelists 91 
 
 Granada — has passed into general knowledge. I 
 shall only say that it is perhaps the 
 
 ALAIN REN^ i i j. 
 
 LESAGE. ^^'y happiest holding up of a mirror 
 to one particular weak place of human 
 nature that I know. Few people perhaps, save 
 reviewers, who are in continual receipt of expostu- 
 lations from the reviewed, know how eternal is 
 the verity of the presentment. By some unhappy 
 fortune the particular stanza of the poem, the 
 particular chapter of the novel, the particular 
 juncture of the plot, which the critic happens to 
 blame is the very thing that is best in the book. 
 " On n'a jamais composd de meilleure hom^lie que 
 celle qui a le malheur de n'avoir pas notre appro- 
 bation." This is only an illustration of the 
 supreme merit of the book' — its absolute truth to 
 Nature. But another illustration may, perhaps, 
 be pardonably given. It has been said, or hinted, 
 that in the last two volumes Gil Bias is a much 
 better as well as a much less ridiculous personage 
 than he is in the first — this is especially the case 
 in the last. Prosperity, age, the absence of 
 temptation, account for this. But Lesage's un- 
 pitying, because absolutely veracious, talent would 
 not suffer him to turn his intriguing fortune-hunter 
 into a saint. The ugly episode of the journey to 
 Toledo, in which the admired minister Olivarez 
 and the respectable reformed rake Gil Bias play 
 such awkward parts, is an instance of the truth 
 which is put in the homely phrase Defoe loved — 
 " What is bred in the bone will not go out of the 
 
92 Essays on 
 
 flesh." Nowadays, perhaps, when the naturalist 
 school, in its scorn of the namby- 
 
 , . ^ ^, ., ALAIN RENE 
 
 pamby, rushes into the opposite ex- lesage. 
 treme and will have nothing but vice 
 and ugliness, such a book as Gil Bias is infinitely 
 more instructive, as well as more refreshing to 
 read, than all the rose-pink pictures of impossible 
 virtues and all the half-told tales of life with the 
 dark side of it kept out of sight that literature 
 can muster. It will scarcely be pretended by 
 any brisk young novelist of the nineteenth century 
 that he has more insight than Lesage, scarcely, 
 either, that Lesage was afraid to say what 
 occurred to him or that his literary vocabulary 
 and general equipment were unequal to the 
 task. Yet here is a book as free from cant or 
 from taint of the hirisie de I'enseignement as any 
 one can desire, and yet one leaving no bad taste 
 in the mouth, meddling with no abnormal crimes, 
 and suggesting as a total reflection not merely that 
 all's well that ends well, but that in most cases 
 with fair luck all does end fairly well. 
 
 The question of the origin, or, if the word be 
 preferred, of the originality, of Gil Bias may not 
 be of much intrinsic importance. But its tradi- 
 tional importance in the history of literature is 
 considerable, and something, perhaps, must be 
 said about it here. The assertions of the more 
 or less complete indebtedness of the author to 
 a Spanish original may be classed under three 
 heads. There is, first, the assertion that Gil Bias 
 
French Novelists 93 
 
 is taken from the Marcos de Obregon of Vincent 
 Espinel. This was advanced very 
 LESAGE. shortly after the appearance of the 
 book, and currency was given to it 
 by Voltaire, who roundly repeated it, in conse- 
 quence, beyond all doubt, of the galling attacks 
 which Lesage had made upon his early dramatic 
 and epic efforts, not merely in his farces but in 
 Gil Bias itself, where the author of Zaire figures 
 as Don Gabriel Triaquero. The second is due 
 to a Spanish Jesuit author, who, avowedly setting 
 before him the object of claiming Gil Bias for his 
 own country, endeavours to make out that it is 
 simply a translation of a Spanish original. The 
 third is a more elaborate hypothesis and more 
 difficult of disproof — its foundation, such as it is, 
 has been already alluded to. It is supposed that 
 Lesage extracted the matter, at least, of GU Bias, 
 as well as that of the Bachelier de Salamanque, 
 from a manuscript Spanish original which has 
 since disappeared. As to the first charge, it is 
 one of those curiously hazardous ones, the making 
 of which can only be accounted for on the general 
 principle that some of most handfuls of mud 
 which are thrown is likely to stick, for Espinel's 
 work is unanimously confessed by competent 
 examiners to be not in the least like Gil Bias on 
 the whole, though a very few detached traits may 
 have been taken by Lesage from it, as they 
 almost certainly were for others of his prose 
 fictions. The patriotic hypothesis of Father Isla 
 
94 Essays on 
 
 suffers only from the' fact that there is not the 
 faintest trace of a Spanish Gil Bias 
 or of any allusion, to such a work. As '^'^tZt^^ 
 for the third, it is obviously, and on 
 the face of it, as impossible to disprove as to 
 prove. There may have been French Macbeths 
 and Lears from which Shakespeare adapted the 
 existing pieces, for aught we know. But, when 
 we dismiss merely hypothetical argument and 
 examine the matter coolly, we find, first, that 
 there is absolutely no external evidence that 
 Lesage did in any way plagiarise Gil Bias ; 
 secondly, that there is overwhelming internal 
 evidence that, while he made free use of his 
 Spanish predecessors for details, for local colour, 
 and so forth, the essential part of the book is 
 fairly his own. The "picaroon" romance, as it 
 is called, was a specially Spanish variety of 
 Roman d'Aventures which, abandoning giants and 
 enchanters on the one hand and the long-winded 
 sentimentalities of the Amadis and the Scuddry 
 romances on the other, confined itself to the 
 actual life of the still but half-civilised dominions 
 of the King of Spain, and to the most exciting 
 incidents of that life. Immense numbers of these 
 books were written by Spaniards during the 
 seventeenth century ; and with many, if not the 
 majority, of these Lesage was, we know, familiar. 
 Many of the separate incidents of Gil Bias have 
 been traced to this literature, and, perhaps, more 
 might be so. But there is no reason to believe 
 
French Novelists 95 
 
 that the general cadre into which Lesage fitted 
 these is not his own, and there is every 
 LESAGE reason to believe that the peculiar 
 spirit with which he informs the whole 
 and which gives it its peculiar value is absolutely 
 his. The shrewd wit, neither sententious nor 
 solemn, of his isolated sayings is assuredly not 
 Spanish ; the peculiar universality of his indica- 
 tions of the weaknesses of human nature is still 
 less so. There is little of the kind, I may venture 
 to say, in the greatest of Spanish writers, in Cer- 
 vantes himself; there is nothing of the kind — 
 competent authorities vouch for it — in any lesser 
 Spanish writer. To the higher side of Spanish 
 imagination, its poetry, its magnificence, its for- 
 getfulness of the baser sides of life, Lesage has 
 no claim to approach. But in regard to a sort 
 of prosaic infallibility and universality which he 
 has he may as fairly pretend that the Spaniards 
 have nothing of his. If there is little of Don 
 Quixote, there is, perhaps, something of Sancho 
 in some of his characters; but it is only such 
 an agreement as writers starting from the most 
 diverse points might attain. 
 
 To one charge which has been brought against 
 Gil Bias, that of undue length, it is difficult to 
 offer a very valid defence. That this length con- 
 duced to the anachronisms which the author 
 admits in a characteristic and sarcastic avertisse- 
 ment is very probable. But these are matters of 
 very little consequence and may be ranked with 
 
96 Essays on 
 
 the sea-coast of Bohemia and Hector's reference 
 to Aristotle. It is of more importance 
 
 , , , . , , . f it. ALAIN RENE 
 
 that the extreme prolongation of the lesage. 
 book has made it — as may freely be 
 admitted — to a certain extent tedious. Nor does 
 it seem reasonable to doubt that this prolongation 
 was, in some degree, artificial — that is to say, that 
 the favour with which the book was received and 
 the offers of the publishers, very likely induced the 
 author to extend it a good deal more than he 
 had at first designed. Per contra it can only be 
 alleged that, in the peculiar style of which Gil 
 Bias is an example, there is no natural limit to 
 the exposition. The book having no defined 
 plot, but being a picture of quotquot agunt homines 
 in so far as the life of a particular person touches 
 that action, nothing but the death of the hero can 
 be said to bring it to a close. This, indeed, is of 
 the essence of the romance as opposed to the 
 epic, and, in its so-called regular or non-Shake- 
 spearian form, the drama. These two latter 
 presuppose a definite and limited plot. The 
 romance does not, and it admits not only an 
 indefinite extension in a straight line, but also 
 digressions and episodes ad infinitum. That this 
 is rather a weakness than a strength of the style 
 may certainly be admitted, and the fact had been 
 sufficiently exemplified, not merely in the medi- 
 aeval poem-and-prose romances but in the Amadis 
 cycle, where the reader is conducted from genera- 
 tion to generation in a manner sufficient to weary 
 
French Novelists 97 
 
 the patience of the most robust. But it was 
 characteristic of Lesage that he was an 
 
 ALAIN Ii.£N!^ • « 
 
 LESAGE. innovator rather in detail than in the 
 general. He did not produce the 
 modern novel — that was reserved for his younger 
 contemporary Provost. He only took an existing 
 genre, made many small improvements in it, and 
 produced a masterpiece therein. Perhaps it would 
 be ungrateful to complain, when he did so much, 
 that he did no more. 
 
 In the controversies which have arisen about 
 Lesage's greatest work it is not very difficult to 
 find a satisfactory explanation of his great and 
 peculiar value. For the Spanish claim — abso- 
 lutely unsupported as it is by one tittle of external 
 evidence, and, indeed, as we may almost say, 
 completely as it is rebutted by all such evidence 
 — rests in reality on an expressed or understood 
 idea that no one but a native writer could have 
 so dealt with Spain and Spaniards. The retort 
 to the charge is as instructive as the charge itself. 
 Frenchmen appeal to Germans, Englishmen, and 
 other foreigners to decide the cause, and the 
 referees give their decision in a manner which is 
 decisive. Gil Bias, they say, is not specially a 
 Spaniard, though the art of his creator has dressed 
 him up marvellously in the habits, garments, and 
 speech of Spain. He is simply a man, and the 
 accuracy with which the author has hit the 
 universal beneath the particular would have 
 equally enabled him, had he chosen, to draw an 
 
 H 
 
98 Essays on 
 
 Englishman or a German, and would have entitled 
 Englishmen or Germans, had they been 
 
 ° . , , i-i.ji 1- I,- ALAIN RENE 
 
 sufficiently shortsighted, to claim his lesage. 
 work as borrowed or stolen from an 
 English or German original. The reply is un- 
 answerable, and the more one reads Lesage the 
 more convinced one is of the sufficiency of it, and 
 the more proof one finds of its truth. It is in 
 this quality of universality, of striking at the 
 essential humanity of men and dealing with their 
 accidental nationality only in such manner as 
 might suit his purpose, that Lesage's great genius 
 consists, and in this quality he is, as it seems to 
 me, at the head of all French writers, and only 
 second to Shakespeare. Of course the range of 
 the two is very different, it is even hardly com- 
 mensurable. Lesage had his faculty at complete 
 command within certain very restricted limits, 
 but beyond those limits he was not in the least 
 master of it ; indeed, it can scarcely be said that 
 he endeavoured to show it at all. Whether his 
 thorough and comparatively early studies in one 
 peculiar and extremely artificial kind of literature 
 — the picaroon romances and intrigue-dramas of 
 Spain — narrowed his mind at the same time that 
 they sharpened it, is a question rather of psychology 
 than of literature ; but it is certain that he shows 
 very little tendency to wander out of his own 
 narrow circle, and that when he does so he be- 
 comes merely an ordinary man of letters, possessed 
 of a pleasant wit and of a ready and skilful pen. 
 
French Novelists 99 
 
 But within his circle he hardly yields to the 
 master himself. Indeed, Gil Bias may 
 
 ALAIN RENE v 1 J L • 1- i • 
 
 LESAGE. '^°^" "P "^^ head m any company, 
 even in the company of Shakespeare's 
 children. There is the same invariable con- 
 sistency, the same total absence of false notes, 
 the same completeness of presentation. It is 
 in this latter that Lesage differs most from his 
 countrymen. The fatal doctrine of the ruling 
 passion had made but little impression upon him. 
 In drawing Gil Bias he has not an abstraction of 
 intrigue and courtiership of the lower class before 
 him as a model, he has a man who, for a long 
 time, is given up partly by the unkindness of 
 fortune, partly by natural bent, to courtiership 
 and intrigue. To the last, touches of Nature, 
 though they naturally grow fewer and fewer, 
 chequer and diversify the presentment. Now 
 this was what the French, since they had given 
 themselves up to swallow the doctrines and do 
 the bidding of Horace, as represented or misre- 
 presented by the native critics of the Malherbe- 
 Boileau school, could not attain to, and could 
 hardly even understand. Had Boileau lived a 
 little longer, it may be shrewdly suspected that he 
 would have regarded Gil Bias with much more 
 indignation than that with which he regarded Le 
 Diable Boiteux, and it is noteworthy that the 
 greater work was far less popular with its author's 
 countrymen than the lesser. They would, doubt- 
 less, have liked Achilles to be always iracundus 
 
lOO Essays on 
 
 inexorabilis acer, and would have preferred that 
 Gil Bias should have outwitted the 
 parasite in the matter of the trout, and lesage. 
 kept the favour of the Archbishop of 
 Granada. Gil Bias, too, is far less full than Le 
 Viable Boiteux of the epigrammatic pointes which 
 have never ceased to delight the true French- 
 man — indeed, they are delightful enough — and 
 which reach their climax in the writings of 
 Voltaire. Such sayings as : " Vous n'avez pas 
 des id^es justes de notre enfer " — " On nous 
 reconcilia, nous nous embrassames, et depuis ce 
 temps nous sommes ennemis mortels " — " Je sais 
 qu'il y a de bons remMes, mais je ne sais pas 
 s'il y a de bons m^decins " — " Tout payeur est 
 trait^ comme un mari," and a hundred things 
 besides, are worthy of the author of Candide at 
 his very best, and his countrymen could not fail 
 to relish them. They were less keen to relish 
 such a presentment as that of Gil Bias, and 
 therefore Lesage's fame, great as it has been 
 even in France, has been more European than 
 French, and he is to be quoted and com- 
 pared with foreigners rather than with his country- 
 men. 
 
 There is another point of importance in which 
 Lesage has a resemblance to Shakespeare. He 
 has not merely in some not small measure the 
 quality of universality, but he has, and this in 
 very great measure, the quality of detachment. 
 He seems to look at his characters with the same 
 
French Novelists loi 
 
 inscrutable impartiality as that with which their 
 _ creator contemplates lago and Goneril, 
 LESAGE. Macbeth and Claudius. He does not 
 describe their monkey tricks with any 
 particular gusto, at least of a personal kind, nor 
 does he regard them with the least moral indig- 
 nation. All that does not concern him. Writing 
 as he did in a period of very low morality — there 
 probably never was a time when the general 
 moral standard was lower in Europe than in the 
 first half of the eighteenth century — and taking 
 for his models a mass of writings dealing with 
 unscrupulous adventures and intrigue, he has had 
 to describe what is bad much oftener than what 
 is good. But it is impossible to say either that 
 he gloats over the vices and follies which he 
 describes, or that he records them with cynical 
 amusement, or that he holds them up for righteous 
 detestation. The least little appearance of the 
 second attitude may sometimes be found in the 
 utterances of Asmodeus, which are as personal as 
 anything we have of his ; but even this is, for the 
 most part, dramatic merely. This quality, beyond 
 all doubt, is connected with the former, and is, 
 indeed, to a great extent implied by it. When a 
 man is very much in earnest about points of 
 morality, still more when he writes definitely 
 with a moral or immoral purpose, he seldom 
 succeeds in giving us the complete presentation 
 of his characters. He is bribed, without knowing 
 it, by his prepossessions, he cannot help, if he 
 
I02 Essays on 
 
 objects to the established standards of morality, 
 softening the vicious characters unduly, 
 
 , . , , J 1 •/■ 1. u ALAIN RENE 
 
 or hardening them unduly if he be lesage. 
 among the moral subdivision of the 
 heretics of instruction. I do not know that 
 Lesage has been much examined by the strenuous 
 advocates of the moral element in literature, 
 though they have not neglected Fielding, his 
 English parallel. The fact is that Fielding's 
 irregular life rather assists them, while the little 
 that is known of Lesage goes to show that he 
 was in his own person an exemplary liver. It is, 
 however, true that the resemblances between 
 Fielding and Lesage are great, not merely in that 
 they adopted the same general conception of the 
 novel, but that they succeeded in working out 
 that conception and in bringing their characters, 
 or some of them, under the species ceternitatis. 
 An Englishman naturally speaks with some 
 caution about Fielding, because he himself is not 
 in so good a position as foreigners to judge how 
 far Fielding has accomplished this. Englishmen, 
 however, are the best possible judges of Lesage, 
 because they are equally free from bias connected 
 with the language in which he writes and from 
 bias connected with the country which he illus- 
 trates. 
 
 There is one important and intricate question 
 which can hardly be passed over, though here, at 
 least, it can only be very summarily dealt with. 
 It has been said that until the present century no 
 
French Novelists 103 
 
 French writer, except Montaigne and Rabelais, 
 deserves the title of humorist, and this 
 
 ALAIN REN£ 
 
 LESAGE. would, of course, exclude Lesage. On 
 the other hand, the exclusion has been 
 objected to in the interest of some mediaeval 
 writers. The truth is, that the whole question 
 turns on one of the most disputed points in litera- 
 ture — the deiinition of humour. If, as it has 
 been admirably put, the humorist is a man who 
 " thinks in jest when he feels in earnest " ; or if, 
 as Thackeray puts it, he is a week-day preacher, 
 then Lesage most assuredly is not one. For not 
 only has he no direct moral purpose (which, 
 indeed, is oftener than not fatal to humour), but 
 it is difficult to discern that he has, as Rabelais, 
 Montaigne, and Shakespeare had, any general 
 theory or grasp of the world or of life, whether 
 poetical, ironical, or sceptical, which could supply 
 him with the background necessary to the humorist. 
 Neither had he, like Fielding and Thackeray 
 himself, a passionate interest in that world — a 
 sympathy with it which, in its way, is also suffi- 
 cient to bring out the strokes of the strange 
 invisible ink called humour. It would seem, 
 therefore, that his exclusion is justified, and as he 
 shares it with Moli^re,and even with La Fontaine, he 
 need not be ashamed of his company. Like these 
 still greater men, however, he had a wit so fine, so 
 flexible, so far transcending the ordinary limitations 
 of wit, that it almost amounted to humour, and 
 may be said to be practically a substitute for it. 
 
I04 Essays on 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of a point 
 of very arreat importance — the style of 
 
 Till. it. J ALAIN REN£ 
 
 Lesage. In all such cases the modern lesage. 
 reader who merely looks back is very 
 likely to be deceived by his point of view. Yet 
 even the modern reader, if he has but some notion 
 of the date of his author, must, I should think, be 
 conscious of a singular modernness in Gil Bias 
 and the Diable Boiteux compared with Bossuet, 
 F^nelon, even Malebranche, and still more with 
 Madame de S^vign^ and Saint-Simon. Lesage, 
 indeed, was one of a line of great writers chiefly 
 of the lighter kind, who, perhaps, did most of any 
 of their contemporaries to shape French style, as 
 it has been generally understood until recently. 
 Saint-Evremond and Pascal are the earliest of 
 these, and Lesage, taking up the torch, handed it 
 on to Voltaire. It is noteworthy that Voltaire, 
 perhaps on the principle of kicking down his 
 ladders, was unjust both to Saint-Evremond and 
 to Lesage, though, as has been said, the latter 
 had certainly provoked him. The great distinc- 
 tion of Lesage is the extreme ease of his writing 
 and the manner in which his good things, such as 
 those already cited above, drop naturally out in 
 the midst of his narrative or dialogue, without 
 any effort or apparent leading up. It would 
 demand a much greater acquaintance with Spanish 
 literature than any to which I, even at second- 
 hand, can pretend, to decide whether his studies 
 had anything to do with this ; but I think that 
 
French Novelists 105 
 
 it may be tolerably safely assumed that they had 
 not, except by way of contrast. For 
 LESAGE. niany. if not most, of the works which 
 Lesage translated or followed were 
 written in the extremest gongorist or conceited 
 style — a style as remote from his as Lyly's from 
 Steele's. It may possibly be contended that it 
 was in fighting against this excess that Lesage 
 learnt the secret of a wise economy. Certainly 
 there are not merely few writers in whom there 
 is so little archaism, affectation, mannerism, or 
 deliberate oddity and obscurity, but also few in 
 whom the style is so absolutely plain and un- 
 adorned, without being in the least vulgar, or, in 
 the unfavourable sense, homely. His autobio- 
 graphies, probably owing to this, have, more than 
 most autobiographies, the air of being really told 
 by a speaker and not elaborated in the study. 
 There are no ponderous sentences, no phrases 
 over which the reader sees that the pen has hung 
 a long time, and, as has been already noted, none 
 of the leading up and preparation which certain 
 witty writers are unable to avoid or to conceal. 
 The most commonplace things are said with 
 perfect simplicity, and yet, somehow or other, in 
 a way on which it is impossible to improve. It 
 must be a bold man who thinks he can better a 
 saying of Lesage's, and that not because of any 
 tour de force of unusual phrase or out-of-the-way 
 thought, but, on the contrary, because the sim- 
 plicity has reached the lowest term. Nothing can 
 
io6 Essays on 
 
 be taken away, and nothing can be added that is 
 not a useless addition. 
 
 _, , . r 1 • 11 J 1 _• ALAIN RENE 
 
 The question of his alleged plagiar- ^esage. 
 isms has been already, to some extent, 
 dealt with. It has been shown, that is to say, 
 that in the way of absolute stealing the charge 
 has not the slightest probability. The strongest 
 argument of all is, indeed, that when we see what 
 he did with originals which we possess, such as 
 Guzman d'Alfarache and the Diablo Cojuelo, there 
 could be no motive for discreditable appropria- 
 tion in other cases. But, when the charge in its 
 offensive sense has been laid aside, it remains to 
 consider the use which he did make of publica 
 materies. There can be no doubt that, as was 
 the case with Shakespeare and Moli^re, and many 
 other men of the very greatest genius, he made 
 wholesale and indiscriminate use thereof. There 
 is proof of this in many cases ; there is probability 
 of it in many more. Indeed, there is in this and 
 other instances almost ground for the paradox 
 that it is only men of little creative power who 
 are scrupulously original. Many very small poets, 
 by luck or by care, have kept free from the charge 
 of indebtedness to anybody, while Shakespeare 
 calmly versifies whole pages of North's "Plutarch "; 
 while Moli^re compels restitution of his goods 
 from the unlucky people who happened to possess 
 them first without the least scruple ; while Milton 
 lays Dutch dramatists and French epic poets 
 and Italian opera librettists under contribution as 
 
French Novelists 107 
 
 coolly as if they had been Royalist squires. In 
 Lesage's case there is, however, some- 
 LESAGE. thing more than this. In the three 
 great cases just mentioned, and in many 
 others, it is only now and then that the borrowers 
 condescend to borrow ; it is a passing freak, or, 
 to speak more respectfully and with more critical 
 truth, an occasional conviction that here are the 
 tools of which they themselves can make the best 
 use. But there are some men, and those not 
 among the least in literature, who, from a certain 
 idiosyncrasy, which may, perhaps, be termed an 
 indolence of brain, have seemed to prefer always, 
 when it was possible, to work on beaten tracks 
 and to take their start from some already accom- 
 plished work. The most remarkable example of 
 this variety of talent in English literature is 
 Dryden ; the most remarkable in French literature 
 is beyond all question Lesage. Yet Lesage must 
 in respect of absolute originality be ranked below 
 Dryden, because his greatest work, though its 
 substance may be independent enough, springs in 
 point of general design directly from Spanish 
 originals, while the greatest work of Dryden, his 
 satiric and didactic pieces, was not directly sug- 
 gested by anything precedent. It may be said, 
 indeed, that, of the four productions which we 
 have singled out as exhibiting Lesage at his best, 
 the two dramas are far more original than the 
 two novels. Whether Lesage, had he been more 
 favoured by the exponents of the regular drama 
 
io8 Essays on 
 
 and had he devoted himself longer thereto, would 
 have produced something even more 
 original than Crispin and Turcaret must l^sage. 
 be left among the merely scholastic 
 problems of literature, the "might-have-beens" 
 inquiry into which is bootless and idle. The 
 time, however, had not come for any innovation 
 on the set lines of French comedy and tragedy, 
 even had the author been disposed for such in- 
 novation, and it is noteworthy enough that, when 
 in his specially chosen province of the Thidtre 
 de la Foire an opportunity appeared for a bold 
 stroke, he declined it. On one occasion the 
 jealousy of the regular actors had procured a 
 police edict restricting their rivals to a single 
 personage. The managers of the fair stage were 
 in despair, for neither Lesage nor any of their 
 other regular contributors would attempt the task 
 of a monodrama, and recourse had to be had to 
 the untried and fitful but fertile genius of Piron, 
 whose Arlequin Deucalion got them out of the 
 difficulty. This anecdote seems to argue a certain 
 indisposition to try experiments which is consistent 
 enough with what we have of Lesage's work. It 
 must be remembered, too, that he did not begin 
 literary labour very young, and that he did not 
 make any great success in it until he was already 
 a man of middle age. There are not wanting 
 examples of striking originality in conception as 
 well as striking power of execution displayed by 
 late-writing authors. But on the whole it may. 
 
French Novelists 109 
 
 perhaps, be safely said that invention is a habit as 
 much as any other, and that it is a 
 LESAGE.'' habit which is for the most part only 
 acquired in youth. 
 Such are the principal critical points which 
 present themselves in the life of this great novelist 
 and master of French prose. As one turns over 
 the leaves of a library catalogue and sees the 
 immense number of editions, translations, and 
 what not, that Gil Bias has gone through and 
 undergone in its century and a half of life, it is 
 impossible not to draw the conclusion that its 
 goodness is a matter settled and out of hand. 
 One generation may make egregious mistakes, 
 and constantly does make egregious mistakes, 
 about an author, leaving him to unjust neglect, 
 or awarding to him still more absurd triumphs. 
 Subsequent generations may, in a way, continue 
 the mistake by leaving the justice of the verdict, 
 for or against, undisturbed, because the evidence 
 is undisturbed likewise. But when a book has 
 actually been read by half a dozen successive 
 sets of the inhabitants of the earth, when its 
 most remarkable incidents and characters have 
 become part of the common stock of furniture 
 possessed even by a very modest housekeeper in 
 things literary, then there is not much reason for 
 questioning the value. The works, even the best 
 works, of Lesage are, of course, not good through- 
 out. Even in Le Diable Boiteux, despite its 
 moderate length, there are longueurs, and there 
 
no Essays on 
 
 are most assuredly longueurs in Gil Bias. Some 
 of it is obsolete, some could be well 
 spared now, some, it is difficult not to ^''^ErAGE.'* 
 think, could have been well spared 
 at any time. But its best things are as fresh as 
 ever, and are likely to continue so as long as 
 human nature exists. The opening chapters, the 
 address to the reader — Lesage was never happier 
 than in his addresses to the reader, prefaces, and 
 such like things — the episodes of Sangrado and 
 the Archbishop, half a hundred things beside, are 
 as amusing to read for the twentieth time as for 
 the first. What is, perhaps, of more importance, 
 the same may be said of the best passages, even 
 in the work which has been less favoured by the 
 general approbation. But at the same time no 
 one who weighs his words will attempt to deny 
 that Lesage has produced a considerable amount 
 of inferior work side by side with his masterpieces. 
 Nor can it be denied that, as has been more than 
 once here allowed, his range is but limited, and 
 that he seems to require a somewhat unusual 
 amount of prompting and crutching before he is 
 able to make his bow and say his say. These 
 things debar him from the place among the 
 chosen few of the writers of his country to which 
 the wonderful success of his best work and the 
 purity of his style would otherwise entitle him. 
 In theoretical originality, in variety of work, in 
 construction, he is very deficient. Gil Bias drags 
 rather than hastens to its end, the author having 
 
French Novelists in 
 
 failed completely to extricate himself from the 
 toils of the endless episodes and digres- 
 
 ALAIN REN^ . r u- <:• -1 J 1 T' j. 
 
 LESAGE. sions of his Spanish models, i urcaret 
 in the same manner lacks unity and 
 precision of plot. Excellence of style and 
 surprising fidelity to human nature in character- 
 drawing — these are the two pillars of Lesage's 
 renown, and it is solidly established upon them. 
 He is thus one of the few writers, to return to 
 the point from which we started, of whom it can 
 be definitely said that, if he had been in more 
 fortunate worldly circumstances, he would have 
 done better, unless, which is, perhaps, equally 
 probable, he had done nothing at all. Possessing 
 gifts which do not fall to the lot of one writer 
 in a thousand, he did not always or very often 
 succeed in getting those gifts into perfect 
 working order. His selection of foreign subjects, 
 and the very natural, though very unjust, sus- 
 picion of grave indebtedness to foreign models, 
 have also worked against his fame. Yet, with 
 those who have considered novel-writing seriously, 
 he will always rank as one of the princes of 
 character-drawing in its largest and most human 
 sense, while with those who busy themselves with 
 the history of French literature he will always 
 hold the rank of the best writer of the first 
 quarter of the eighteenth century. 
 
IV 
 A STUDY OF SENSIBILITY 
 
 There are few words in the use of which the 
 power of fashion is at the present day 
 
 ' SENSIBILITY. 
 
 more curiously illustrated than in the f ^"^^^^ °^ 
 
 use of the word sensibility. As it is 
 employed in the title of this essay, it will probably 
 seem to some persons affected, or at the best 
 peculiar. Yet " Sensibility, so charming " in verse, 
 and the title of not the least delightful of Miss 
 Austen's novels in prose, may suffice to clear the 
 locution from the charge of latter-day Gallicism. 
 There was most assuredly a time when sensibility 
 had in English the full Gallic sense of sensibiliti — 
 in fact, when it had reached the pitch which the 
 French themselves were, and are, fain to designate 
 by the intensification, coined for the purpose, of 
 sensiblerie. The whole eighteenth century, but 
 especially its later years, was the period of this 
 use, and the great writer who has just been cited 
 may suffice (as the present purpose is not to deal 
 with English examples of the phenomenon) to 
 
Essays on French Novelists 113 
 
 show what the end of sensibility was. Every- 
 body has laughed, let us hope not un- 
 sENsiBiLiTY. kindly, over Marianne Dashwood's woes. 
 But Marianne was only an example, 
 exaggerated in the genial fashion of her creatress, 
 of the proper and recognised standard of feminine 
 feeling. The " man of feeling " was admitted as 
 something out of the way — on which side of the 
 way opinions might differ. But the woman of 
 feeling was emphatically the accepted type — a 
 type which lasted far into the present age. The 
 extraordinary development of emotion which was 
 expected from women need not be illustrated 
 merely from love stories. The wonderful trans- 
 ports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their 
 long-lost mothers ; even those of sober Fanny Price 
 in Mansfield Park, at the recovery of her estimable 
 but not particularly interesting brother William, 
 give the keynote much better than any more 
 questionable ecstasies. " Sensibility, so charming," 
 was the pet affectation of the period — an affecta- 
 tion carried on till it became quite natural, and 
 was only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction 
 of Byronism. 
 
 The thing, however, was not English in origin, 
 and never was thoroughly English at all. The 
 production of it was one of the social triumphs of 
 literature — one of the tricks played by that very 
 odd demon which agitates the gray goose-quill. 
 There is no trace of sensibility in Shakespeare's 
 women, though they have plenty of passion ; there 
 
 I 
 
114 Essays on 
 
 is little or none in any English author till French 
 literature had acquired on the English 
 mind a hold which here at least cannot g^j^gj^jj^j^y^ 
 be over-estimated, as it has been in vari- 
 ous criticisms on other departments of letters. In 
 poetry, drama, serious prose of all sorts, the verdict 
 on Pope's charge of a victorious invasion of the 
 Gauls must be Not Proven. In prose fiction it is 
 hardly the same. Throughout the eighteenth 
 century French romance was practically the model 
 of all Europe, though it is noteworthy that the 
 most vivid and enduring copies were taken from 
 Lesage, who himself made no school in France, 
 precisely because he was absolutely free from 
 sensibility. An extreme patriot might try to 
 vindicate the dubious honour of paternity for this 
 growth for Richardson, but chronology is against 
 it. The spirit which had been first evolved in 
 France certainly entered into the fat body of that 
 printer in a very energetic manner, and returned 
 therefrom, more vigorous and effectual than ever, to 
 the country of its birth. But Richardson was only 
 a parenthesis. The main current of the sensibility 
 novelists who impressed their curious morals or 
 manners on all men and women in civilised Europe, 
 continued to be French in unbroken succession, 
 from the day when Madame de la Fayette first 
 broke ground against the ponderous romances of 
 Madeleine de Scuddry, to the day when Benjamin 
 Constant forged in Adolphe the link between 
 eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century romance. 
 
French Novelists 115 
 
 between the novel of sentiment and the novel of 
 
 analysis. 
 SENSIBILITY. ^"^ °^ *^^^ oddest things which 
 
 strikes a student of this matter, is that 
 the greatest names of prose fiction in the French 
 eighteenth century fall somehow or other out of 
 this current, at least out of its direct line, though 
 they are all, except Lesage, more or less influ- 
 enced by it. The author of Gil Bias is perhaps 
 the greatest stumbling-block in literature to the 
 product-of-the-circumstances and spirit-of-the-age 
 formulas which have served for so much glib and 
 picturesque literary exposition. The obstinate 
 Breton ignores chronology and M. Taine in a 
 manner which verges very closely on the disrespect- 
 ful. It evidently never occurred to him that he 
 had been only just of age when Madame de la 
 Fayette died, that he was the contemporary of 
 Marivaux, and not a great many years older than 
 Richardson. He chose to be himself, and not a 
 product of the century, and was rewarded on the 
 one hand by the neglect of his countrymen then 
 and ever since, and on the other by being the 
 literary father of Fielding and every subsequent 
 member of one of the two good schools of novelists. 
 Provost, almost a greater name than Lesage, 
 inasmuch as Manon Lescaut is more uniformly 
 and concentratedly good than Gil Bias or any of 
 its fellows, is also hardly a novelist of sensibility. 
 He tried it, as in his journalist fashion he tried 
 everything, but it did not suit him, and so he wrote 
 
ii6 Essays on 
 
 several interminable romances of a kind of mild 
 adventure, and one masterpiece of 
 character-drawing which it is impossible sensibility. 
 to like too much, or to praise too much, 
 or to read too much. Cr^billon's mistress was not 
 sensibility, it was that with which sensibility has 
 been said to " keep house " ; and a very lively and 
 agreeable household did this major-domo keep up 
 for the less reputable of the two housemates. 
 With Diderot (who chose to be eaten up with 
 sensibility in other circumstances) it passed, as far 
 as his fiction is concerned, into tragic moral por- 
 traiture in La Riligieuse, into real pathos, free 
 from all convention (which is of the essence of 
 sensibility), in the one undisputed episode of 
 Jacques le Fataliste, the famous story of the 
 Marquis des Arcis. Rousseau took things too 
 seriously for it, Voltaire not nearly seriously 
 enough ; and as for the great semi-novelists of the 
 close of the century, Chateaubriand and Madame 
 de Stael, they mix too many secondary purposes 
 with their philandering, and, like the philosophes 
 their fathers, are too much of pamphleteers. For 
 the true sensibility, the odd quintessence of con- 
 ventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real 
 if not wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of 
 two such wholesome young Britonesses as Marianne 
 Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look else- 
 where. Madame de la Fayette, Madame de 
 Fontaines, Madame de Tencin (most heartless and 
 therefore naturally not least sentimental of women). 
 
French Novelists 117 
 
 Marivaux, Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady 
 novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza 
 SENSIBILITY.^"'^ dc Duras are the chief; and, to 
 finish, the two really remarkable names 
 of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant — 
 these are our " documents." The subjects of the 
 inquiry are pleasant pieces of literary bric-d-brac ; 
 perhaps they are something a little more than that. 
 For sensibility was actually once a great power in 
 the world. Transformed a little, it did wonderful 
 things in the hands of Rousseau and Goethe and 
 Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks 
 and corners even at the present day, when it is 
 usually and irreverently called " gush," and heaven 
 only knows whether it may not be resuscitated in 
 full force before some of us are dead. For it has 
 exactly the peculiarities which characterise all 
 recurrent fashions — the appeal to something which 
 is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great 
 deal that is not. 
 
 It may seem strange at first sight that the 
 invention of this curiously unreal product should 
 be set to the credit of a woman who, like Madame 
 de la Fayette, had the credit of being " la femme 
 la plus vraie " that her friends (and they included 
 such terrible critics as Madame de S^vignd and 
 La Rochefoucauld) professed to know. But the 
 paradox is easily explicable. What Madame de 
 la Fayette did was to change an utterly unreal 
 style into one real enough to live and influence 
 human beings. Many people talk about the 
 
1 1 8 Essays on 
 
 romances of Sapho (that is to say. Mademoiselle 
 de Scuddry), but few people, I ven- 
 
 ,1 ^^ t J i A STUDY OF 
 
 ture to suspect, have attempted to gj,j^gjgjj^j^y_ 
 read them in the present day, and 
 fewer have achieved the adventure. To find 
 yourself in face of twenty-four authentic volumes, 
 even if they be not very large duodecimos, and 
 to know that these are one novel, is sufficiently 
 appalling ; and it is not in the least a consolation 
 to be informed that there are really only twelve, 
 because each is divided into two parts. But 
 mere length is not a fatal obstacle. Madame de 
 S^vign^'s own letters probably fill, at least, as 
 much actual space as the longest of the novels 
 she delighted in, and they are not hard to read 
 through. The impenetrability of the Scuddry 
 romances does not lie in any actual literary 
 inferiority, for there are excellent passages in 
 them. But the atmosphere is so wholly unreal to 
 a modern reader, that it simply asphyxiates him 
 when he has to breathe it for the terribly long 
 space of time necessary to follow the fortunes of 
 the Grand Cyrus, or to explore thoroughly the 
 geography of Tendre. Now Marie Madeleine de 
 Lavergne, who married one of those remarkable 
 husbands (frequent in French history and liter- 
 ature) of whom nobody ever hears anything, 
 showed that she was a woman of genius, by doing 
 two things with this deplorable kind of romance. 
 She cut it down from the dimensions of an 
 encyclopaedia to those of a pamphlet, and she 
 
French Novelists 119 
 
 infused into its atmosphere a very considerable 
 proportion of the breath of actual 
 
 A STUDY OF vr J ■ 11 i T- 
 
 SENsiBiLiTY. ^'"^ ^"" UHiversal human nature. For 
 the artificiality which still remained, 
 and which gave the distinguishing character to 
 sensibility, she had the excuse that it faith- 
 fully reproduced the tone of society ; and 
 society itself had more excuse for maintaining 
 that tone at the time than is generally known. 
 All impartial students of French literature are 
 agreed that the conventional absurdities of the 
 prdcieuses, their sighs and flames, their platonic 
 affections, their elaborate gradations of the tender 
 passion, were really an attempt, and a not unsuc- 
 cessful attempt, at reform. To estimate the need 
 that there was for reform, a course (which is not 
 recommended virginibus puerisqtie) of Brantdme, 
 followed by Tallemant des Rdaux, is all that is 
 necessary. What sort of manners the incompar- 
 able Arth^nice (an anagram for Catherine, due 
 to the combined wits of two celebrated poets, 
 Malherbe and Racan, during a severe afternoon's 
 study) had to soften and render human, might be 
 made intelligible by two anecdotes (if it were only 
 possible to quote them), the anecdote of the 
 practical joke played by some of the finest gentle- 
 men of France on a maid of honour, which is 
 recorded by Brant6me, and the anecdote of the 
 servant- girl who threw herself out of window, 
 which is recorded by Tallemant. Knowledge of 
 these facts does not in the least take off the edge 
 
1 20 Essays on 
 
 of one's laughter at the pr^cieuses ridicules and the 
 femmes savantes, but it enables one 
 to respect Madame de Rambouillet ^^™^^j^y. 
 and her friends while laughing at 
 them, or rather at those who imitated and 
 of course caricatured them. Madame de la 
 Fayette's great merit is that she reduced this 
 preciousness to manageable limits, and informed 
 it with a great deal of wit and pathos. She is 
 rather a considerable figure in literature, for 
 besides her novels, she has left numerous and 
 interesting letters (some of which have shocked 
 her French admirers dreadfully, by showing that 
 she did not entirely renounce interest in the things 
 of this world when her friend La Rochefoucauld 
 died), and some still more interesting memoirs 
 on Henrietta Maria of England, of whom she 
 saw much in the miserable days when the Queen 
 had to depend on Mazarin's bounty, and on the 
 early days of the sojourn of James II in France. 
 But we have to do here only with Zaide and 
 the Princesse de Cleves, for her smaller novels, 
 Madame de Montpensier and the Comtesse de Tende, 
 may be omitted. 
 
 The first thing which strikes the reader (and it 
 continued to mark the school till the genius of 
 Marivaux and Provost struck out a new line) is 
 that the scenes of these novels are, with evident 
 purpose, thrown into a remote period. In the 
 Princesse de Cloves the author ventured so near 
 her own day as the reign of Henri II, but Zatde 
 
French Novelists 121 
 
 (the earlier book) deals with an indistinct time 
 in the dark ages of Spain. So also 
 SENSIBILITY. ^^^^™^ de Fontaines, Madame de la 
 Fayette's immediate borrower, threw 
 the scene of La Comtesse de Savoie into the 
 eleventh century, and that of Amenophis into 
 a period of the history of Libya with which, I 
 think, chronology has not much to do. The 
 M^moires du Comte de Comminge of Madame 
 de Tencin is indeed exempt from this peculiarity, 
 but it reappears in the Si^ge de Calais and 
 the Regne d'Edouard II of the same author. 
 In all these books, except those of Madame de 
 la Fayette, the fault of contemporary French 
 tragedy (a fault which, at the date of the Princesse 
 de Cleves, had hardly been rendered inveterate by 
 the principal sinner Racine) appears flagrantly. 
 Not only is there no attempt at local colour, 
 but the local colour of the writer's own country 
 and time is audaciously thrust on the personages. 
 However, the Princesse de Cleves is a very remark- 
 able book in the history of literature, while the 
 Mimoires du Comte de Comminge and the Malheurs 
 de V Amour, which in a way complete it, are 
 books very important for the study of sensibility. 
 Therefore some brief notice of them must be taken 
 here. 
 
 The plot of the Princesse de Cleves is laid in 
 the last days of the reign of Henri H, and though 
 it is much complicated (for so short a book) with 
 details, half historical and very cleverly drawn, of 
 
122 Essays on 
 
 Court incidents and intrigues, it is in the main 
 simple enough, Madame de Cloves, 
 married young to a husband who loves ^^gl'g^^j"^^ 
 her, but whom she respects rather than 
 loves, becomes the object of a violent but re- 
 spectful passion on the part of Jacques de Savoie, 
 Duke of Ndmours. She is perfectly virtuous, 
 but greatly attracted by the duke, and the main 
 interest of the book lies in her efforts to avoid 
 and rebuff him. The central incident is the 
 accidental overhearing by Nemours of a conversa- 
 tion between the husband and wife, in which she 
 begs him to take her away from the Court, where 
 she is exposed to temptations which she fears she 
 will not have the strength to resist. The ingenuity 
 of this is that, while it "knots the intrigue," it 
 leaves all the persons concerned in ignorance of 
 the exact state of the case. M. de Cldves, re- 
 ceiving his wife's well-meant but very unpleasant 
 confidence, perceives that he has lost her heart, 
 whether anybody else has gained it or not. 
 Madame de Cloves is unaware that her lover has 
 overheard her, and Ndmours himself, though of 
 course delighted at the confession of weakness, is 
 by no means sure (since no names are mentioned) 
 that he is the subject of her doubts. This 
 eccentric but not wholly unnatural situation is 
 admirably treated. The commonplaces of sensi- 
 bility proper are absent for the most part, the 
 somewhat high-flown sentiments are excused, partly 
 by the real pathos of the situation, and partly by 
 
French Novelists 123 
 
 the slight archaism of the language and the 
 stately manners displayed. Madame 
 
 A STUDY OF J ,-,, , , . ^ , 
 
 SENSIBILITY. "^ ^^Icves s virtuous resolve is main- 
 tained to the end, but her unlucky 
 husband none the less dies of a broken heart, 
 perhaps the only ending consistent with keeping 
 up the strain of the situation, and at the same 
 time, not making him ridiculous. The conflict of 
 feeling in both is excellently rendered, and the 
 reader puts down the book with the feeling that 
 for all its artificiality and its promise of sensibility 
 to come, it deserves its repute as the earliest of 
 modern novels properly so called. All that can 
 be said against it is, first, that the characters talk 
 a great deal too much about their sentiments and 
 emotions ; and secondly, that in talking about 
 them they use too much of a certain official jargon 
 appropriated to the subject. That is the beginning 
 of the misdeeds of sensibility in literature. 
 
 In the followers of Madame de la Fayette we 
 find that a good many years have passed by. 
 The jargon has grown still more official ; and 
 instead of using it to express genuine sentiments, 
 which in another language might deserve expres- 
 sion well enough, the characters are constantly 
 suspected by the callous modern reader of 
 elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feign- 
 ing the sentiments which the jargon seems to 
 imply that they ought to have. This is somewhat 
 less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin 
 than elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was 
 
124 Essays on 
 
 so very much cleverer a person than the generality 
 of the novel-writers of her day, that 
 she could hardly fail to veil defects g^^g"°^j°Y_ 
 more cunningly. But it is evident 
 enough in the Comte de Comminge and in the 
 Malheurs de V Amour. Having as questionable 
 morals as any lady of the time (the time of the 
 Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always 
 had a moral purpose in her writings, and this 
 again gives her books a certain difference. But 
 like the former, this difference only exposes all 
 the more clearly the defects of the style and the 
 drawbacks from which it was almost impossible 
 that those who practised it should escape. 
 
 Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several 
 gates. Besides her moral purposes and her esprit, 
 she indulged in a good deal of rather complicated 
 and sometimes extravagant incident. M. de 
 Comminge, which is very short, contains, not to 
 mention other things, the rather startling detail 
 of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his 
 lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds 
 which he has been charged to recover, and the 
 still more startling incident of the heroine living 
 for some years in disguise as a monk. The follow- 
 ing epistle, however, from the heroine to the hero, 
 will show better than anything else the topsy-turvy 
 condition which sensibility had already reached. 
 All that need be said in explanation of it is that 
 the father (who is furious with his son, and not 
 unreasonably so) has shut him up in a dungeon. 
 
French Novelists 125 
 
 in order to force him to give up his beloved 
 Adelaide. 
 
 A STUDY OF 
 
 SENSIBILITY. Yout father's fury has told me all I owe 
 you : I know what your generosity had con- 
 cealed from me. I know, too, the terrible situation in 
 which you are, and I have no means of extracting you 
 therefrom save one. This will perhaps make you more 
 unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as yourself, 
 and this gives me the courage to do what I am. required 
 to do. They would have me, by engaging myself to an- 
 other, give a pledge never to be yours : 'tis at this price 
 that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me 
 perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. 
 I shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de 
 B&avid6s. What I know of his character forewarns me of 
 what I shall have to suffer ; but I owe you at least so much 
 constancy as to make only misery for myself in the engage- 
 ment I am contracting. 
 
 The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated 
 by the italicised passages was reached, let it be 
 remembered, by one of the cleverest women of the 
 century, and the chief excuse for it is that the re- 
 strictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it 
 was to the upper classes and to a limited number 
 of elaborately distressing situations, were very 
 embarrassing. One of Madame de Tencin's 
 " beasts " (as she called her literary protig^s) came 
 to rescue it from this parlous condition, and by 
 reducing it to common life, toning dbwn the pitch 
 considerably, and adding the charm of a most 
 remarkable mannerism and sentimental casuistry, 
 to give it a new lease of life. 
 
 There are not many odder persons than 
 
126 Essays on 
 
 Marivaux in the history of literature. For mere 
 cleverness, and even for a certain kind 
 of originality, he had few equals, and g*g^g°'J^j°y_ 
 yet he is hardly read at all, and sur- 
 vives chiefly by virtue of a term coined from 
 his name, and used generally in an uncompli- 
 mentary sense. The enmity of the philosophes 
 (whom he followed not, and to whom he used to 
 say rude things) would scarcely account for this. 
 His own ill-luck in having lost his fortune in the 
 Mississippi scheme, and in being obliged to write 
 for bread, is hardly more conclusive. The real 
 fault seems to have been a deficiency in power of 
 concentration — of fixing a definite plan, and then 
 definitely working it out. As actors will not 
 accept an unfinished play, or perform it one act 
 at a time, Marivaux was obliged to complete his 
 dramatic works. In the thirty or forty of these 
 which exist, there is ample stuff for half the 
 number of thoroughly good ones, but hardly a 
 single one as it stands can be said to be thoroughly 
 good. He began divers periodicals on the plan 
 of Defoe's Review, and the more famous papers of 
 Steele and Addison. The public bought them, 
 and would have continued to buy them, but as 
 they never came out on the proper days, and 
 occasionally took holidays of indefinite length, the 
 subscribers got tired. Marianne dragged itself 
 over about fifteen years, and never was finished at 
 all. Whether Marivaux ever wrote more than the 
 first five parts of the Paysan Parvenu is a disputed 
 
French Novelists 
 
 127 
 
 point, but the evidence seems strongly against it, 
 and even if the later parts are in 
 
 A STUDY OF 
 
 SENSIBILITY. ^°™^ Hieasure his, they do not finish 
 the stoty. A man of this kind does 
 not allow himself a chance, and it w^as certainly 
 fortunate for Marivaux that he lived in the days 
 when giving and receiving pensions was fashion- 
 able. 
 
 Nevertheless, Marianne and the Paysan Parvenu 
 are among the most remarkable examples of the 
 novel of sensibility, especially the first. The 
 Paysan Parvenu, which ought to have some interest 
 for English readers, inasmuch as it undoubtedly 
 suggested Joseph Andrews, just as Marianne is not 
 likely to have been without some influence on 
 Pamela, is in its certainly genuine portion so very 
 incomplete, and has besides so many different 
 purposes (such as that of at once rivalling and 
 rebuking Crdbillon), that it is a less perfect 
 example of the style. It is also rather a repulsive 
 one, and one cannot help thinking that Marivaux, 
 who was much more of a satirist than is sometimes 
 supposed, meant it as in some degree a caricature, 
 -thus playing Fielding to his own Richardson. 
 There is something very comic in the garrulous- 
 ness of the autobiographic footman. He is, as 
 was to be expected from his station, a little crude ; 
 but he has his own point of honour, and that point 
 of honour turns on a modification of the sensibility 
 of his betters. Thus a " sensible " footman need 
 not, like the two Josephs, repulse the advances of 
 
128 Essays on 
 
 his master's wife, but he must by no means con- 
 sent to espouse a pretty waiting- maid 
 
 , . . . . rj A STUDY OF 
 
 under suspicious circumstances. Wav-gj,j,gjgjLiTY. 
 ing married an elderly devote (sensibility 
 below stairs does not forbid this), there is no- 
 thing to prevent him from engaging in simul- 
 taneous commerces (as the word went) with divers 
 ladies of rank. But the first intimation that he 
 has of the fact that one of these ladies can be 
 herself simultaneously " sensible " to another, sends 
 him off in a huff of virtuous and sensible disgust. 
 The Jacob of the Paysan is, however, rather an 
 enigma, and, at least hypothetically, a caricature. 
 
 Marianne itself is not by any means free from 
 a certain touch of the same sarcasm. The comical 
 gravity with which the garrulous heroine talks of 
 the importance of dress, the half humorous fashion 
 in which she displays her own vanity, interfere 
 with the picture of pure sensibility. Indeed, 
 Marianne is such a thorough coquette, that on 
 modern standards her virtue, irreproachable as it 
 is in practice, becomes a little suspect. But still 
 the book is a very important one, perhaps the 
 most important in the history of sensibility ir> 
 fiction. To confess the truth, it is from any other 
 than the purely literary view rather hard reading 
 nowadays. Marivaux's tricks of style, his ex- 
 traordinary involutions and labyrinths of meta- 
 physical gallantry and sentiment, are agreeable 
 enough. But there is next to no story, and the 
 characters are not, according to modern ideas. 
 
French Novelists 1 29 
 
 very interesting. Marianne herself is as arrant 
 
 a little minx as ever dropped her 
 
 SENSIBILITY, ^y^^^*^^ and then lifted them. Her 
 
 remark when, an orphan of unknown 
 
 birth and penniless, she is asked whether the 
 
 place of companion will suit her — " II me semble 
 
 que j'aimerais mieux mourir que d'etre chez 
 
 quelqu'un en qualite de domestique, et si j'avais 
 
 mon pfere et ma m^re il y a toute apparence que 
 
 j'en aurais moi m^me au lieu d'en servir a personne " 
 
 — is one of the earliest literary expressions of 
 
 definite and pronounced snobbishness, a fact which 
 
 for the credit of the English nation I am glad to 
 
 point out. 
 
 What story there is can be very quickly told. An 
 improbably bloodthirsty gang of footpads massacres 
 a whole coachful of passengers, except a little girl 
 of between two and three years old, whose parentage 
 it is impossible to trace. Some officers who pass 
 carry the child to the neighbouring village priest, 
 and leave her with the provision of a small sub- 
 scription. She is brought up by the good cur^, 
 but a chapter of unimportant and sufficiently 
 natural accidents leaves her stranded in Paris, with 
 no friends and only a little money. A monk, 
 who is her only acquaintance, recommends her to 
 the patronage of a pious and middle-aged gentle- 
 man, M. de Climal, who accepts the charge, but is 
 unfortunately tempted of the devil, Marianne being 
 extraordinarily pretty. At first he keeps within 
 paternal limits, though the girl, innocent as she 
 
 K 
 
1 30 Essays on 
 
 is, suspects something. An accident hurries on 
 matters. She goes to church in her 
 
 -A STUDY OF 
 
 new clothes, makes a great sensation, gj.^gjg,j^j^y 
 and in coming home is half run 
 over by a carriage, and sprains her ankle. A 
 young man who has noticed her in the sacred 
 edifice conveys her into his house and sends 
 for a surgeon. The pair fall in love with 
 each other at first sight in the most approved 
 sensibility style. To them (the surgeon being 
 gone, and M. de Valville, the young man, being 
 on his knees in the correct attitude of adoration) 
 enters M. de Climal, who happens to be Valville's 
 uncle. The upshot of all this is that the exemplary 
 M. de Climal makes undisguised proposals to 
 Marianne, which she virtuously refuses, and flies 
 to a convent. Here she finds a benevolent lady 
 who patronises her afresh, and who happens 
 (everything "happens" in an eighteenth-century 
 novel) to be Valville's mother. The young man, 
 tracing Marianne to the convent, renews his suit ; 
 M. de Climal repents and dies, leaving Marianne 
 a legacy, and the mother makes no objection to 
 the union of the two lovers. Other relations are, 
 however, less complying, and a plot is got up to 
 separate them. The real separation comes, how- 
 ever, from Valville's own inconstancy. He deserts 
 Marianne for an English girl. Miss Warton, the 
 daughter of a Jacobite refugee. A huge Histoire 
 d'une Riligieuse is then inserted parenthetically, 
 and the book is abruptly left unfinished. Years 
 
French Novelists 131 
 
 afterwards Madame Riccoboni added to it an 
 exceedingly clever Suite, approved by 
 
 A STUDY OF TV «• - , , ' 
 
 SENSIBILITY. J*i^ivaux, and some unknown person 
 composed a wretchedly clumsy Fin, 
 which usually has the very undeserved honour 
 of figuring in the book as it is printed, while 
 Madame Riccoboni's capital work is left out. 
 
 The mere story of Marianne, however (except 
 that it is so little likely to be within the actual 
 knowledge of readers, that some sketch of it is 
 necessary to make remarks on it intelligible), has 
 little to do with our purpose. The book is 
 important here as illustrating a new and important 
 stage in the sensibility novel. Hitherto, as has 
 been seen, it had dealt chiefly with altogether 
 fantastic scenes and personages, the latter almost 
 uniformly of exalted rank. Marianne, it is true, 
 is supposed (though not proved by Marivaux) 
 to be of noble blood. But the whole framework 
 and conditions of her story are those of quite 
 ordinary life. The homely vividness of Madame 
 Dutour, the shopkeeper with whom Marianne's 
 perfidious protector places her, is very curious to 
 come upon after the superfine atmosphere of the 
 La Fayette -Tencin novels. But Marianne's own 
 sentiments, when they are not sarcastic or purely 
 coquettish, are distinguished by the most advanced 
 sensibility. "Je pense," she says in a sentence 
 which is at once characteristic of sensibility in 
 sense and of marivaudage in manner, "je pense 
 pour moi qu'il n'y a que le sentiment qui nous 
 
132 Essays on 
 
 puisse donner des nouvelles un peu sures de nous, 
 
 et qu'il ne faut trap se fier k celles 
 
 que notre esprit veut faire a sa guise : sensibility. 
 
 car je la crois un grand visionnaire." 
 
 Here is a longer passage, which Catherine Mor- 
 
 land herself might have written — 
 
 I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. 
 I cannot indeed tell you what was the exact object of my 
 fear, or why it was so lively. All I know is that I constantly 
 beheld before me the countenance of my landlord, to which 
 I had hitherto paid no particular attention, and then I began 
 to find terrible things in this countenance. His wife's face, 
 Jtoo, seemed to be gloomy and dark ; the servants looked 
 like scoundrels ; all their faces made me in a state of un- 
 bearable alarm. I saw before me swords, daggers, murders, 
 thefts, insults. My blood grew cold at the perils I imagined. 
 
 A profound belief in " le sentiment," or " le 
 coeur," and an extremely lively imagination — these 
 are two infallible notes of sensibility But Marianne 
 shall give us some more. When the Monk and 
 M. de Climal are settling her destiny, the heroine's 
 fine mind is terribly shocked by the open way in 
 which her future obligations to her patron are 
 spoken of. 
 
 I must tell you that, young as I was, I had a soul not 
 devoid of pride. I had been brought up affectionately, and 
 even, to a certain extent, respectfully, and I was much dis- 
 turbed by a conversation of this nature. Men accompany 
 their benefits with a clumsiness of manner very humiliating to 
 the person who receives them. They had pulled my misfor- 
 tune to pieces for an hour, and talked of nothing but the pity 
 I inspired, the merit of doing me good, the religious duty of 
 helping me, together with a whole load of other charitable 
 sentiments and devout reflections. 
 
French Novelists 133 
 
 And so the young lady goes on at great length, 
 displaying a delicacy of mind which 
 SENSIBILITY, would bc admirable in a giver of bene- 
 fits, but which is perhaps not quite 
 so admirable in a receiver of them. This kind 
 of pseudo- dignity, which strongly objects to be 
 called dependent, but has no objection to be 
 so, must also, I fear, be. set down as a note of 
 sensibility. So again Marianne (who has been, 
 let it be remembered, brought up all her life in 
 a country village by people of a class then very 
 little above the peasantry themselves) feels, in the 
 frank good-nature of Madame Dutour, "quelque 
 chose de grossier qui me rebutait," and a "ton 
 brusque qui blessait ma ddlicatesse." She accepts 
 M. de Climal's gifts willingly enough, but is dread- 
 fully disturbed when Madame Dutour remarks 
 on his "charitd" As for the first scene with 
 Valville, the whole of it is a running commentary 
 on the queer kind of love-making which sensibility 
 affected. The duty of love at first sight was one 
 of the canons of the sensible church, and Valville 
 and Marianne obey it in the most orthodox 
 fashion. They have seen each other, let it be 
 remembered, only during the few but well-spent 
 minutes of a single mass, and they have not yet 
 spoken. 
 
 For my part, I spoke to others but not to him, any more 
 than he did to me. I did not even dare to look at him, 
 though not doing so made me long to do it all the more. 
 So at last I looked, hardly venturing the glance, and I do 
 
1 34 Essays on 
 
 not know what my eyes told him, but his made so tender 
 a reply that mine must have deserved it. 
 That made me blush, while my heart beat a study of 
 to that degree that I hardly knew what was sensibility. 
 going to happen to me. Never in my life 
 have I been so agitated, and I cannot define my feelings. 
 They were a mixture of trouble, of pleasure, and of fear — 
 yes, of fear. For a young girl who is a novice knows not 
 where all this is going to lead her. There are unknown 
 impulses which surround her^ which make her obey, which 
 she controls not, which control her, and the novelty of this 
 state of things alarms her. It is true that she finds it 
 pleasant, but it is a pleasure which looks like a danger, and 
 which frightens her modesty. There is something which 
 threatens, which bewilders, which overpowers her. One 
 would fain in these moments ask oneself what is going to 
 happen, for love does not deceive us. As soon as he shows 
 himself he tells what he is and what it all means. The 
 soul hails in him a master who caresses it, but with a 
 manner of authority which asks not its leave, and allows it, 
 if it chooses, to suspect its future slavery. 
 
 And all this at sixteen, at first sight, and after 
 a country life with an aged priest and his sister ! 
 Of course some allowance must be made for the 
 inevitable marivaudage — for the tendency, as 
 Crdbillon wickedly put it, to say " not only every- 
 thing you have said and everything you have 
 thought, but also everything you would have liked 
 to think but did not." After this allowance has 
 been made, there is a very considerable residuum 
 which expresses the " sensible " idea of the birth 
 of love, a fourth and very welcome assistance 
 to the comprehension of sensibility. The whole 
 scene is full of further instruction on this important 
 
French Novelists 135 
 
 point, for most of which, unluckily, there is no 
 room here. Thus we have a valuable 
 SENSIBILITY distinctiou between "amoureux" and 
 " tendre." Tenderness, it seems, is 
 "a fashion of attachment which at first makes 
 the heart well disposed {honnite), instils into it 
 morality" (lui donne des mceurs), and restricts 
 it to "the delicate pleasure of timidly loving, 
 and respecting what it loves." But it is not 
 possible to spend more time on this agreeable 
 and instructive study of the acutest form of 
 sensibility in this its palmy days. Let it be 
 sufficient to say that other parts of Marianne 
 contain passages nearly as instructive as to the 
 feelings of the truly sensible heart towards bene- 
 factors (Madame de Miran, Madame Dorsin), 
 towards friends of the same sex (Mademoiselle 
 Warton), towards enemies (an insulting young 
 person who causes Marianne the keenest agony 
 by remarking that somebody pays for her board at 
 the convent), etc. etc. And all in the middle of 
 this curious book comes this curious sentence, in 
 which Marivaux either consciously or not writes 
 the Mene Tekel of sensibility. " Enfin ces agi- 
 tations tant agrdables que pdnibles, s'affaiblirent 
 et se pass^rent. L'ime s'accoutume i tout; sa 
 sensibility s'use : et je me familiarisais avec mes 
 esp6rances et mes inquietudes." All things pass 
 certainly, but the flutters of sensibility pass faster 
 than anything else. 
 
 Marivaux, however, was of too old a generation 
 
136 Essays on 
 
 to exemplify sensibility finally or in its over-ripe 
 stage. Those who came after him, 
 and had his work and that of the g^j^gj^jj^j^y 
 La Fayette- Fontaines -Tencin school 
 before them, completed the presentation. The 
 reasons for not dwelling on the works of the 
 great masters — of Diderot, of Rousseau, of 
 Madame de Stael — have already been hinted at 
 and are evident enough. In the first place, a 
 stronger spirit than mere sensibility enters into 
 them ; in the second, they are very often novels 
 with a purpose, which the sensibility-novel proper 
 never is. Among Marivaux's immediate suc- 
 cessors, neither Duclos nor Crdbillon need be 
 mentioned, because they are out of the style, as is 
 Prdvost for different reasons. Madame Riccoboni, 
 however, who has just been mentioned as continu- 
 ing Marianne, shows ,'the completed product very 
 fairly. Her Histoire du Marquis de Cressy is a 
 capital example of the kind. The Marquis is be- 
 loved by a charming girl of sixteen and by a 
 charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious 
 rival betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, 
 and her father makes her write an epistle which 
 pretty clearly gives him the option of a declaration 
 in form or a rupture. For a sensible man it must 
 be confessed that the Marquis does not get out of 
 the difficulty too well. She has slipped into her 
 father's formal note the highly sensible postscript, 
 " Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah ! Jamais. On m'a 
 forcd de I'^crire ; rien ne peut m'obliger i le penser 
 
French Novelists 137 
 
 ni le ddsirer." Apparently it was not leap-year, 
 for the Marquis replied in a letter 
 
 A STUDY OF , , , ,Ct.,, , . , 
 
 SENSIBILITY, "early as bad as Willoughby s cele- 
 brated epistle in Sense and Sensibility. 
 
 Mademoiselle — Nothing can console me for having 
 been the innocent cause of fault being found with the con- 
 duct of a person so worthy of respect as you. I shall 
 approve whatever you may think proper to do, without con- 
 sidering myself entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. 
 How happy should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune and 
 the arrangements which it forces me to make did not deprive 
 me of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and 
 my sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which 
 my present circumstances permit me not to seek. 
 
 Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything 
 very unhandsome in this broad refusal to throw 
 the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it 
 could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. 
 So M. de Cressy despatches this private note to 
 Adelaide by " Machiavel the waiting-maid " — 
 
 Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself 
 of the greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and 
 your pity ? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more 
 ardent than that with which my heart burns for the amiable 
 Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those 
 proofs of it which she had the right to expect ? Ah ! 
 mademoiselle, how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch 
 all whose wishes even you perhaps would not fulfil ? who, 
 when he possessed you, though master of so dear, so precious 
 a blessing, might regret others less estimable, but which 
 have been the object of his hope and desire, etc. etc. 
 
 This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, 
 and wants a wife who will assist his views. The 
 
138 Essays on 
 
 compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it in 
 approved fashion. She opens it " with 
 a violent emotion," and her " trouble ^^™'J^j°y_ 
 was so great in reading it through, that 
 she had to begin it again many times before she 
 understood it." The exceedingly dubious nature 
 of the compliment, however, strikes her, and 
 "tears of regret and indignation rise to her 
 eyes " — tears which indeed are excusable even 
 from a different point of view than that of sensi- 
 bility. She is far, however, from blaming that 
 sacred emotion. " Ce n'est pas," she says ; " de 
 notre sensibility mais de I'objet qui I'a fait nattre 
 que nous devons nous plaindre." This point 
 seems arguable if it were proper to argue with 
 a lady. 
 
 The last letter to be cited is from Adelaide's 
 unconscious rival, whose conduct is — translated 
 into the language of sensibility, and adjusted to 
 the manners of the time and class — a ludicrous 
 anticipation of the Pickwickian widow. She buys 
 a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously to 
 the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, 
 with this letter — 
 
 A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself 
 known, gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of 
 your heart. You are thought indifferent ; you seem to me 
 insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your 
 happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and 
 be sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence.. If you 
 have no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your 
 compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She 
 
French Novelists 139 
 
 who feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your 
 attentions, arid the step she takes to let you 
 A STUDY OF know it is the first weakness which she has 
 SENSIBILITY, to confess. 
 
 The modesty of this perhaps leaves something 
 to desire, but its sensibility is irreproachable. 
 There is no need to analyse the story of the 
 Marquis de Cressy, which is a very little book and 
 not extremely edifying. But it supplies us with 
 another locus classicus on sentimental manners. 
 M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide, 
 and has married the widow with the scarf. He 
 receives a letter from Adelaide on the day on 
 which she takes the black veil — 
 
 'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no 
 more the perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal 
 adieu. Birth, wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. 
 My youth withered by grief, my power of enjoyment de- 
 stroyed, love past, memory present, and regret still too 
 deeply felt, all combine to bury me in this retreat. 
 
 And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, 
 is not specially unnatural ; but the oddity of the 
 passage is to come. Most men would be a little 
 embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in 
 presence of their wives (it is to be observed that 
 the unhappy Adelaide is profuse of pardons to 
 Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and 
 most wives would not be amiable when they read 
 it But Madame de Cressy has the finest sensi- 
 bility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and 
 then — 
 
140 Essays on 
 
 The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself 
 into the arms of her husband, and clasping 
 him with an inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, a study of 
 sir, weep," she cried, bathing him with her sensibility. 
 own tears ; " you cannot show too much sensi- 
 bility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love. Amiable 
 and dear Adelaide. 'Tis done, then, and we have lost you 
 for ever. Ah ! why must I reproach myself with having 
 deprived you of the only possession which excited your 
 desires ? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling 
 myself that my happiness has destroyed yours ?" 
 
 All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little 
 good-will, more or less interesting. Much of it is 
 full of italics, which never were used so freely in 
 France as in England, but which seem to suit the 
 queer exaggerated topsy-turvyfied sentiments and 
 expressions very well. The Histoire d'Ernestine 
 in particular is a charming little novelette. But 
 if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her 
 work here. Milady Catesby, which does us the 
 honour to take its scene and personages from 
 England, would be the one to choose. Milady 
 Catesby is well worth comparing with Evelina, 
 which is some twenty years its junior, and the 
 sentimental parts of which are quite in the same 
 tone with it. Lord Ossery is indeed even more 
 sensible than Lord Orville, but then he is described 
 in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a 
 model of the style, as when she writes — 
 
 Oh ! my dear Henrietta ! What agitation in my senses ! 
 what trouble in my soul ! . . . I have seen him. ... He 
 has spoken to me. . . . Himself. ... He was at the ball. 
 . . . Yes ! he. Lord Ossery. ... Ah ! tell me not again 
 to see him. . . . Bid me not hear him once more. 
 
French Novelists 141 
 
 That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had 
 no particular occasion or excuse for 
 
 A STUDY OF ,, ,,. .. ^ ^ MM-, 
 
 SENSIBILITY. ^^^ "^"^^ excitcment except sensibility. 
 But sensibility was getting more and 
 more exacting. The hero of a novel must al- 
 ways be in the heroics, the heroine in a con- 
 tinual state of palpitation. We are already a 
 long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately 
 passions, from Marianne's whimsical minauderies. 
 All the resources of typography — exclamations, 
 points, dashes — have to be called in to express 
 the generally disturbed state of things. Now 
 unfortunately this sort of perpetual tempest in 
 a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup) requires 
 unusual genius to make it anything but ludi- 
 crous. I myself have not the least desire to 
 laugh when I read such a book as La Nouvelle 
 Hdo'ise, and I venture to think that any one who 
 does laugh must have something of the fool and 
 something of the brute in his composition. But 
 then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not 
 many like him. At the Madame Riccobonis of 
 this world, however clever they may be, it is 
 difficult not to laugh when they have to dance 
 on such extraordinary tight ropes as those which 
 sensibility prescribed. 
 
 The writers who were contemporary with 
 Madame Riccoboni's later days, and who followed 
 her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even 
 farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette 
 of Mademoiselle de Clermont, the amount of tears 
 
142 Essays on 
 
 shed, the way in which the knees of the char- 
 acters knock together, their palenesses, 
 blushes, tears, sighs, and other perform- ^g^g^Lixv. 
 ances of the same kind, are sur- 
 prising. In the Lettres du Marquis de Roselle 
 of Madame Elie de Beaumont (wife of the 
 young advocate who defended the Calas family), 
 a long scene between a brother and sister, 
 in which the sister seeks to deter the brother 
 from what she regards as a misalliance, ends (or 
 at least almost ends, for the usual flood of tears 
 is the actual termination) in this remarkable 
 passage. 
 
 "And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I 
 suppose that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does 
 not insult him ; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better 
 what can make him happy than the Countess of St. S^ver ; 
 and that he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, 
 in spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to 
 leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he 
 resists. "My brother!" " I have no sister." He makes a 
 movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. 
 " Oh, my father ! " I cried. " Oh, my mother ! come to 
 my help." At these sacred names he started, stopped, and 
 allowed himself to be conducted to a sofa. 
 
 This unlucky termination might be paralleled 
 from many other places, even from the agreeable 
 writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by 
 the way, when the father of one of her heroes 
 refuses to consent to his son's marriage, makes 
 the stern parent yield to a representation that by 
 not doing so he will " authorise by anticipation 
 
French Novelists 143 
 
 a want of filial attachment and respect" in the 
 grandchildren who do not as yet exist. 
 SENSIBILITY ThesB excursions into the preposterous 
 in search of something new in the way 
 of noble sentiment or affecting emotion — these 
 whippings and spurrings of the feelings and the 
 fancy — characterise all the later work of the 
 school. 
 
 Two names of great literary value and interest 
 close the list of the novelists of sensibility in 
 France, and show at once its Nemesis and its 
 caricature. They were almost contemporaries, 
 and by a curious coincidence neither was a 
 Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to 
 imagine a greater contrast than existed personally 
 between Xavier de Maistre and Henri Benjamin 
 de Constant- Rebecque, commonly called Benjamin 
 Constant. But their personalities, interesting as 
 both are, are not the matter of principal concern 
 here. The Voyage autour de ma Chambre, its 
 sequel the Expedition Nocturne, and the Lipreux 
 de la Cite dAoste, exhibit one branch of the river 
 of sensibility (if one may be permitted to draw 
 up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in agree- 
 able trifling with the surface of life, and in 
 generous, but fleeting, and slightly, though not 
 consciously, insincere indulgence of the emotions. 
 In Adolphe the river rushes violently down a steep 
 place, and in nigras lethargi mergitur undas. It is 
 to be hoped that most people who will read these 
 pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming little 
 
144 Essays on 
 
 books ; it is probable that at least some of them 
 
 do not know Adolphe. Constant is 
 
 the more strictly original of the two g^^™°^j°Y_ 
 
 authors, for Xavier de Maistre owes a 
 
 heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the 
 
 borrowed capital so well that he makes it his 
 
 own, while Adolphe can only be said to come 
 
 after Werther and Ren^, not in the least to 
 
 follow them. 
 
 The Voyage autour de ma Chambre (readers 
 may be informed or reminded) is a whimsical 
 description of the author's meditations and ex- 
 periences when confined to barracks for some 
 military peccadillo. After a fashion which has 
 found endless imitators since, the prisoner con- 
 templates the various objects in his room, spins 
 little romances to himself about them and about 
 his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on 
 the faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so 
 forth. The Expidition Nocturne, a less popular 
 sequel, is not very different in plan. The L^preux 
 de la Citi d'Aosle is a very short story, telling 
 how the narrator finds a sufferer from the most 
 terrible of all diseases lodged in a garden-house, 
 and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these 
 works, as of the less mannerised and more direct 
 Prisonnier du Caucase and Jeune Sib^rienne, 
 resides in their dainty style, in their singular 
 narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough 
 that the Prisonnier du Caucase has been equalled 
 by no other writer except M^rimde), and in the 
 
French Novelists 145 
 
 remarkable charm of the personality of the author 
 
 which escapes at every moment from 
 
 SENSIBILITY.*'^^ work. The pleasant picture of 
 
 the Chevalier de B in the Soirees 
 
 de St. P^tersbourg, which Joseph de Maistre is 
 said to have drawn from his less formidable 
 brother, often suggests itself as one follows 
 the whimsicalities of the Voyage and the Ex- 
 pMition. The affectation is so natural, the man- 
 nerism so simple, that it is some time before 
 one realises how great in degree both are. 
 Looked at. from a certain point of view, Xavier 
 de Maistre illustrates the effect of the sensibility 
 theory on a thoroughly good-natured, cultivated, 
 and well-bred man of no particular force of 
 character or strength of emotion. He has not 
 the least intention of taking sensibility seriously, 
 but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or 
 other. So he sets himself to work to be a man 
 of feeling and a humorist at the same time. 
 His encounter with the leper is so freshly and 
 simply told, there is such an air of genuineness 
 about it, that it seems at first sight not merely 
 harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to Sterne's 
 account of his proceedings with his monks and 
 donkeys, his imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious 
 ensigns. But there is a real contact between 
 them. Both have the chief note of sensibility, 
 the taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured 
 and degusted deliberately — to be dealt with on 
 scientific principles and strictly according to the 
 
146 Essays on 
 
 rules of the game. One result of this proceeding 
 pursued for a considerable time is un- 
 avoidably a certain amount of frivolity, s^ensimlity. 
 especially in dealing with emotions 
 directly affecting the player. Sympathy such 
 as that displayed with the leper may be strong 
 and genuine, because there is no danger about 
 it ; there is the suave -mari magno preservative 
 from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in 
 matters which directly affect the interest of the 
 individual it does not do to be too serious. 
 The tear of sensibility must not be dj-opped in a 
 manner giving real pain to the dropper. Hence 
 the humoristic attitude. When Xavier de Maistre 
 informs us that " le grand art de I'homme de g^nie 
 est de savoir bien dlever sa b^te," he means a 
 great deal more than he supposes himself to mean. 
 The great art of an easy-going person, who believes 
 it to be his duty to be " sensible," is to arrange for 
 a series of emotions which can be taken gently. 
 The author of the Voyage takes his without any 
 extravagance. He takes good care not to burn 
 his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though 
 he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so 
 literally. His affection for Madame de Haut- 
 castel is certainly not a very passionate kind of 
 affection, for all his elaborately counted and 
 described heartbeats as he is dusting her portrait. 
 Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us in no 
 doubt about the matter. " La froide raison," he 
 says, " reprit bientdt son empire." Of course it 
 
fi'rench Novelists 147 
 
 did ; the intelligent, and in the other sense 
 sensible, person who wishes to preserve 
 SENSIBILITY. ^'^ fcpose Hiust take care of that. We 
 do not even believe that he really 
 dropped a tear of repentance on his left shoe 
 when he had unreasonably rated his servant ; it 
 is out of keeping with his own part. He bor- 
 rowed that tear either ironically or by over- 
 sight from Sterne, just as he did " Ma ch^re 
 Jenny." He is much more in his element when 
 he proves that a lover is to his mistress, when she 
 is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a 
 lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of 
 man ; or when in the ExpMition he meditates on 
 a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms below his 
 garret. 
 
 All this illustrates what may be called the 
 attempt to get rid of sensibility by the humorist 
 gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt con- 
 sciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an 
 approaching downfall of sensibility, of a feeling on 
 the part of those who have to do with it that it is 
 an edged, tool, and an awkward one to handle. 
 In comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master 
 Sterne, it is very noticeable that while the one in 
 disposition is thoroughly insincere, and the other 
 thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true 
 believer in sensibility, and the sincere one evidently 
 a semi-heretic. How far Sterne consciously simu- 
 lated his droppings of warm tears, and how far he 
 really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. 
 
148 Essays on 
 
 But he was quite sincere in believing that they 
 were very creditable things, and very 
 admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does ^nsimlity. 
 not seem by any means so well con- 
 vinced of this. He is at times not merely evi- 
 dently pretending and making believe, but laughing 
 at himself for pretending and making believe. He 
 still thinks sensibility a gratissimus error, a very 
 pretty game for persons of refinement to play 
 at, and he plays at it with a great deal of in- 
 dustry and with a most exquisite skill. But the 
 spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his sensibility 
 (in real life, if not in literature) with nearly as much 
 sincerity as Sterne, has passed over Xavier de 
 Maistre. The Savoyard gentleman is sincerely 
 and unexceptionably orthodox in religion ; it may 
 be doubted whether a severe inquisition in matters 
 of sensibility would let him off scatheless. It is 
 not merely that he jests — as, for instance, that 
 when he is imagining the scene at the Rape of 
 the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears a 
 cry of despair from one of the visitors. " Dieux 
 immortels ! Pourquoi n'ai j'amend ma femme k la 
 fete ? " That is quite proper and allowable. It 
 is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental 
 moments, the undercurrent of mockery at his own 
 feelings in this man of feeling, which is so shock- 
 ing to sensibility, and yet it was precisely this 
 that was inevitable. Sensibility, to carry it out 
 properly, required, like other elaborate games, 
 a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of 
 
French Novelists 149 
 
 conditions. The parties must be in earnest so far 
 as not to have the slightest suspicion 
 SENSIBILITY. ^'^'^ they were making themselves ridi- 
 culous, and yet not in earnest enough 
 to make themselves really miserable. They must 
 have plenty of time to spare, and not be dis- 
 tracted by business, serious study, political ex- 
 citement, or other disturbing causes. On the 
 other hand, to get too much absorbed, and arrive 
 at Werther's end, was not only destructive to 
 the individual player, but to the spirit of the 
 game. As the century grew older, and this 
 danger of absorption grew stronger, the game 
 became more and more difficult to play seriously 
 enough, and yet not too seriously. When the 
 players did not blow their brains out, they often 
 fell into the mere libertinism from which sensibility, 
 properly so called, is separated by a clear enough 
 line. Two such examples in real life as Rousseau 
 and Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse, one such demon- 
 stration in fiction of the same moral as Werther, 
 were enough to discourage the man of feeling. 
 Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley, 
 the only wear for the human race in troublesome 
 circumstances which beset it with unpleasant 
 recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe 
 anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in 
 art, and yet neither wish nor know how to do 
 without it, the safe way is to make a not too 
 grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a 
 long sermon might be hung were it worth while. 
 
1 50 Essays on 
 
 But as it is, it is sufficient to point out that Xavier 
 de Maistre is an extremely remarkable 
 illustration of the fact in the particular ^^g^'J^j!^ 
 region of sentimental fiction. 
 
 Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the 
 sequel to it never having appeared, though it was 
 in existence in manuscript half a century ago) is 
 also his only purely literary work, is a very small 
 book, but it calls here for something more than a 
 very small mention. The books which make an 
 end are almost fewer in literattire than those which 
 make a beginning, and this is one of them. Like 
 most such books, it made a beginning also, show- 
 ing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all 
 the analytic school of the present century. Space 
 would not here suffice to discuss the singular 
 character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve 
 certainly did some injustice, as the letters to 
 Madame Recamier, which have had such an odd 
 fate, show, but whose political and personal ex- 
 periences as certainly call for a large allowance of 
 charity. The theory of AdolpMs latest editor, 
 M. de Lescure, which alsa was the accepted theory 
 long before M. de Lescure's time, that the heroine 
 of the novel was Madame de Stael, will not, I 
 think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal 
 and mental, Ell^nore and Madame de Stael are at 
 opposite poles. Elldnore was beautiful, Madame 
 de Stael was very nearly hideous ; Ellenore was 
 careless of her social position, Corinne was as 
 great a slave to society as any one who ever lived ; 
 
French Novelists 151 
 
 EUdnore was somewhat uncultivated, had little 
 esprit, was indifferent to flattery, took 
 
 A STUDY OF . , ^ ir • 
 
 SENSIBILITY. "°'- "^"^^^ upon hcrself in any way 
 except in exacting affection where 
 no affection existed ; the good Corinne was 
 one of the cleverest women of her time, and 
 thought herself one of the cleverest of all times, 
 could not endure that any one in company should 
 be of a different opinion on this point, and in- 
 sisted on general admiration and homage. How- 
 ever, this is a very minor matter. What is 
 important is that Madame de Stael was almost 
 the last genuine devotee of sensibility, and that 
 Adolphe was certainly written by a lover of Madame 
 de Stael, who had from his youth up been a man 
 of feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When 
 Constant wrote the book he had run through the 
 whole gamut of sensibility. He had been instructed 
 as a youth by ancient women of letters ; he had 
 married and got rid of his wife cl. la mode German- 
 orum ; he had frequently taken a hint from 
 Werther, and threatened suicide with the best 
 possible results ; he had given, perhaps, the most 
 atrocious example of the atrocious want of taste 
 which accompanied the decadence of sensibility, 
 by marrying Charlotte von Hardenburg out of 
 pique, because Madame de Stael would not marry 
 him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, 
 and finally deserting her, newly married as she 
 was, for her very uncomely but intellectually 
 interesting rival. In short, according to the theory 
 
152 Essays on 
 
 of a certain ethical school, that the philo- 
 sopher who discusses virtue should be 
 thoroughly conversant with vice, Ben- ^^g^g°^j°y 
 jamin Constant was a past master in 
 sensibility. It was at a late period in his 
 career, and when he had only one trial to go 
 through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere 
 and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that 
 he wrote Adolphe, or at least that he published it, 
 and its appearance was almost contemporary with 
 his one unpardonable political fault, his condescen- 
 sion to Napoleon in the Hundred Days. This, 
 however, is accidental, and of no direct bearing on 
 the book, which has nothing whatever to do with 
 1 81 5, the date which it bears. It is, as has been 
 said, the history of the Nemesis of sensibility, the 
 prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swin- 
 burne's admirable " Stage Love " — 
 
 Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry. 
 They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die ; 
 Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow. 
 Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow. 
 
 That is a history in one stanza of sensibility, and 
 no better account than Adolphe exists of the rising 
 in sorrow. 
 
 The story of the book opens in full eighteenth 
 century. A young man, fresh from the University 
 of Gottingen, goes to finish his education at the 
 
 residenz of D . Here he finds much society, 
 
 courtly and other. His chief resort is the house 
 of a certain Count de P , who lives, unmarried. 
 
French Novelists 153 
 
 with a Polish lady named Ellenore. In the easy- 
 going days of sensibility the m^naice 
 
 A STUDY OF , 1 J , . , • ■ . ^1 1 
 
 SENSIBILITY. "°i"S a Certain place m society, though 
 
 it is looked upon a little askance. 
 
 But E116nore is on her own theory thoroughly 
 
 respectable, and the Count de P , though 
 
 in danger of his fortune, is a man of position 
 and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result 
 of the struggle between sensibility, an unquiet 
 and ironic nature, and the teaching of a father 
 who, though not unquiet, is more ironically 
 given than himself His main character is all 
 that a young man's should be from the point of 
 view of sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'a 
 me livrer k ces impressions primitives et fou- 
 gueuses," etc. But his father snubs the primitive 
 and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that 
 they are a mistake, is only more determined to 
 experience them. Alternately expanding himself 
 as sensibility demands, and making ironic jests as 
 his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, 
 he acquires the character of " un homme immoral, 
 un homme peu sur," the last of which expressions 
 may be paralleled from the British repertory by 
 " an ill-regulated young man,'' or " a young man 
 on whom you can never depend." All this time 
 Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching 
 of sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he 
 feels that he is wrong. "Je veux 6tre aimd, me 
 dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne voyais 
 personne qui m'inspirat de I'amour ; personne qui 
 
154 Essays on 
 
 me parut susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel 
 case the ordinary man would resign 
 
 ... ,. M -r 1- • A STUDY OF 
 
 himself as easily as if he were m gj,j^gjjjj^j^y 
 face of the two conditions of having 
 no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will 
 not do for the pupil of sensibility. He must 
 make what he does not find, and so Adolphe 
 pitches on the luckless Elldnore, who " me parut 
 une conqu^te digne de moi." To do sensibility 
 justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have used 
 language so crude as this, but it had come to it 
 now. Here is the portrait of the victim, drawn 
 by her ten years younger lover. 
 
 EUfeore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her 
 thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was, 
 was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and eleva- 
 tion of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but she 
 was always prejudiced against her own interest. There 
 was nothing she set more value on than regularity of 
 conduct, precisely because her own conduct was con- 
 ventionally irregular. She was very religious, because 
 religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In conversa- 
 tion she frowned on pleasantries which would have seemed 
 quite innocent to other women, because she feared that her 
 circumstances might encourage the use of such as were riot 
 innocent. She would have liked to admit to her society 
 none but men of the highest rank and most irreproachable 
 reputation, because those women with whom she shuddered 
 at the thought of being classed usually tolerate mixed 
 society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only 
 amusement. In short, EU^nore and her destiny were at 
 daggers drawn ; every word, every action of hers was a 
 kind of protest against her social position. And as she 
 felt that facts were too strong for her, and that the situation 
 could be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly 
 
French Novelists 155 
 
 miserable. . . . The struggle between her feelings and 
 her circumstances had affected her temper. 
 A STUDY OF She was often silent and dreamy : some- 
 SENSiBiLiTY. times, however, she spoke with impetuosity. 
 Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, 
 she was never quite calm in the midst of the most mis- 
 cellaneous conversation, and for this very reason her 
 manner had an unrest and an air of surprise about it which 
 made her more piquant than she was by nature. Her 
 strange position, in short, took the place of new and original 
 ideas in her. 
 
 The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth 
 century will strike everybody here. If we are 
 still some way from Emma Bovary, it is only in 
 point of language : we are poles asunder froni 
 Marianne. But the hero is still, in his own belief, 
 acting under the influence of sensibility. He is 
 not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere 
 libertine, but he has a "besoin d'amour." He 
 wants a " conquSte." He is still actuated by the 
 odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, 
 which goes by the name of sensibility. But hi^ 
 love is a " dessin de lui plaire " ; he has taken an 
 " engagement envers son amour propre." In other 
 words, he is playing the game from the lower 
 point of view — the mere point of view of winning. 
 It does not take him very long to win. Elldnore 
 at first behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive 
 him after his first declaration, and retires to the 
 country. But she returns, and the exemplary 
 Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his 
 creator's biographers may be believed. Constant 
 himself was very fond of employing in similar 
 
156 Essays on 
 
 cases, and which the great popularity of Werther 
 
 made terrible to the compassionate 
 
 and foolish feminine mind. He will ^^^j^jj^j^ 
 
 kill himself. She hesitates, and very 
 
 soon she does not hesitate any longer. The 
 
 reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, 
 
 that nothing but the fact of his having been 
 
 brought up in a time when sensibility was 
 
 dominant saves him. But the following passage, 
 
 from the point of view alike of nature and of 
 
 expression, again pacifies the critic : — 
 
 ■'"■■ I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the 
 happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal 
 affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she 
 had suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often 
 she had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her 
 efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had 
 hoped for my arrival ; what trouble, joy, and fear she had 
 felt on seeing me again ; how she had distrusted herself, 
 and how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought 
 once more the distractions of society and the crowds which 
 she formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest 
 details, and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the 
 history of a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by 
 magic, for the absence of far-reaching memory. All other 
 affections have need of the past, love as by enchantment 
 makes its own past and throws it round us. It gives us the 
 feeling of having lived for years with one who yesterday was 
 all but a stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates 
 and illuminates all time. A little while and it was not : a 
 little while and it will be no more : but as long as it exists 
 its light is reflected alike on the past and on the future. 
 
 This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a shoft 
 time ; and, indeed, no one who has read the book 
 
French Novelists 157 
 
 so far is likely to suppose that it did. Adolphe 
 has entered into the liaison to play 
 SENSIBILITY. ^^ g^me, Ell^nore (unluckily for her- 
 self) to be loved. The difference soon 
 brings discord. In the earlier sensibility days 
 men and women were nearly on equal terms. 
 It was only in the most strictly metaphorical 
 way that the unhappy lover was bound to ex- 
 pire, and his beloved rarely took the method of 
 wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith 
 when anybody else of proper sensibility was there 
 to console her. But the game had become un- 
 equal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the 
 
 Adolphes and the Elldnores. The Count de P 
 
 naturally perceives the state of affairs before long, 
 and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having 
 played his game and won it, does not care to go 
 on playing for love merely. " Ell^nore ^tait sans 
 doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle 
 n'^tait pas plus un but — elle etait devenue un lien." 
 But EUdnore does not see this accurate distinction. 
 After many vicissitudes and a few scenes (" Nous 
 vdcumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces, 
 quelque fois doux, jamais compl^tement libres, y 
 rencontrant encore du plaisir mais n'y trouvant 
 plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count 
 forbids Ell^nore to receive Adolphe any more, 
 and she thereupon breaks the ten years old union, 
 and leaves her children and home. Her young 
 lover receives this riveting of his chains with 
 consternation, but he does his best. He defends 
 
158 Essays on 
 
 her in public, he fights with a man who speaks 
 lightly of her, but this is not what 
 
 r" . A STUDY OF 
 
 She wants. sensibility. 
 
 Of course I ought to have consoled her. 
 I ought to have pressed her to my heart and said, " Let 
 us live for each other ; let us forget the misjudgments 
 of men ; let us be happy in our mutual regard and our 
 mutual love." I tried to do so, but what can a re- 
 solution made out of duty do to revive a sentiment that 
 is extinct ? EU^nore and I each concealed something 
 from the other. She dared not tell me her troubles, 
 arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had not asked 
 of her. I had accepted that sacrifice ; I dared not 
 complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had 
 not had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore 
 silent on the very subject which occupied us both in- 
 cessantly. We were prodigal of caresses, we babbled of 
 love, but when we spoke of it we spoke for fear of speaking 
 of something else. 
 
 Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to 
 use Constant's own words, is " neither passion nor 
 duty," and has the strength of neither, when it 
 finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. 
 There were none of these unpleasant meetings in 
 sensibility proper. There sentiment met sentiment, 
 and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous 
 phrase. When the rate of exchange became un- 
 satisfactory it sought some other customer — a 
 facile and agreeable process, which was quite con- 
 sistent in practice with all the sighs and flames. 
 Adolphe is not to be quit so easily of his conquest. 
 He is recalled by his father, and his correspondence 
 withEU^nore is described in one of the astonishingly 
 true passages which make the book so remarkable. 
 
French Novelists 159 
 
 During my absence I wrote regularly to EUdnore. I 
 was divided between the desire of not hurting 
 A STUDY OF her feelings and the desire of truthfully re- 
 SENSIBIHTY. presenting my own. I should have liked her 
 to guess what I felt, but to guess it without 
 being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had 
 substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion," 
 for the word " love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ell&ore 
 sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for 
 consolation, and at the end of two cold and artificial pages 
 I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness 
 suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying 
 enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her, 
 a species of double-dealing the very success of which was 
 against my wishes and prolonged my misery. 
 
 This situation, however, does not last. Unable 
 to bear his absence, and half puzzled, half pained 
 by his letters, Elldnore follows him, and his father 
 for the first time expresses displeasure at this 
 compromising step. Elldnore being threatened 
 with police measures, Adolphe is once more per- 
 force thrown on her side, and elopes with her to 
 neutral territory. Then events march quickly. 
 Her father's Polish property, long confiscated, is 
 restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe 
 (still struggling between his obligations to her and 
 his desire to be free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer 
 
 of semi-reconciliation from the Count de P , 
 
 grows fonder and more exacting the more weary 
 of her yoke her lover becomes ; and at last, dis- 
 covering his real sentiments from a correspondence 
 of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his 
 father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. 
 
i6o Essays on 
 
 A prologue and epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, 
 far from taking his place in the world 
 (from which he had thought his liaison ^^J^^^^^^\_ 
 debarred him), wandered about in aim- 
 less remorse, might perhaps be cut away with 
 advantage, though they are defensible, not merely 
 on the old theory of political justice, but on sound 
 critical grounds. 
 
 This was the end of sensibility in more senses 
 than one. It is true that five years later than 
 Adolphe appeared Madame de Duras's charming 
 novelettes of Ourika and Edouard, in which some- 
 thing of the old tone revives. But they were 
 written late in their author's life, and avowedly as 
 a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of 
 society. " Le ton de cette soci^td," says Madame 
 de Duras herself, " 6tait I'engouement." As happy 
 a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to 
 describe what has been much written about, and, 
 perhaps it may be said without presumption, much 
 miswritten about. Engouement itself is a nearly 
 untranslatable word. It may be clumsily but not 
 inaccurately defined as a state of fanciful interest 
 in persons and things which is rather more serious 
 than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious 
 than genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses 
 exactly the attitude of French polite society in the 
 eighteenth century to a vast number of subjects, 
 and, what is more, it helps to explain the sensibility 
 which dominated that society. The two terms 
 mutually involve each other, and sensibility stands 
 
French Novelists i6i 
 
 to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine 
 passion on the other, exactly as engoue- 
 sENsiBiLiTY. ^^'^^ docs to caprfce and enthusiasm. 
 People flirted admirably in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries, and the art 
 has been recovered in the nineteenth with some 
 success, but I do not think they flirted, properly 
 speaking, in the eighteenth. Sensibility pre- 
 vented that. But, on the other hand, they did 
 not, till the society itself and its sentiments with 
 it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can 
 be called real passion. Sensibility prevented that 
 also. The kind of love-making which was popular 
 may be compared without much fancifulness to 
 the favourite card game of the period, quadrille. 
 You changed partners pretty often, and the stakes 
 were not very serious ; but the rules of the game 
 were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit 
 of being treated with levity. 
 
 Only a small part, though the mpst original and 
 not the least remarkable part of the representation 
 of this curious phenomenon in literature, has been 
 attempted in this essay. The English and German 
 developments of it are interesting and famous, and 
 merely as literature contain perhaps better work 
 than the French, but they are not so original. 
 Marivaux served directly as model to both English 
 and German novelists, though the peculiarity of 
 the national temperament quickly made itself felt 
 in both cases. In England the great and healthy 
 genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Essays on 
 
 sensibility at a very early period ; in Germany the 
 literature of sensibility rapidly became 
 the literature of suicide — a consum- g^^™^^,°y_ 
 mation than which nothing could be 
 more alien from the original conception. It is 
 true that there is a good deal of dying in the 
 works of Madame de la Fayette and her imita- 
 tors. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, 
 and the virtuous Prince of Cloves and the peni- 
 tent Adelaide in the Comte de Comfninge do not 
 disturb the mind at all. We know that as soon 
 as the curtain has dropped they will get up 
 again and go home to supper quite comfortably. 
 It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With 
 all the first-named young man's extravagance, four 
 generations have known perfectly well that there 
 is something besides absurdity in him, while in 
 Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The 
 wind of sensibility had been sown in literature and 
 in life for many a long year, and the whirlwind 
 had begun to be reaped. 
 
 This, however, is the moral side of the matter, 
 with which we have not much to do. As a division 
 of literature these sentimental novels, artificial as 
 they are, have a good deal of interest. They are 
 so entirely different in atmosphere from the work 
 of our own times, that reading them has all the 
 refreshing effect of a visit to a strange country. 
 They are often extraordinarily ingenious, and the 
 books to which in form they set the example, 
 though the genius of the writers made them 
 
French Novelists 163 
 
 something very different in matter — Julie, La Re- 
 ligieuse, Paul et Virginie, Corinne, Reni 
 
 A STUDY OF - ii ■ -i , f^.i • 
 
 SENSIBILITY. — §1^6 thcir progeHitors not a little im- 
 portance, or at least not a little interest 
 of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school of 
 sensibility that the author of Manon Lescaut 
 somehow or other developed that wonderful 
 little book. I do not know that it would be 
 prudent to recommend modern readers to study 
 sensibility for themselves in the original documents. 
 Disappointment and possibly maledictions would 
 probably be the result of any such attempt, except 
 in the case of Marivaux, Xavier de Maistre, and 
 Constant. But these are just the cases in which 
 the office of critic justifies itself It is often said 
 (and nobody knows the truth of it better than 
 critics themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the 
 studies and causeries that have ever been written 
 on any one of the really great writers will not give 
 as much knowledge of them as half an hour's 
 reading of their own work. But then in that case 
 the metal is virgin, and to be had on the surface 
 and for the picking up. The case is different 
 where tons of ore have to be crushed and smelted 
 in order to produce a few pennyweights of metal. 
 
V 
 CHARLES DE BERNARD 
 
 When the author of Walter Lorraine obtained 
 praise and profit by that performance, 
 it is recorded that his uncle was sOjj™^^^^^^ 
 much surprised as to be almost angry. 
 " I never read your novels and rubbish," said he. 
 " Except Paul de Kock, who certainly makes me 
 laugh, I don't think I have looked into a book of 
 the sort these thirty years." It is probable that 
 Major Pendennis was by no means singular in 
 reading certain books because they made him 
 laugh. The quality which happens to produce 
 that effect varies, of course, according to the 
 idiosyncrasy of the reader. But still there is a 
 clearly defined class of books which, though widely 
 enough different in other ways, agree with one 
 another in the possession of this peculiar faculty 
 of amusing. They are not always intentionally 
 comic — indeed, the intentionally comic book is 
 often the last which succeeds in its intention ; but 
 they are emphatically light literature. Their 
 
Essays on French Novelists 165 
 
 display of character may be, and to some extent 
 must be, truthful and even masterly, 
 
 DE BERNARD. ^^^ ^^ ^'^ "°* ''^^'^ them as studies 
 of character. Their pictures of the 
 manners of their time must have facility and 
 power, but we do not read them as we read 
 Congreve or Moli^re. Their end, whether con- 
 sciously proposed or not, is simple amusement, 
 and the higher qualities which they may possess 
 merely subserve this end. 
 
 There is usually a certain slightness about 
 writers of this sort, and this slightness does not 
 often give them a long life even in their capa- 
 cities of amusement-purveyors. What tickles one 
 generation frequently bores another. Sometimes, 
 however, an author comes who, without the 
 humour which might exalt him into the place of 
 great writers, and while still belonging to the class 
 to which no other word than light can be applied, 
 still has enough salt in him to keep him alive 
 after the generation which originally he made 
 laugh has long passed away. There are not very 
 many such writers; and there are perhaps more 
 of them in French than in any other language. 
 To this class undoubtedly belongs the novelist 
 with whom it is now my purpose to deal. Charles 
 de Bernard cannot be called a great novelist or a 
 great writer ; his work is nearly as slight as it is 
 pleasant, and the characters of his innumerable 
 novelettes blend and confuse themselves in the 
 memory in a way in which the characters of the 
 
1 66 Essays on 
 
 great novelist are never confused or blended. But 
 for the actual amusement of the time 
 occupied in reading him, and in thej^^ g^j^^^^^, 
 character of time-killer, he may challenge 
 comparison with almost any artist in fiction. It 
 is possible that Thackeray's avowed and frequently 
 expressed admiration may have been the means 
 of introducing a large number of his English 
 readers to him. But it is certain that the friends 
 whom he thus gains by the intervention of another, 
 he keeps by his own merits, and that no one who 
 knows a good story when he sees it will hesitate 
 to extend his acquaintance, however that acquaint- 
 ance may have been formed, with the author of 
 La Femme de Quarante Ans and Le Gendre. 
 
 It was some little time before Charles de 
 Bernard (who was born in 1805 and had a short 
 and not eventful life) adopted the style in which 
 he was to attain so striking a success. He began 
 with poetry and criticism, and it must be confessed 
 that his poetry is, if not actually bad, hopelessly 
 mediocre, and that his criticism is not much better. 
 Balzac, however, took him under his protection, a 
 protection which was at least, and probably at 
 most, flattering. It was under the directions of 
 the great novelist that he began to write novels, 
 though fortunately he did not obey Balzac's 
 suggestions to the letter in adopting the historical 
 and heroic style. For about ten years he wrote 
 constantly. At the end of this time a terrible 
 disease came upon him, and in 1850 he died 
 
French Novelists 167 
 
 from exhaustion and inability to take nourish- 
 ment. His life appears to have been 
 DE BERNARD, ^l^ost entirely domestic, and very 
 happy. He had no enemies, personal 
 or literary, and his melancholy death seems to 
 have been sincerely regretted, far beyond the 
 rather narrow circle of his personal friends. 
 
 His ten years' work came at an interesting 
 moment. He was old enough to have taken part 
 in the great Romantic effort. But at that time 
 he was a provincial with no Parisian friends, and 
 his efforts to establish himself in literary work 
 were long unsuccessful. He was, moreover, a 
 strong Royalist, less of the sentimental than the 
 rational type, and was therefore out of harmony 
 both with the purely artistic and with the en- 
 thusiastically republican schools of the movement. 
 When he had succeeded in establishing himself as 
 a writer, the tide, if it had not turned, was 
 turning. Lucrkce had not yet been played, but 
 the days of Antony and Hernani were over. 
 There is thus little directly Romantic in Charles 
 de Bernard's work, though the movement, like 
 most other contemporary things, comes in oc- 
 casionally for his gentle and good-humoured 
 satire. The results of his ten or twelve years' 
 labour occupy about as many volumes ; four of 
 which are taken up with his only books of great 
 length, Un Beau-pere and Le Gentilhomme Cam- 
 pagnard. Three contain each a separate book 
 of moderate size, Un Homme Sirieux, Les Ailes 
 
1 68 Essays on 
 
 d'Icare, and Gerfaut. The remainder present the 
 work in which his genius is most fully 
 represented, a score or so of delightful ^^^^^^j^^^p 
 tales rarely exceeding some sixty or 
 seventy pages in length, but perfect in propor- 
 tion, crammed with invention and originality, 
 and saturated with the purest and pleasantest 
 essence of the spirit which for six centuries 
 in fabliaux, farces, tales in prose and verse, come- 
 dies, and correspondence, made French literature 
 the delight and recreation of Europe. 
 
 That these shorter stories are not only the 
 best things that their author did, but also the 
 best things that he could do, I have no doubt 
 whatever. A careful examination will indeed 
 show that the merits of his longer works are the 
 merits of his shorter ones, while their defects are 
 exactly those which the composition of the shorter 
 stories excludes. Take, for instance, Un Beau- 
 fere, the longest but one, and unquestionably the 
 worst of its author's books. It has all the appear- 
 ance of a shorter story unnaturally drawn out and 
 prolonged. We have, to start with, a dinner. 
 First, the guests do not come ; when they do 
 come, a strange interruption occurs ; they have to 
 go out and while away the time, and when they 
 at last sit down, some eighty pages have been 
 gone through. One feels that the thing is 
 altogether out of proportion, and that the dinner 
 is a nuisance. It would have made a good 
 nouvelle of itself, under the title of " The Hungry 
 
French Novelists 169 
 
 Host," or something of that sort. Treated more 
 shortly, it would have made a good 
 DE^E^NrRD. ^"troduction to a longer story; but, 
 as it stands, it is a mistake. So 
 also in Le Gentilhomme Campagnard, the re- 
 ception of the marquis, with which that charm- 
 ing story opens, is made disproportionately pro- ' 
 minent in the same manner. I think that even 
 Gerfaut would have been very much better 
 if it had been designed on the scale of Un 
 Persicuteur and U Innocence d'un Forgat, but this 
 will doubtless seem heresy to those who consider 
 Gerfaut Bernard's masterpiece. I cannot, how- 
 ever, myself avoid thinking that these critics 
 have allowed their judgment of the book as a 
 whole to be biassed by their admiration of the 
 incomparable sketches of Marillac and Made- 
 moiselle de Corandeuil. Les Ailes d'Icare and 
 Un Homme Serieux are indeed well sustained 
 throughout ; but even these a clever arranger 
 might easily split up into shorter stories that 
 would be better than the present wholes. 
 
 This, however, must be a matter very much 
 of individual taste, and it is time to leave gener- 
 alities and allow the author to speak for himself, 
 as far as he can, in some narrative abstract of 
 parts of his work. For this purpose I shall take 
 Un Homme Sirieux of the longer works, and Le 
 Gendre of the smaller. 
 
 Un Homme SMeux opens with all the proper 
 ceremonies. We are introduced to the courtyard 
 
170 Essays on 
 
 of the Paris Post-Office, where two persons, one 
 of whom has evidently no desire to 
 be recognised by the other, are wait- j^^'^^^^^fj^ 
 ing for the arrival of the Lille dili- 
 gence. It appears at last, and from it emerges 
 a complete provincial family — father, daughter, 
 and son. The father is the " Homme Sdrieux " 
 himself, M. Chevassu, just elected deputy of the 
 Nord, inheritor of three hundred years of un- 
 broken roture, and in his own estimation a very 
 great man indeed. One of the persons expectant 
 is his jackal — a jackal, indeed, who has secretly 
 made up his mind to have very much more than 
 the jackal's share — a certain Andrd Dornier, 
 journalist by profession, whom it suits to serve the 
 deputy as private secretary. The other is the 
 Vicomte de Mortal, a very accomplished young 
 gentleman, who, in Chevassu's eyes, is hopelessly 
 condemned by the ineradicable and unpardonable 
 sin of noble birth. That these two are rivals for 
 the hand of Henriette Chevassu, every experienced 
 person will see at once, and the author makes no 
 secret of it in the first few pages. As for the 
 sensible man's son and heir, Prosper, he is a clerk 
 who crosses his father's' soul very frequently and, 
 very sadly. He has, in contradistinction to his 
 sire's respectable liberalism, adopted the wildest 
 revolutionary politics. He has already achieved 
 the destruction of a journal started by M. Chevassu 
 at Douai, with Dornier for editor, by inserting 
 in it inflammatory articles ; he has a personal 
 
French Novelists 171 
 
 friendship for Mortal, mixed up in the queerest 
 way with a determination that his 
 
 CHARLES ■ . 1 11 • ^ i 
 
 DE BERNARD. ^^^^^'^ Shall Hcver marry an aristocrat, 
 and he is, generally speaking, a mass 
 of the most amusing absurdities and contradic- 
 tions. The list of the dramatis personce is com- 
 pleted by Chevassu's sister and her husband. The 
 lady has tarnished the purity of the Chevassu 
 roture by marrying a marquis, the Marquis de 
 Pontailly, who is altogether of the old style, self- 
 indulgent and passionate, but a gentleman to the 
 backbone, and in the affairs of private life a 
 famous diplomatist. Madame de Pontailly adores 
 intellect, and thus rather favours Dornier. 
 
 The reader must not think that in giving this 
 elaborate description of the battlefield and the 
 combatants, I am doing the author a wrong. It 
 is the plan which he himself almost invariably 
 adopts in his longer novels, and particularly in 
 this one, according to the traditions of the older 
 fiction. To a merely modern taste it may seem 
 to have some of the drawbacks of the Euripidean 
 prologue, and it must be admitted that the history of 
 that unfortunate newspaper, Le Patriate Douaisien, 
 is given at somewhat unnecessary length. But, 
 on the other hand, it may be contended that the 
 more modern plan of beginning in the middle is 
 quite as often a device for concealing the want of 
 art as an instrument for exhibiting the possession 
 of it. To return, it is clear that as M. Chevassu 
 is a widower, and has come to Paris merely to 
 
1 72 Essays on 
 
 discharge his functions as deputy, his daughter will 
 have to be under the charge of her 
 aunt. Thus it becomes necessary forj,™^^^f^j, 
 Mordal to lay siege to the Pontailly 
 salon. Fortunately his father has been an old 
 comrade of the marquis in the hard and yet 
 jovial days of the emigration, when one painted 
 still life and the other turned snuff-boxes for a 
 livelihood. M. de Pontailly responds to an appeal, 
 pays the viscount a visit, and promises every 
 assistance. But the question is, how Mortal 
 shall conciliate the aunt, over whom her husband 
 frankly enough confesses himself to possess no 
 direct influence. Fortunately the young man is a 
 poet — it is 1834, remember, — and on Being pressed 
 he reads a specimen of his verse to his visitor. 
 M. de Pontailly selects a piece entitled " La F^te 
 Romaine," rejecting absolutely certain "Jours de 
 Tristesse," " Illusions Perdues," and so forth ; he 
 innocently supposes that " La F6te Romaine " must 
 be about the carnival, of which he has pleasant 
 recollections. He will hear "La F^te Romaine" — 
 
 M. de Pontailly gave the manuscript back to Mor&l ; he 
 then threw himself back in his chair, rested his chin on one 
 of his hands, put the other in his waistcoat, and half- 
 shutting his eyes, presented so formidable an attitude of 
 attention that the young poet felt himself as nervous as if 
 he had been in presence of a whole high commission of 
 critics. His voice, as he began to read his verses, trembled 
 somewhat. " La Fete Romaine " was the history of the 
 martyrdom of the Christians under Nero, and the chief 
 parts in it were played by the claws of the tigers and the 
 torches of the executioner, rendered in violent outline and 
 
French Novelists 1 73 
 
 glaring colours after the fashion of certain contemporary 
 productions of the poetical kind. When he 
 CHARLES had finished his reading, the viscount turned 
 DE BERNARD, upon his hearer one of those modest smiles 
 with which an author is wont to invite the 
 indulgence of his judge. M. de Pontailly's attitude had 
 undergone a slight change. His arms hung by his sides, 
 his head reclined on the back of the chair, his mouth was 
 slightly open, and his eyes were closed ; in fact, he appeared 
 to be enjoying a peaceful and refreshing slumber. At this 
 spectacle the demon of irritability, which is supposed 
 particularly to attend upon poets, plunged his talons into 
 Mortal, and, with an involuntary movement, he crushed his 
 manuscript in his hand and flung it on the table. The old 
 man instantly opened his eyes, raised himself, and looking 
 ironically at the viscount, said, " Don't disturb yourself. I 
 was not asleep ; I was thinking. You young men of to-day 
 are certainly very curious people. When you wish to sing, 
 you either weep or bellow. You yourself, for instance, how 
 nicely you caught me with your title ! I might have known 
 better. You call that a fite? A Roman _;?^e.? I wonder 
 what Pasquin and Marforio would say to it. A. fife f Why 
 didn't you call it an Auto da Fd, or a cannibal's feast, or a 
 day in the shambles ? If that is your taste, it is not mine. 
 Your fHe smells of the slaughter-house and the pitch- 
 kettle. For my part, I like the smell of roses or of old 
 Falemian better. Yes, I would rather have Albano than 
 Spagnoletto. Besides, any one can lay on black and red, 
 while really pretty colouring is no such easy matter. I used 
 to make verses too when I was young — you need not be afraid, 
 I have forgotten them, and therefore I can't take my revenge. 
 All I can remember of them is that they were at least lively." 
 
 However, the old man, though satirical, is not 
 ill-natured. He decides that, as the verses are 
 after all verses, they will do admirably for Madame 
 de Pontailly, and proposes that the presentation 
 shall take place at once. 
 
174 Essays on 
 
 Meanwhile the deputy of the Nord, who has 
 come up determined to lead the affairs 
 of the nation, has discovered that j, ™^^^^^j,_ 
 those of his own household will give 
 him some trouble. He receives very unflattering 
 accounts of Prosper's law studies, and Henriette 
 refuses flatly to marry Dornier, so that his son 
 and daughter are both in open revolt. Mortal's 
 star is more kindly. By great good luck it 
 happens to be "poetry day" with Madame de 
 Pontailly. The viscount is presented, is asked his 
 opinion on a literary point, and, assisted by a 
 little signal from the marquis, delivers it in com- 
 plete accordance with the lady's own. Then he 
 is requested to recite, and selects the most plain- 
 tive of all his lamentable verses. His success 
 is complete, and his rival, who appears at the 
 moment and tries to sneer at the poem, is severely 
 snubbed. Nor do Dornier's misfortunes end there, 
 for shortly afterwards he is involved by the hot- 
 headed Prosper in one of the political demonstra- 
 tions of the moment, and both are locked up by 
 the police, who thereby interfere with certain 
 warlike designs on Mortal which the pair have 
 formed. 
 
 But while everything thus appears to be going 
 well, an unexpected misfortune occurs. Madame 
 de Pontailly has indeed taken Mordal into favour, 
 but she is neither too old nor too literary to have 
 given up coquetry, and she is by no means disposed 
 to abandon such a promising cavalier to her niece. 
 
French Novelists 175 
 
 Hence, instead of assisting the course of true 
 love, she does all she can to hinder 
 
 de'^bernard. ^*' ^"^ ^* ^^^* persuades her brother 
 to send Henriette, in honourable cap- 
 tivity, to a boarding-school. 
 
 Nor is fate kinder to the ambitious designs of 
 M. Chevassu. Under the promptings of Dornier, 
 he has resolved to try and get together a small 
 party in the Chamber. As a preliminary measure 
 he has asked those with whom he wishes to act 
 to tea and discussion — 
 
 About nine o'clock the guests arrived, and the conversa- 
 tion, dealing exclusively with the tactics to be adopted 
 during the session, became lively. Suddenly the door 
 opened, and there entered a very unexpected personage, to 
 wit. Prosper Chevassu. As he recognised Jhis son, the 
 deputy frowned, and his face expressed a vague disquiet, 
 while his colleagues gazed with surprise at the curiously 
 unparliamentary appearance of the new-comer. At last he 
 said, " Gentlemen, I have the honour to present my son to 
 yoa" — "Just escaped," added Prosper pompously, "from the 
 dungeons of authority." — " Ah ! " remarked a deputy to his 
 neighbour, " it must be the noisy fellow who was arrested in 
 the disturbance on Friday. What a ruffian he looks." As 
 a matter of fact, the student's appearance was a little 
 terrible. The lower half of his countenance was unshaved 
 and blackened, the upper was flushed with the wine he had 
 drunk at his uncle's, and his eyes sparkled in such a 
 manner that he might have been an excellent model for an 
 artist who wished to paint a Bacchanal, but was likely rather 
 to shock gentlemen who considered gravity the first of 
 virtues. Without appearing in any way embarrassed by his 
 father's gloomy looks, Prosper went up to the table, filled 
 his cup, took some bread and butter, and proceeded to 
 establish himself in the midst of the group of talkers in front 
 of the fire. " Gentlemen," he said, with superb coolness, " I 
 
1 76 Essays on 
 
 perceive that I have the honour to be in the society of 
 deputies. I am much gratified at making 
 vour acquaintance, inasmuch as it is my pur- charles 
 pose to address a petition to the Chamber de Bernard. 
 without delay. I shall take the Uberty of 
 inviting your support thereto now."—" Prosper," ,said M. 
 Chevassu anxiously, "remember to whom you are speaking." 
 " In your house, father," replied the son, " I can only be 
 speaking to honourable citizens, enemies of arbitrary power, 
 and defenders of popular rights."— " Well," said a stout man 
 of gruff countenance, « you wish to petition us. May I ask 
 what about ? "— " I desire," said Prosper, " to draw the atten- 
 tion of the Chamber to the monstrous abuse of illegal 
 imprisonment which we daily witness. I myself have been 
 the victim of an outrage of this sort ; it is therefore my duty 
 to bell the cat of ministerial tyranny."—" Why ; what have 
 you got to complain of?" rejoined the deputy brusquely. 
 « You make a disturbance in the streets, and you are arrested. 
 Where is the injustice ? You might have stayed at home." 
 " Where is the injustice, sir ! " cried Prosper, whose counte- 
 nance became yet more inflamed ; " is it then henceforward 
 to be illegal to take an after-dinner walk on the Boulevard ? 
 Is it then to be the right of the minions of tyranny to 
 bludgeon the peaceable citizen to whom exercise is recom- 
 mended by his medical advisers ? Is it then " " He 
 
 must be mad," said the stout man half aloud. " They called 
 Brutus mad," replied the student in disdainful tones. " Hold 
 your tongue. Prosper," interrupted M. Chevassu. "Pray, 
 gentlemen, excuse this vivacity in a young man who thinks 
 himself arbitrarily treated." But Prosper did not allow him 
 to finish. " Father," said he, with vehemence, " make no 
 excuses. With one exception I feel sure that these gentle- 
 men understand and share my indignation. Were I 
 deceived, sympathy will not fail me elsewhere. The 
 Chamber of Deputies is after all but an infinitesimal fraction 
 of the country, and if those who compose it slumber in 
 culpable apathy, there are without its limits patriot-hearts 
 that are awake." 
 
 These audacious words were received with a murmur of 
 
French Novelists 177 
 
 disapproval. " This is becoming scandalous," said one. " It 
 is an insult to the Chamber," said another. 
 CHARLES " Such a tirade is intolerable," said a third. In 
 DE BERNARD, yain M. Chevassu, who was on thorns, ex- 
 claimed, " Prosper ! Prosper ! " The student, 
 in this moment of general emotion, sipped his tea calmly 
 and surveyed the assembly with a sarcastic air. When he 
 had finished his cup, he put it down. " Gentlemen," said 
 he with humour, " I claim the indulgence of the House that 
 I may reply to this call to order. I claim it in accordance 
 with the rules of the House itself" This irreverent parody 
 redoubled the murmurs. " I thought," said one, "that we 
 came to discuss a serious question seriously, not to listen 
 to schoolboy jokes." — "Sir," replied Prosper, "I am not a 
 schoolboy, and you are not my master. 1 know indeed 
 that I am guilty of the crime of youth, an unpardonable 
 crime in the eyes of a gerontocracy. But a day will come 
 when the rising generation cannot be longer kept in a state 
 of helotry. Yes," continued he, gesticulating in his ardour, 
 " the day will come. I call to witness the memory of the men 
 of Eighty-nine and the glorious traditions of the Republic." 
 A covey of partridges, startled by the report of a fowl- 
 ing-piece, could not be rdore alarmed than were the repre- 
 sentatives of the nation at hearing this terrible word whistle 
 past their ears. Those who were standing rushed for their 
 hats ; those who were sitting rose. In a moment the whole 
 body were making for the door with parliamentary discipline 
 and unanimity. In vain M. Chevassu tried to stop them ; he 
 was as successful as the hapless shepherd of the victims of 
 Panurge, and all he got was a pretty sharp speech firom the 
 fat deputy. " Monsieur Chevassu, the man who aspires to 
 be the head of a political party, had better first be head of 
 his own house. I do not pretend to direct my colleagues, 
 but not one of my four sons would dare to call his soul his 
 own in my presence. My advice on this point, sir, is at 
 your service. I cannot say the same of my support in the 
 Chamber." 
 
 The woes of the deputy, however, do not help 
 
 N 
 
178 Essays on 
 
 Mortal, notwithstanding that Prosper, who con- 
 siders himself ill-treated by Dornier 
 in the matter of their deliverance jj^^^^J^^^p 
 from prison, transfers his valuable 
 allegiance to the viscount. The difficulty is 
 now to find the school in which Henrietta is 
 immured. Mortal, however, accomplishes this, 
 hires an adjoining house, and across the familiar 
 garden -wall converses sweetly with his beloved. 
 This intercourse is discovered, and the marquise, 
 furious at it, encourages Dornier to carry off her 
 niece. The plot is discovered by M. de Pontailly, 
 and valiantly frustrated by Mortal, all of course 
 ending well. Even the austere deputy is partially 
 reconciled to the marriage by Mortal's promise to 
 be, at any rate up to that event, un homme sirieux, 
 to cut off his beard, wear a frock-coat, and above 
 all to write no verses. 
 
 Such is a meagre account of a charming book. 
 Meagre as it is, however, it may show in what the 
 charm consists. It lies in the constant succession 
 of amusing scenes, such as that which I have trans- 
 lated, sometimes between Prosper and his father, 
 sometimes between Mortal and the marquise, 
 sometimes between M. de Pontailly and any or all 
 of the characters. Of anything like a central 
 interest there is next to nothing. The scenes 
 hang well together, and one is carried on to the 
 end satisfactorily. But the charm is in the parts, 
 not in the whole. 
 
 Le Gendre begins with one of the dialogues 
 
French Novelists 1 79 
 
 which must have delighted Thackeray, and of 
 which he himself is our best Eng- 
 DE BEWJARD. ^^^^ artist. The speakers are "a man 
 of about fifty-five years old, possess- 
 ing an amiable countenance and wearing a loose 
 suit, and a lady about ten years younger, of very 
 smart appearance and dress." The conversa- 
 tion enlightens us at once as to their relation. 
 They are man and wife, and the wife is very much 
 the better man. Their daughter Adolphine has 
 been married some six months, the two happy 
 families are living together near Meudon, and of 
 the joint household there is no doubt who is 
 chief. At the moment when the story opens, 
 Madame Bailleul, the mother-in-law, is demanding 
 from her husband the formidable sum of ten 
 thousand francs. It is to be invested in a com- 
 pany for the building of steamboats whose boilers 
 can by no possibility burst ; and the promoter of 
 this promising enterprise is a certain M. Gustave 
 Laboissi^re, who is the friend of the house in a 
 very intimate sense. M. Bailleul has not yet paid 
 over his daughter's dowry, and he is anxious to do 
 so instead of investing in the tempting boats. But 
 when he wishes one thing and his wife another, it 
 is needless to say which prevails. It is settled 
 that Laboissi^re, who happens to be coming to 
 dinner, shall have his money. 
 
 In the course, however, of the conversation, the 
 excellent Bailleul expresses a fear that Laboissi^re 
 comes too often for Adolphine's peace of mind and 
 
i8o Essays on 
 
 the welfare of his son-in-law, Chaudieu. His 
 wife at first treats this suggestion very 
 lightly, but as he brings forward j^^^^^^^^fj^^^ 
 something like proof, she becomes 
 violently angry. The suspected pair are in the 
 garden. She hides herself behind the arbour in 
 which they are sitting, and is rewarded by hearing 
 not merely an assignation, but certain remarks 
 about herself which nearly carry her off in an 
 apoplexy. All this time no one has troubled 
 himself about the master of the house. At length, 
 when the four other actors have assembled, Madame 
 Bailleul concealing her rage by a violent effort, 
 Laboissiere remembers that he has been entrusted 
 with a letter for Chaudieu. They go to seek him, 
 and he is found engaged in the innocent occupa- 
 tion of painting the trellis-work for his vines. 
 
 The appearance of Adolphine's husband corresponded 
 well enough with the rustic simplicity of his employment. 
 He was a young man of about eight-and-twenty, tall and 
 strongly built, but this was all that could be said for his 
 personal charms. His face gave evidence of good health 
 and a quiet conscience, but the features could not be called 
 either regular or remarkable. ... As they came near the 
 painter, our four personages appeared to experience a 
 sarcastic feeling to which they did not give utterance, but 
 which their countenances in different ways clearly expressed. 
 Laboissi&re smiled sneeringly. M. Bailleul shrugged his 
 shoulders in an irritated manner. Adolphine gave one of 
 those half-sighing yawns which the presence of a husband 
 sometimes provokes in lovely woman ; and as for Madame 
 Bailleul, after looking for a minute at her son-in-law, as if 
 she expected the ladder to collapse under her gaze, she 
 cried in her sharpest tones, "I suppose you are joking. 
 
French Novelists 1 8 1 
 
 You must have seen us." Chaudieu turned his head and 
 
 contemplated the group beneath him. " How 
 
 CHARLES do you do ? " said he, and continued his 
 
 DE BERNARD, work. « Don't you see M. Laboissiere ? " 
 
 said his mother-in-law in a tone which was 
 
 equivalent to " Come down at once, sir." — " Oh, he does 
 
 not expect me to treat him as a stranger, and he will let 
 
 me finish my work." — " Certainly," said Laboissifere, " artists 
 
 must not be disturbed. That is a fresco, I suppose ?" — 
 
 " Come down, Chaudieu," said M. Bailleul, " he has a letter 
 
 for you." — " From Marseilles," added Laboissifere, taking 
 
 it from his pocket. " Ah," said Adolphine's husband, " from 
 
 Marseilles ? And it is you who bring it me?" 
 
 He puts the letter in his pocket without open- 
 ing it, saying that he knowrs its contents, and, 
 still in character, carries off his wife's lover " to 
 see the asparagus," which Laboissiere duly praises. 
 After dinner the investment question, upon which 
 it is necessary to consult Chaudieu, comes up 
 again, and to his father-in-law's intense surprise, 
 he not only consents to the postponement of the 
 payment of the dowry, but expresses himself 
 willing to invest a much more considerable sum 
 in the inexplosive boats himself Laboissiere is 
 nearly beside himself with joy at the combined 
 prospect of his assignation with the wife, and his 
 windfall from the husband. 
 
 As to the first point, however, he has counted 
 without his host. When the occupants of the 
 Meudon villa separate for the night, Madame 
 Bailleul summons her daughter from her room, 
 locks her in her own, and goes to meet the Love- 
 lace. As the chapter of accidents will have it. 
 
1 82 Essays on 
 
 her son-in-law wishes to speak to her about the 
 investment, and about certain inten- 
 tions of his respecting it. Naturally j,™^^^^^j,_ 
 he does not find her in her room, 
 and fancying that she may be with his wife, 
 proceeds thither. But before he opens the 
 door he hears voices, not his wife's, but Labois- 
 , si^re's and his mother-in-law's. Such a mystery 
 excuses eavesdropping, and Chaudieu listens with 
 great coolness to the whole conversation. 
 
 The tenor of the interview may be guessed. 
 Laboissi^re, in his double character of swindler 
 and lady-killer, has paid his addresses to the 
 mother as well as to the daughter. He has, 
 moreover, a complete hold on the former in the 
 shape of some compromising letters, and he is 
 thus enabled to brazen the matter out, and to 
 defeat not merely Madame Bailleul's interference 
 with his projects on Adolphine, but also all hope 
 of preventing the investment from taking place. 
 He departs threatening and mocking her. Next 
 morning, after much thought, she sends for her 
 son-in-law, and endeavours to persuade him — of 
 course without giving details — that she has been 
 insulted. The scene is worth translation. — 
 
 " I wish to speak to you on a very serious matter," said 
 she, " but first of all promise me on your honour not to tell 
 any one what I say ; not any one, mind, not even your 
 wife." — "You need not tell me that. I know that one 
 should only tell women secrets that one wishes not to be 
 kept," replied Chaudieu. " Is that your principle ? " said 
 Adolphine's mother, surprised at the reply which accorded 
 
French Novelists 183 
 
 so little with the easy-going conjugal habits of her son-in- 
 law. " It is a Breton proverb," said he, 
 CHARLES and his sunburnt countenance assumed an 
 DE BERNARD, air of cool resolution which rather startled 
 Madame Bailleul. She seemed to make a fresh 
 acquaintance with her son-in-law, and she augured well of 
 it for the task with which she wished to charge him. 
 " Listen to me," she said solemnly, " and weigh my words 
 well. While your mother lived, if any one should have 
 insulted her would you not have defended her t Would you 
 not have employed all the strength and courage which 
 Heaven has given you to protect and avenge her ? " — " I 
 should have done my duty," said Chaudieu. "You have 
 had the misfortune," continued she tenderly, " to lose your 
 mother, but your marriage has given you another who, with- 
 out affecting to equal the lost, tries at least to take her 
 place as much as she can, by virtue of the sincere affection 
 she bears you." Chaudieu looked at his mother-in-law, as 
 if to say, " I really did not know that you were so fond of 
 me." Then he bowed without speaking. "After the ties 
 of blood which count first," continued Madame Bailleul, 
 who was becoming quite eloquent, " are there ties more 
 sacred than those which come from a happy and honourable 
 alliance ? My husband and I look upon you as a son, and 
 I am sure that at need you would discharge the duties 
 which that title imposes." — " I hope so," said Chaudieu 
 modestly. "For my part," said she, " I am sure of it, for 
 you are a man of honour, a man of spirit, a true Breton. 
 That is enough." The true Breton received this compli- 
 ment with a second bow as silent and as ambiguous as the 
 first. " If then I were to say to you, a man has insulted 
 me gravely, deeply, mortally. He is my enemy, I have 
 everything to fear from him, my husband is an old man, I 
 am but a woman, and have no son, you alone can defend 
 me, and from you alone I expect protection ; what would 
 you do ? Tell me." 
 
 Benedict Chaudieu directed his gaze towards the ceiling. 
 He crossed his hands on his waistcoat, and slowly twirled 
 his thumbs. " What should I do ? " said he in a meditative 
 
184 £ssays on 
 
 tone, after a moment's reflection. " Really I am not sure. 
 It seems to me that you should tell me what 
 you wish me to do." — " What ! " cried Madame charles 
 Bailleul, who had been considerably fidgeted de Bernard. 
 by her son-in-law's very unchivalrous gestures. 
 "You are a man, and you do not know how to answer 
 such a question ? I tell you of an unpardonable insult, 
 of a serious danger, of a question of life and death, 
 and you ask what is to be done ! You cannot mean it, or 
 rather you cannot have understood me." — " Perhaps not," 
 said Chaudieu with the greatest coolness. " We Bretons are 
 capital fellows, as you were kind enough just now to remark, 
 but we are accused of having rather thick heads, and in 
 this respect I am strictly true to my country. If you would 
 speak a little more clearly perhaps I should be able to 
 understand you." — " If a man gave you a box on the ear," 
 said Adolphine's mother shortly, " what should you do ? " — 
 " Give him two," replied the Breton. " You would challenge 
 the man who had struck you ? Well, I have just shown 
 you that in virtue of the ties which bind us, your honour 
 and mine are one. You are insulted in my person. Do 
 you understand now ? " — " I think," said Chaudieu, " I 
 begin to guess. You want me to fight. 1 have something 
 to say about that though." — " I am listening," said Madame 
 Bailleul, whose countenance grew dark. "About two months 
 ago," continued Chaudieu quite coolly, "we were in the 
 drawing-room, you and I and my wife. I was on the sofa, 
 and you thought me asleep ; you two were talking near the 
 piano. You said to Adolphine, ' You say your husband is 
 dull and unlovable. That is true ; but on the other hand 
 he has neither energy, will, nor character, and that is the 
 main point. You can mould him like wax. A fool that 
 one can lead by the nose is better than a fine talker who is 
 master.' "— " I did not say that," interrupted Madame 
 Bailleul, blushing to the eyes. " Excuse me, you did. 
 Now it follows from your words that I am a man of no 
 energy or character, and therefore you must pardon me if I 
 am surprised at your proposing to me a course of conduct 
 which requires both." Madame Bailleul bit her lips and 
 
French Novelists 185 
 
 inwardly cursed her imprudence. "An evasion is not an 
 answer," said she at length. "If you wish 
 CHARLES for an answer," said Chaudieu, quite unmoved, 
 DE BERNARD. « hgre it is. It is five months since my 
 marriage, and during that time I have 
 accepted the position you assigned me. I should have 
 liked to be master in my own house, but you thought that 
 would be a bad precedent. My wife leads me, according 
 to your advice ; you on your part lead my wife, so that you 
 are in fact the mistress. I scarcely dare to ask a friend to 
 dinner, my servants look to you before obeying the orders I 
 give them, the house and the garden are turned upside 
 down without my being consulted : in short, I am nobody. 
 I do not complain. But, as I pay the fees, I think it is 
 fair that I should have the privileges. If I were the master 
 of the house and the head of the family, and you came to 
 me and said, ' Son-in-law, such and such a thing has 
 happened, which is a man's business,' I should say, ' That 
 is for me to look to,' and I should act accordingly. But if 
 the petticoat does the governing, let the petticoat do the 
 fighting. I wash my hands of it." — " How well I judged 
 you ! " cried Madame Bailleul. " You are exactly the 
 mean and vulgar creature I thought you at first." — " In 
 short," said he, "a second edition of M. Bailleul, am I 
 not ? " — " Leave the room, sir ! " cried she, her eyes blazing 
 with anger. "I do not allow your father-in-law to be 
 insulted in my presence." Chaudieu bowed for the third 
 time. " You have nothing else to say ? " said he with the 
 imperturbable coolness which redoubled his companion's 
 irritation. " Fool and coward ! " she muttered between her 
 teeth, but audibly enough. "The two things often go 
 together," remarked the young man as he went out ; " so 
 do old woman and coquette." 
 
 But the experienced reader has no fear that 
 the Breton is going to leave Laboissi^re un- 
 punished for his misdeeds, committed and intended. 
 After quitting his irate mother-in-law, Chaudieu 
 
1 86 Essays on 
 
 makes an excellent breakfast, and then sets out 
 for Paris, first inducing his father-in- 
 law to assign to him, on account of ^^^^^^^^j, 
 Adolphine's dowry, the ten thousand 
 francs worth of shares in the inexplosive boats, 
 which have been already taken. Then follows 
 a grand scene with the swindler, too long, un- 
 fortunately, for quotation. Armed with a forged 
 bill of Laboissi^re's — the very document contained 
 in the letter from Marseilles — he extracts from 
 him not merely the money's , worth of the worth- 
 less shares, but also Madame Bailleul's letters, of 
 the existence of which his nocturnal eavesdropping 
 has informed him. Laboissiere, seeing the bill 
 burnt, recovers his audacity, and, being a practised 
 duellist, challenges the Breton, who coolly refuses 
 to fight him, and gives him proof that his own 
 physical strength is sufficient to guard him from 
 outrage. The baffled swindler, however, declares 
 that he will publicly insult his conqueror at an 
 approaching dinner at M. Bailleul's. Chaudieu, 
 quite unmoved by this threat, returns to Meudon, 
 and in an interview with his wife's mother, points 
 out that he intends to be master in his own 
 house, that he had only been waiting for complete 
 proofs of Laboissi^re's guilt, and that thence- 
 forward she has quite a different person to reckon 
 with. At the same time, by returning to 
 Madame Bailleul the letters unread, he binds even 
 her to his side. Next day the final scene occurs. 
 Laboissiere, who has quite recovered his impudence, 
 
French Novelists 187 
 
 threatens Chaudieu with personal violence before 
 his father-in-law's guests. The Breton 
 
 CHART P*? 
 
 DE BERNARD, ^ollars him and administers a sound 
 thrashing, after which he turns him out 
 of the house, courteously entertains the guests — 
 it is at his father-in-law's own house in Paris — 
 and then carries off his wife triumphantly to 
 Meudon, where he reigns supreme. 
 
 I have no hesitation in placing Le Gendre 
 at the head of all novelettes of its class with 
 which I am acquainted. The scenes to which I 
 have referred are all equally good ; and the way 
 in which Chaudieu is made to display his real 
 character, quite naturally and without any violent 
 metamorphosis, is admirably managed. The par- 
 ticular scene in which Laboissiere is forced to 
 disgorge, has served as a model and a quarry to 
 hundreds of novelists. Indeed, of all the numerous 
 writers who have since embellished their works 
 with similar descriptions, I hardly know one who 
 is not indebted to it. Almost equally admirable, 
 though less suited to English taste, is that in 
 which the haughty and vindictive Madame 
 Bailleul is subdued by the greater coolness and 
 baseness of her scoundrelly admirer. Nothing 
 again can surpass the touches by which good M. 
 Bailleul is kept before us as a useful but absolutely 
 uncomprehending witness of the surprising events 
 which pass under his eyes. 
 
 It is not possible to give any individual notice 
 to all Charles de Bernard's works. There is Les 
 
1 88 Essays on 
 
 Ailes deleave, which has had, hke Gerfaut, the 
 position of masterpiece, but of which, 
 to my fancy, Thackeray has translated jj™^^^^p_ 
 the best part. It has been noted too 
 that some hints are taken from it for the duel 
 in the Shabby-genteel Story. There is Un Beau- 
 pere, the drawbacks of which I have already 
 hinted at. It is the only one of its author's 
 books which is hardly worth reading for any 
 but critical purposes. There is Le Gentil- 
 homme Campagnard, full of the most admirable 
 scenes, and containing character sketches enough 
 for half a dozen novels, but perhaps too long for 
 its central interest. Then there is Gerfaut, re- 
 specting which it is perhaps well to say why I 
 differ from most of its critics. The plot is simple 
 enough. A Parisian gentleman, of good family 
 and literary eminence, finds himself brain-weary, 
 and is quite gravely recommended by his medical 
 man to fall in love as a means of acquiring 
 intellectual freshness. He, with equal gravity, 
 addresses himself to this laudable purpose, selects 
 a certain Madame de Bergenheim, pursues her to 
 her chateau in Alsace, and, extracting an invitation 
 from the husband, sets to work. But in the long 
 run the husband becomes aware of the intrigue, 
 with tragic results to himself and his wife. The 
 defect of the book seems to be that the author 
 does not show us what view he takes of Gerfaut. 
 It is impossible to make out whether the treatment 
 is satiric or melodramatic. If we are really 
 
French Novelists 189 
 
 expected to sympathise with an outrageous cox- 
 comb, we refuse ; if we are meant to 
 DE BERNARD, ^^.ugh at him, we find little assistance 
 given us in doing so. It is clear that 
 the author had not yet found his way ; though 
 the supper scene and the drunken harangue of 
 Marillac, Gerfaut's friend, point to that way 
 very clearly. 
 
 In the shorter tales the reader can hardly go 
 wrong. Whether he takes up Le Nceud Gordien, 
 Le Paravent, Le Paratonnerre, or L'Ecueil, names 
 which the author chose to attach to his little 
 bundles of collected nouvelles, sometimes without 
 much reason, he cannot fail to be delighted. The 
 average length of these tales is about seventy 
 pages, though two longer ones, La Peau du Lion 
 and La Chasse aux Amants, make a volume 
 between them ; and there are a few which do not 
 exceed a dozen pages. La Peau du Lion, a story 
 dealing with the unmasking of a braggart and 
 nearly successful suitor, is one of the author's 
 happiest efforts ; and La Chasse aux Amants, 
 which describes how a menaced husband avenges 
 himself in the most signal manner on his false 
 friends, matches it well. Of the four stories which 
 make up L'Ecueil, by far the best is Le Gendre, 
 with which I have already dealt fully. L Inno- 
 cence dun Forqat is tragic, and tragedy is not 
 the author's forte. Nor is La Cinquantaine, 
 though full of wit, exempt from a certain painful 
 impression, for the woes of a superannuated lover 
 
I go Essays on 
 
 are but tragi-comic after all. The tale which 
 gives its name to Le Paratonnerre, 
 as well as Le Pied d'Argile — ^\i.&^l1^^^^_ 
 Bedford Row Conspiracy — which ac- 
 companies it, is admirable ; but La Peine du 
 Talion again brings in the serious element and 
 again falls. Georges de Sordeuil, the hero, attains 
 but to melodrama at best. Le Nceud Gordien 
 contains the delicious Femme de Quarante Ans, 
 where the heroine is identified by her unfortunately 
 stereotyped habit of assigning a special star for 
 each of her numerous adorers to remember her by. 
 L'Anneau d Argent is the most touching of all its 
 author's sadder stories. In it a great lady, who 
 plays at Carlism, first entraps her daughter's suitor 
 into the ranks of the Vendean insurgents, and 
 then hands the girl over to a wealthy supporter 
 of Louis Philippe. Un Acte de Vertu has had the 
 honour of being in part translated by Thackeray. 
 Its end, however, does not quite satisfy the ex- 
 pectations which the beginning excites. Le Per- 
 s^cuteur (which the author dramatised) is the most 
 powerful of his tragic efforts, but not the most 
 agreeable. Lastly, there is the Paravent, to some 
 of the contents of which I may have occasion to 
 allude presently. The best thing in it, however, 
 must be here mentioned. This is L'Arbre de la 
 Science, a story having some points of resemblance 
 with La Chasse aux Amants. The hero, a lady- 
 killer on the turn, takes in hand, for his own 
 purposes, a youthful but innocent husband. He 
 
French Novelists 191 
 
 hopes, by introducing him to the world and its 
 ways, to facilitate his projects. The 
 DE''MRN''rRD. ""^sult is just the reverse. The pupil 
 improves so rapidly that he very soon 
 divines his tutor's intention, while at the same 
 time the tottering fidelity of his wife is estab- 
 lished firmly by her admiration for his newly- 
 acquired accomplishments and graces, so that 
 the seducer is beaten completely, and has to 
 retire in considerable disorder. 
 
 I have given this catalogue of the contents of 
 these volumes because, as their general titles give 
 no indication, it is not very easy without some- 
 thing of the kind to find the volume in which a 
 particular story is contained. No critic, nor even, 
 I should suppose, the most uncritical reader, has 
 failed to notice the success with which Charles de 
 Bernard introduces people of rank and breeding 
 into his stories. Whether or not he drew from 
 nature, his portraits of this kind are exquisitely 
 natural and easy. I shall not insult the admirers 
 of Balzac by drawing the parallel which many 
 commentators have busied themselves to draw. 
 It is sujfficient to say that Charles de Bernard is 
 the literary Sir Joshua of the post -revolution 
 vicomte and marquise. We can see that his 
 portraits are faithful ; we must feel that they are 
 at the same time charming. If he has one talent 
 greater than another in this direction, it is in 
 drawing old men. His returned emigrants, who 
 unite a profound conviction of the deterioration of 
 
192 Essays on 
 
 youth, and a half melancholy, half satirical re- 
 membrance of their past joys and 
 prowess, with a charming good nature ^^^^^^^^jj 
 and an admirable skill in diplomacy, 
 are among the most delightful characters in 
 fiction. In the portrayal of his younger men, 
 the author has been, if not less successful, at 
 any rate less attractive, and the reason of this 
 is a curious study in manners, if not in morals. 
 He has, and in the main justly, the reputation of 
 drawing ladies and gentlemen. But his gentle- 
 men, if not his ladies, come short of the mark in 
 one curious point of honour. They are a great 
 deal too unscrupulous in their manoeuvres. This 
 is not a piece of insular squeamishness ; for it 
 seems to have struck French critics almost as 
 strongly as it strikes an Englishman. Nor can 
 it be defended by the excuse as to pranks which 
 only deserve '' peals of elvish laughter." Too 
 many of Charles de Bernard's heroes do things 
 at which, by convention of elf- land, even elves 
 have no right to indulge in laughing. They do 
 not wait till their friends have, in the accepted 
 manner, declared war against the human race by 
 becoming husbands. They apply the licenses of 
 the state of war to what ought to be the state of 
 peace. We laugh so much at the Paratonnerre, 
 and the unlucky hero has his own coxcombry so 
 much to blame for his unpleasant predicament, 
 that we can hardly blame the friend who makes 
 such unscrupulous use of him. But in La Rose 
 
French Novelists 193 
 
 Jaune, the construction which Dramond puts on 
 the duties of ambassador, is a little 
 DE BERNARD, disturbing to one's ideas of the con- 
 duct of a gentleman. After all, how- 
 ever, there are not many instances of this 
 shortcoming, and in those which do show them- 
 selves, there is no great harm done. It is, more- 
 over, an interesting survival of the old Gallic 
 spirit of sacrificing everything for the jest's sake, 
 and of relying for a moral on the lesson given to 
 the dupe not to be caught again. It must also be 
 admitted that the victims have generally exposed 
 themselves to ill-treatment by some folly or worse, 
 and they therefore deserve their punishment, even 
 if the executioners are not quite the right people 
 to administer it, and if the punishment itself be 
 not exactly according to our notions of propriety. 
 The older tale-tellers were extremely fond of 
 proceeding on this method, and they sometimes 
 carried it, as in the fabliau of The Priest and 
 the Knight, to rather appalling extremes. 
 
 Criticism on a novelist of this class must 
 always in- the long run resolve itself into a simple 
 recommendation to read him. He has no unusual 
 savour which requires preparation or encourage- 
 ment before it can be enjoyed, no far-sought senti- 
 ment and interest which have to be brought near, 
 no eccentricity of plot or style which might require 
 interpretation or excuse. No one need bring any- 
 thing to the reading of him but the faculty of 
 perceiving a joke, and the willingness to perceive 
 
 
 
194 Essays on 
 
 it. He may but stand to Balzac and George Sand 
 as champagne stands to Romance 
 Conti and to Chateau Yquem. But ^^g^^j^^^j, 
 no one who is at all capable of en- 
 joying him needs anything more • than to have 
 a specimen put into his hands. A reader of 
 one volume will go on reading whenever he 
 has an opportunity. Translation indeed is per- 
 haps the worst means of conveying his peculiar 
 charm. Translated he is — as Thackeray himself 
 confesses — like decanted champagne; a monstrosity 
 which, however, Thackeray must have lived long 
 enough to see. Yet even decanted champagne 
 might possibly give some, though a feeble, idea of 
 the sapor and liveliness of the wine to persons 
 who had never tasted it in its natural, or rather 
 artificial, condition. These novels, well enough as 
 they are known to professed students of French 
 literature, have, by the mere fact of their age, 
 rather slipped out of the list of books known to 
 the general reader. The general reader who reads 
 for amusement cannot possibly do better than 
 proceed to convert his ignorance of them into 
 knowledge. 
 
 I have not forgotten the occasion on which 
 I made acquaintance with Charles de Bernard's 
 books. It was in the summer of 1866, at a 
 Breton inn, where, to pass the time, a companion 
 of mine had borrowed an armful of light literature 
 from the landlady. There was Les Louves de 
 Machecoul, that remarkable specimen of the later 
 
French Novelists 195 
 
 manner of Alexander the Great, when he was 
 content to leave the work chiefly to 
 DE BERNARD. ^^ " Xoung men," the possession and 
 use of whom Thackeray affected to 
 envy him. There was Belle - Rose, the best 
 imitation of his best manner by his best imi- 
 tator Amedde Achard. There were wondrous 
 works of Feydeau, who was then just arriving at 
 the stage when Sainte-Beuve found it necessary 
 to hide his portrait from general inspection, and a 
 great many others the authors of which, if not the 
 individual examples, were already familiar to me. 
 But among these was L'Ecueil, of whose writer at 
 that time I knew nothing but the name. One 
 could hardly help the exclamation, "Voici enfin 
 de la bonne com^die" under such circumstances. 
 Charles de Bernard has, as it seems to me, no 
 tragic power, anci wherever he attempts tragedy 
 he comes manifestly short of himself. But in 
 comedy proper, in the unfolding of intrigue and 
 the portraiture of manners, he has hardly a superior 
 except in the greatest masters. His excellence of 
 execution is only passed by his extraordinary 
 facility of invention. I do not know that he is 
 a novelist who insists upon being very frequently 
 re-read. He is too slight for that, and his speedy 
 workmanship throws no grapnel on the memory. 
 But the very shallowness of the impression which 
 he makes in a manner compensates for this. One 
 forgets the substance of his stories, and only re- 
 members that they were extremely pleasant, so 
 
196 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 that after a few years they can be read almost 
 as if they had never been read before. 
 Their amusingness is, like the beauty j^^g^^^^^^^ 
 of Mr. Browning's heroine, their sole 
 duty, and they certainly do it. They have, 
 perhaps, scarcely humour in the proper sense 
 of the word. But in wit and urbanity, and 
 in the peculiar charm that wit and urbanity give, 
 they are of the best French type, — of a type 
 which has been growing rarer and rarer ever since 
 their day. To any higher place than a place in 
 the literature of amusement they have no claim ; 
 but in that literature their place is very high, and 
 from many testimonies it would seem that those 
 whom they most amuse are those who are best 
 worth amusing. 
 
VI 
 ALEXANDRE DUMAS ^ 
 
 I HAVE heard that aggrieved authors, when they 
 remonstrate with their critics, are wont 
 ^^DUMAs"^^ to lay great stress on the curiously 
 dissonant utterances of the latter. " I 
 am desirous," a person of a modest and docile 
 temper will say, " to improve myself by attending 
 to the dictates of my reviewers ; but how am I to 
 do so when I find A blaming me for exactly the 
 same thing which B commends ? " It is even 
 on record that one author, inspired with a some- 
 what Gallic malignity, prefixed to his second work 
 an anthology of contradictory judgments on his 
 first, as a testimony against the injustice of critics 
 convinced out of their own mouth. I am not 
 
 ^ Since this essay was written a strong reaction, of which I may 
 say without too great fatuity pars minima fui, has taken place in 
 Dumas's favour. Mr. Lang, Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Walter Pollock 
 have done him reason and justice : and the place of the very article 
 which I notice below has been taken in a new edition by a very able 
 and appreciative notice from the pen of Mr. W. E. Henley. Yet 
 something like the old burden of misapprehension and misrepresenta- 
 tion has reappeared so lately as in the Quarterly Review of the 
 year 1890. 
 
198 Essays on 
 
 concerned here to discuss the causes of this pheno- 
 menon. But there are probably few 
 authors who might assemble in this i,umas. 
 way a body of more hopelessly irre- 
 concilable judgments than the author of Les Trots 
 Mousquetaires. Thackeray, for instance, who may 
 be admitted to have spoken with some authority, 
 is never weary of praising him. The Roundabout 
 Papers are full of complimentary expressions to 
 Dumas, and On a Peal of Bells contains a formal 
 panegyric and apology devoted to the creator of 
 Chicot and Dantes, D'Artagnan and Coconnas. I 
 think, too, that it will be found that most men of 
 letters of eminence who mention Dumas at all, 
 mention him with a kind of affection and gratitude 
 not dissimilar to Thackeray's. On the other hand, 
 the general judgment is less complimentary. 
 Most of us can remember that in our younger 
 days he was joined with Eugene Sue — ^very much 
 as if a man should join Scott and the author of 
 the Mysteries of London — in a mysterious bond 
 of moral condemnation. Afterwards it became 
 fashionable to affect literary contempt for the author 
 who, next to Victor Hugo, did most to stimu- 
 late, if not to exemplify, the great literary revival 
 in France. It is almost a commonplace to speak 
 of him as a scene-painter; nor can we greatly 
 wonder at this, when we remember that no less 
 considerable a man than Peacock compared the 
 author of Waverley to a pantomime -writer, and 
 even affected to consider the pantomime -writer 
 
French Novelists 199 
 
 the more remarkable genius of the two. I turn 
 from Peacock to a popular, and de- 
 
 ALEXANDRE ji , ^ . ^ ^ 
 
 uuMAs. servedly popular, book of reference, 
 and I find under the title of Dumas 
 that " his crisp hair and thick lips bear testimony 
 to his African origin, a testimony confirmed by 
 the savage voluptuousness and barbaric taste of 
 his innumerable compositions." Before I have done 
 questioning the relevance and civilised taste of this 
 ethnological remark, I find that Dumas's works "are 
 for the most part worthless, and for the most part 
 not his," that his appearance in literature is "a 
 portentous phenomenon," and that "the avidity 
 with which his immoral fictions are devoured is 
 the most severe condemnation of modern and 
 especially French society that could well be pro- 
 nounced." It must surely be worth while to 
 examine the peculiarities of a writer whom one of 
 the greatest of English men of letters is never tired 
 of praising, and who appears to other persons a 
 phenomenon only to be duly qualified by the 
 terms portentous, immoral, and the like. 
 
 In the first place, it may be well to get out of 
 the way the charge of issuing other men's works 
 as his own, which is so constantly made, and which 
 seems to prejudice Dumas so much in some 
 English eyes. There is, of course, no doubt what- 
 ever that a large part of the enormous total of his 
 so-called works is not his. The industry — doubt- 
 less altogether benevolent and public-spirited — of 
 MM. Karr, Qu^rard, and the person who called 
 
200 Essays on 
 
 himself Eugene de Mirecourt, have put that 
 matter beyond question. Nor is it 
 worth discussing the exact morality of ^^^^^'^g^^^ 
 such a proceeding. If not unknown in 
 England, it is not openly practised here, and is 
 certainly not considered creditable. I think, for 
 my part, that we are quite right in refusing it 
 our approval. But it must be remembered that in 
 France collaboration is much more common than 
 here, and that collaboration glides into devilling 
 by very easy stages. However, I am not at all 
 careful to excuse Dumas in this matter. Much of 
 his later work and some of his earlier is obviously 
 not his to the most unpractised literary taster, and 
 all such work has simply done his reputation 
 harm instead of good. I do not suppose that 
 anybody bases his admiration on Le Pasteur 
 d'Ashbourn, which is said to be in some round- 
 about way plagiarised from the German, or on 
 Madame de Chamblay, which has the air of being, 
 and may not impossibly be, an unsuccessful 
 attempt of M. Octave Feuillet or some disciple of 
 his, or on Les Louves de Machecoul, where the 
 episode of Ewan of Brigglands is calmly trans- 
 lated verbatim from Rob Roy. But the assailants 
 of Dumas have gone further. They declare that 
 even his most famous works, the D'Artagnan 
 series and the like, are the work of devils. They 
 go further still, and give us the names of the 
 devils themselves. 
 
 But this proceeding has given occasion to an 
 
French Novelists 201 
 
 answer which has never been fairly rebutted. 
 Many if not the most of these inferior 
 
 ALEXANDRE • • 
 
 DUMAS, spirits have done work independently, 
 and that work has been absolutely 
 different in character, if not in merit, from Les 
 Trois Mousquetaires and La Reine Margot. 
 Chief among the earlier aides -de - camp is 
 ranked the late M. Auguste Maquet, who is 
 even said, if I mistake not, to have written 
 the Three Musketeers. No devotee of 1830, 
 as I frankly profess myself to be, can think 
 of speaking disrespectfully of M. Maquet. His 
 delightful pseudonym, Augustus MacKeat, adopted 
 to show his horror of classicism and his admira- 
 tion for English literature, must conciliate every 
 Englishman. With Philothde O'Neddy and that 
 tompagnon miraculeux Jules Vabre, whose fame as 
 an author rests on the unpublished Essai sur 
 V Incommodit^ des Commodes, and whom Thdophile 
 Gautier last saw in England intent upon translat- 
 ing Shakespeare on the spot, M. Maquet composes 
 the fine flower and unforgettable trinity of the 
 second early romantics. But I am not aware that 
 any one has claimed for M. Maquet's original 
 work, which is tolerably voluminous, any share of 
 the merits of the books which he is said to have 
 devilled, though his theatrical powers were well 
 spoken of Again, M. Octave Feuillet was one of 
 the " young men." Does any reader of Bellah or 
 Onesta see, in either of those works, possibilities 
 of the scene under the scaffold in VingtAns Apres, 
 
202 Essays on 
 
 or the transports of Marguerite and the Duchesse 
 de Nevers over the heads of Cocon- 
 nas and La Mole? M. Fiorentino '''■^^';^s_''^ 
 is another name cited. Do his feuil- 
 letons, good as they were, suggest many memo- 
 ries to the reader of Dumas ? We might go 
 through all these writers with the same result. 
 Either their genius failed them utterly when they 
 began to sign their own names, or it completely 
 changed its character, or else Dumas must have 
 had some mysterious power of animating and 
 inspiring his subordinates, which is to me quite as 
 remarkable and quite as interesting as the power 
 of actual composition. 
 
 The excellent historian of French literature, M. 
 Gdruzez, has a remark which I have always felt 
 inclined to quote to all separatists, critics of 
 internal evidence, and such like folk. " La critique 
 erudite," says M. G^ruzez, " se propose d'enlever a 
 Chrdtien de Troyes le Perceval. Nous verrons bien. 
 S'il doit etre d6poss6d6, nous aurons k louer un 
 autre po^te qui sera de son dcole et son ^gal." This 
 is very much the case with Dumas. No one who 
 has any literary palate can fail to perceive in the 
 best of the works attributed to him a unity and a 
 peculiarity of savour which cannot be mistaken. 
 This savour has not been shown to be the property 
 of any other man, though perhaps it is not his. 
 If it be not, there is another unnamed novelist who 
 possesses the charm. For the present we shall 
 call this novelist by the only name known, that of 
 
French Novelists 203 
 
 Alexandre Dumas, and busy ourselves with his 
 characteristics only. Whether he be 
 DUMAS, identical or not with the person who 
 in the flesh made forty thousand 
 pounds in a single year, who followed Gari- 
 baldi about, and whose physical peculiarities 
 so distressed the sensitive encyclopaedist I have 
 quoted, is a question that concerns a school of 
 criticism to which I do not pretend to belong. 
 
 The principles and characteristics of Dumas's 
 faire are not very difficult to discover, though they 
 are by no means so simple and inartistic as it suits 
 the upholders of the scene -painting theory to 
 maintain. In his better work he prefers, though 
 he does not invariably choose, a tolerably stout 
 canvas of history, memoirs, and the like. Without 
 such writers as I'Estoile, Tallemant des R6aux, 
 Brantdme, Madame de Motteville, he would, it 
 may freely be acknowledged, be very badly off: 
 perhaps he would not be very well off without the 
 help of more modern commentators and servers-up 
 of such books. Sometimes (it must also be ad- 
 mitted) the canvas shows through, and then the 
 book, as in the case of parts of Isabeau de Bavihe, 
 is a failure. But generally the borrowed material 
 is so skilfully worked up and covered over, that it 
 is legitimately made the borrower's own property. 
 In doing this he uses, of course, the four instruments 
 which every novelist must use — plot, character, 
 description, and dialogue. But there is no com- 
 parison between the proportions in which he 
 
204 Essays on 
 
 employs these instruments and the success which 
 attends their employment. For a 
 
 ,. , , . J- 1 r • ALEXANDRE 
 
 novelist who is so prodigal oi m- duj,as. 
 cident, Dumas is remarkably indiffer- 
 ent to a regular or cunningly entangled plot. 
 In many of his works, indeed, there is really no 
 particular reason why they should begin or end 
 at the precise points of their beginning and ending. 
 They are emphatically chronicles, slices from the 
 history of the world or of certain individuals, the 
 dimensions of which are determined merely by the 
 arbitrary will of the carver. This is why they 
 lend themselves so admirably to continuations, and 
 why Dumas is one of the very few writers whose 
 second parts do not disappoint us. It is true that 
 in many of his books there is a central incident 
 of some sort, but its development often bears no 
 proportion to the extraneous matter introduced. 
 What, for instance, is the central interest of Les 
 Trots Mousquetaires ? The quest for the diamonds ? 
 It finishes too soon. The wrath and discomfiture 
 of Milady ? It does not begin till too late. What 
 is the central interest of Vingt Ans Apres ? The 
 attempt to rescue Charles I. perhaps, but yet this 
 occupies but a very small part of the book. In 
 Le Vicomte de Bragelonne there are two distinct 
 themes — the restoration of Charles II and the 
 winning of Belleisle for Louis XIV — and the two 
 might well have made two separate books. La 
 Dame de Monsoreau has indeed an unusually 
 regular plot ; but its sequel, Les Quarante-dnq, 
 
French Novelists 205 
 
 though it contains some of the very best scenes 
 of the master, is one of the most 
 
 ALEXANDRE . r i. i i , i t-- . 
 
 DUMAS, promiscuous of books, and the Forty- 
 five themselves play a very subordinate 
 part as compared with the ruses and adven- 
 tures of Chicot, and the requital of the Duke of 
 Anjou. The authorities at the disposal of the 
 author, or his own fertile imagination, usually 
 supply him with an inexhaustible store of moving 
 incidents, and these he connects together as well 
 as may be by the expedient of making the same 
 personages figure in all or most of them. Nor is 
 he any more to be called a novelist of description 
 than a novelist of plot. Indeed he is less abundant 
 and less successful in this respect than almost any 
 other writer of great volume. Little bits of 
 description of houses, dresses, and so forth are 
 frequent enough, and the authorities are sometimes 
 drawn upon largely for a festival or a battle. But 
 Dumas seems to have felt that his readers did 
 not want elaborate set-pieces from him, but plenty 
 of " business " and lively speech. His characters, 
 however, are a much more curious study. Those 
 who call his general method scene -painting, of 
 course, call his characters lay-figures. The appella- 
 tion does not do their observation much credit. 
 Dumas is nothing so little as an analyst, and he 
 does not attempt to give us complicated or intri- 
 cate studies of character, yet his men and women 
 are curiously adapted to their purpose and curiously 
 lifelike of their kind. They are naturally types 
 
2o6 Essays on 
 
 rather than individuals, and types of a some- 
 what loose and vague order, but still 
 there is an amount of individuality * ^umas^^ 
 about them which is very rarely found 
 in novels of incident. No one will deny that 
 the three, or rather four, musketeers are sus- 
 tained in their contrast of dispositions throughout 
 the score or so of volumes they occupy, with a 
 good deal of skill. Nor are the repetitions of the 
 types in different books merely modelled the one on 
 the other. Chicot and D'Artagnan have remark- 
 able points of contact, yet they are not mere 
 duplicates. Ernauton de Carmainges is a clever 
 variation of La Mole, rather than a mere reproduc- 
 tion of the character. 
 
 But it is in his dialogue that Dumas's real 
 secret consists, and it is this which is the rosin 
 that none of his imitators have ever succeeded in 
 stealing, however confident they may be that they 
 have got the fiddle. Its extraordinary volume 
 would be the most remarkable point about it, if 
 its goodness, considering its volume, were not 
 equally remarkable. The rapidity of it necessarily 
 deprives it of much literary grace, and prevents 
 it from supplying any jewels five words long. 
 Indeed Dumas, to recur once more to Peacock's 
 cavillings at Scott, is one of the least quotable of 
 writers. But still, if not quotable, his dialogue is 
 extraordinarily readable, and carries the reader 
 along with it in a manner hardly to be paralleled 
 elsewhere. Dumas possesses fully the secret of 
 
French Novelists 207 
 
 making dialogue express action, and this is 
 where he is supreme. His gift, how- 
 
 ALEXANDRE • l\.- ^ • c ^i i • i 
 
 DUMAS, sver, in this respect is of the kind 
 which is almost necessarily a snare. 
 He abuses his dialogic facility constantly, and the 
 result is the exorbitant length of some of his 
 books. It is absolutely impossible for him to be 
 concise. He will make a single interview extend 
 over half a dozen chapters, and give a volume to 
 the talk of twenty-four hours. Nowhere is this 
 more apparent than in the Vicomte de Bragelonne. 
 That vast book contains, if not his very best, two of 
 his best, pieces of work — the kidnapping, namely, 
 of Monk, and the death of Porthos in the Grotto 
 of Locmaria. But the longueurs of its middle, of 
 the endless court conversations, and the conspiracies 
 that come to nothing, are almost incredible. It is 
 undeniable, again, that his situations have a tend- 
 ency to repeat themselves, though, as in the case 
 of his characters, the repetition is often very skil- 
 fully masked and coloured. Yet on the whole 
 he succeeds not merely in riveting the attention 
 of the reader, but also in securing his affection 
 for and interest in his characters. No one has 
 ever managed the process called "working up" 
 better than he has. In such scenes as that where 
 the four princes wait at Marguerite's door, 
 ready to assassinate La Mole, that where the 
 powder is found in the wine -casks, that where 
 D'Artagnan extracts the Queen and Mazarin from 
 the clutches of the Parisians, and scores of others, 
 
2o8 Essays on 
 
 it is impossible to avert the attention when 
 
 once fairly engaged, and impossible 
 
 to avoid identifying oneself with the '"''^^^'^"^'^ 
 
 characters. That is the triumph of this 
 
 sort of novel-writing. 
 
 It may be noticed that I have hitherto taken 
 my illustrations chiefly from the D'Artagnan series, 
 and from that which contains La Reine Margot, 
 La Dame de Monsoreau, and Les Quarante-cinq. 
 I have done so because these six novels seem to 
 me to be on the whole not merely the author's 
 best, but also the most characteristic of his genius. 
 The period which they cover seems to have had a 
 special faculty of inspiring him, or, perhaps, we 
 may say that it was the only one with which he 
 was sufficiently familiar to be able to employ his 
 method with successful effect. In those of his 
 historical novels which are earlier in date, the 
 elements are less happily blended. I have spoken 
 of Isabeau de Baviere. Something similar may, 
 perhaps, be said of the Bdtard de MauUon. It is 
 interesting, the story is well told, and there is 
 certainly no lack of exciting incident. The scene 
 indeed of Duguesclin's negotiation with Sir Hugh 
 Calverley and the Free Companions, the battle of 
 Najara, and other passages, are excellent. But 
 the life is not in the characters in the same way 
 as it is in Aramis and Porthos. One feels that 
 the author is not so sure of his surroundings, and 
 is chary of the little touches that make scenes and 
 characters live. Nor do the novels whose scene is 
 
French Novelists 209 
 
 in more modern times please me much better. 
 Almost all those of purely modern 
 
 ALEXANDRE . . , . i^ ii 
 
 DUMAS, society may be swept away altogether. 
 Dumas had not the least power of 
 dealing with contemporary subjects in any of the 
 ways in which it is now possible to deal with 
 them. His Maitre d'Armes again, and other 
 such things, seem to me very poor stuff. 
 They sink mostly to the level of mere recitals, 
 interesting simply from the actual facts they 
 contain. Nor, yet again, has he been happier 
 than other novelists in treating the great revolu- 
 tion. Of the Collier de la Reine I shall speak 
 presently. But the Chevalier de Maisonrouge 
 adds, to my mind, only one more to the long list 
 of failures which might be made up of French 
 novels having '89 and its sequel for their subjects. 
 It would be rather interesting to discuss the causes 
 of this failure, if they were not somewhat irrele- 
 vant to my present purpose. At present I need 
 only repeat that the Chevalier de Maisonrouge is 
 a failure. The best character in it, Lorin, the 
 devotee of Parny, is not bad, but he is not of a 
 kind that Dumas can really manage well. 
 
 There are, however, two novels besides the 
 Collier de la Reine and Monte Cristo, which lie 
 outside the limits I have drawn, and which are 
 usually ranked among the author's masterpieces. 
 These are La Tulipe Noire and the Chevalier 
 d' Harmental. With respect to La Tulipe Noire, 
 I am inclined to think that, charming as it is 
 
 P 
 
2IO Essays on 
 
 in parts, it has been overpraised. Its com- 
 plete adaptation to the needs of Mr. 
 
 \^ , , J. ALEXANDRE 
 
 Podsnaps young person appears to uumas. 
 have bribed all its critics. But it has 
 the serious literary fault of being out of scale. 
 The tulip -fancying and the loves of the ex- 
 cellent Cornelius van Baerle make a perfect 
 subject for a really short tale of a hundred pages 
 or so. But Dumas's unfortunate prolixity is here 
 especially unfortunate. The tale is choked up 
 with irrelevant matter, and spun out to an un- 
 conscionable length. But it is none the less 
 charming, perhaps, if one consents to lay aside 
 rule and compass, and it certainly squares but 
 ill with the theory of the " barbaric and voluptu- 
 ous " tastes of its author ; while, on the other hand, 
 the identity of touch between it and some of his 
 most apparently dissimilar work is too remarkable 
 to escape any competent critic. The contrast 
 between the detestable part assigned to William 
 the Dutchman at the beginning and his beneficence 
 at the end, for instance, recalls most curiously 
 the picture of Colbert, drawn in the Vicomte de 
 Bragelonne. Le Chevalier d' Har mental is a very 
 different book. This, too, has the striking similari- 
 ties to other parts of the author's work to which I 
 have already alluded. The scene between the 
 Duchesse du Maine and her poets reminds one at 
 once of that between the poetical adherents of 
 Fouquet and their master. The rather unneces- 
 sary descriptions of Madame Denis's domestic 
 
French Novelists 211 
 
 interior are in the style exactly of the details of 
 the Broussel family and servants in 
 DUMAS. Vingt Ans Aprh. Besides being thus 
 closely connected with the other books, 
 which, as I have said, must necessarily be 
 attributed to a single influence, Le Chevalier 
 d' Harmental contains detached passages of very 
 striking merits. Le Capitaine Roquefinette, the 
 last of the descendants of Dugald Dalgetty, is a 
 great creation, though Dumas has been extremely 
 hard on him. There is no reason whatever 
 why the uninteresting chevalier should have been 
 allowed to obtain such a victory, excepting the 
 necessity, which Alexander the Great generally 
 recognises, of making the end of his books 
 melancholy. The caligraphist, Buvat, is another 
 triumph ; and his incarceration in the gilded 
 captivity of the Palais Royal is most charmingly 
 told. The Regent Philippe, again, is excellent ; 
 and the way in which Richelieu, Saint Simon, and 
 other historical characters are made to play their 
 part, is most artful. Lastly, it must be remembered, 
 in favour of the Chevalier d' Harmental, that it is 
 one of the very few books of its author that has 
 a regular plot. The Cellamare conspiracy gives 
 just enough framework for the book, and not too 
 much, and the episodes and digressions are scarcely 
 disproportionate in their extent. After allowing 
 all these merits, which can certainly not be al- 
 lowed in like measure to many others of Dumas's 
 books, it might seem only reasonable to call it his 
 
212 Essays on 
 
 masterpiece. Yet there is about it something want- 
 ing which is present elsewhere. The 
 dialogue is not of the best, and the lack ^^^umas.^^ 
 of interest which one feels in the hero 
 is a serious drawback. For once Dumas has 
 let himself follow Scott in the mistake of mak- 
 ing his hero too generally faultless and lucky, 
 and this is the cause, I think, of failure, if failure 
 there be, in the Chevalier d' Harmental. 
 
 The Collier de la Reine, perhaps, demands a 
 more special mention than the run of Dumas's 
 less eminent works. With Le Chevalier d'Har- 
 mental, Josef h Balsamo, Le Chevalier de Maison- 
 rouge, and so forth, it forms a series corresponding 
 in some measure with the earlier and more suc- 
 cessful cycles, and continuing them until the end 
 of the last century. With Joseph Balsamo — 
 Mdmoires d'un Midecin — it composes, moreover, 
 a sub -series treating of Cagliostro, a character 
 naturally attractive to Dumas as combining the 
 peculiarities of the successful adventurer with the 
 suspicion of charlatanism, which, it is to be feared, 
 was not a very great drawback in the eyes of the 
 creator of Edmond Dant^s. Le Collier de la Reine 
 is one of Dumas's most popular works, but it 
 seems to me to be very far from being one of his 
 best. There is no single character in it of any 
 particular excellence, and the endless scenes of 
 intrigue between Jeanne de la Motte and the 
 Cardinal de Rohan, between Oliva and Cagliostro, 
 between the Queen and half a dozen different 
 
French Novelists 213 
 
 personages, are altogether wearisome. The author 
 has not succeeded in interesting us 
 DUMAS, sufficiently to make his volume toler- 
 able, and it is not tolerable in itself 
 in virtue of any skill in handling the subject. 
 This subject, moreover, is felt to be too much for 
 Dumas. The stupendous interest of the French 
 Revolution wants quite a different chronicler, 
 and quite other modes of treatment. The par- 
 ticular episode, too, of the diamond necklace is 
 one of those which have, in virtue of their special 
 interest and strangeness, passed out of the class 
 of subjects which can be successfully treated by 
 fiction. All those who have studied the philosophy 
 of novel -writing at all closely know that great 
 historical events are bad subjects, or are only good 
 subjects on one condition — a condition the steady 
 observance of which constitutes one of the great 
 merits of Sir Walter Scott. The central interest 
 in all such cases must be connected with a wholly 
 fictitious personage, or one of whom sufficiently 
 little is known to give the romancer free play. 
 When this condition is complied with, the actual 
 historical events may be, and constantly have 
 been, used with effect as aids in developing the 
 story and working out the fortunes of the characters. 
 Dumas himself has observed this law in his more 
 successful efforts ; he has not observed it here. 
 If Scott, instead of writing the Abbot and making 
 Catherine Seyton the heroine, had taken the court 
 of Holyrood before the death of Darnley as his 
 
214 Essays on 
 
 subject, and had made Mary his central figure, 
 
 he would almost assuredly have failed. 
 
 The character of Cagliostro as here *^dumas.^^ 
 
 given, moreover, is one which no writer 
 
 could manage. He is at once too supernatural 
 
 and not supernatural enough. 
 
 If, however, there is one book of Dumas's which 
 deserves especial attention, both because of its 
 immense popularity and because of the clearness 
 with which it exhibits the limits of its author's 
 powers, that book is the Comte de Monte Crista. 
 Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first 
 appearance, and for some time subsequently, the 
 most popular book in Europe. Perhaps no novel 
 within a given number of years had so many 
 readers and penetrated into so many different 
 countries. I do not know how far this popularity 
 has been maintained, but it still remains the book 
 with which, with the possible exception of the 
 Three Musketeers, more people connect the name 
 of Dumas than with any other of his works. How 
 far does it deserve this popularity ? The answer 
 of most critical persons would probably be, with- 
 out any intention of flippancy. As far as the 
 end of the first volume. The Chjlteau d'lf, as 
 this section has sometimes been called, is almost 
 faultless, and few persons can have found anything 
 to object to in it except the rather dubious omni- 
 science of the Abbd Faria. The style and char- 
 acter of the book, moreover, are so far all the 
 author's own, and deal only with subjects which 
 
French Novelists 215 
 
 he can well manage. From the time, however, 
 that Dantes has discovered the treasure, 
 DUMAS. ^^ '■^^^^ '^ altered. The succeeding 
 scenes give indeed an opportunity of 
 portraying what Dumas has always endeavoured 
 and loved to portray, the rise of an adventurer 
 to supreme power and importance. Nor is 
 there any taint of the supernatural, as in the 
 case of Cagliostro. But, on the other hand, 
 the scenes described and the characters attempted 
 are scenes and characters in which the author 
 is not himself at home, and which constantly 
 recall to us scenes and characters in the work of 
 other men who can manage them. Take, to 
 begin with, Monte Cristo himself. Whether it is 
 altogether fair for the generation which has come 
 after him, and which he himself has helped to 
 render blas^ with persons of extraordinary attri- 
 butes, to criticise him severely, may be answered 
 in the negative by a fervent Alexandrian. But it 
 cannot be denied that at the present day Edmond 
 Dantfes in his parts of Lord Wilmore, or the Abb6 
 Busoni, or the Count, appears to some of us, who 
 are fervent Alexandrians ourselves, a very tiresome 
 and rather ludicrous player at providence. His 
 use of his money seems ostentatious, and some- 
 times, as in the case of the horses bought from 
 Danglars, intolerably vulgar. His mania for 
 theatrical peripetias — which might have resulted 
 in the death both of Morrel and his son — is 
 equally to be objected to, and the skimble-skamble 
 
2i6 Essays on 
 
 stuff which so impresses his Parisian friends (for 
 instance, in his first interview with 
 Villefort) is pitiable enough. In few '^'''eumas.'^^ 
 of the author's books, moreover, is 
 the abuse of over - length greater, and the 
 complicated series of intrigues, though managed 
 with considerable skill, wearies the reader more 
 than it interests him. But the involuntary com- 
 parisons that one makes in reading the book are 
 the most unfortunate. No one, for instance, who 
 knows Gautier's literary dealings with haschish 
 can avoid a sigh over the pages in which Franz 
 d'Epinay's very commonplace experiences of the 
 drug are described. I am not myself among 
 those who consider Henri de Marsay, Bixiou, 
 Blondel, and the rest as absolutely perfect creations 
 beyond whom the wit of man cannot go ; but 
 Chateaurenaud, Debray, the journalist Beauchamp, 
 and others of Morcerfs set, certainly remind one 
 but unpleasantly of Balzac's favourite cliques. 
 The viscount himself would have been more 
 acceptable if he had not in his excessive hospitality 
 displayed " all the tobaccoes of the known world " 
 when he was expecting his visitors. Another 
 point in which Dumas here fails is his description. 
 This is, as I already said, probably his weakest 
 point, and it is particularly noticeable in a book 
 where description, one would have thought, was 
 particularly in place. But the prevailing want 
 all through is the want of a sufficient grasp 
 of character to make scenes so familiar and 
 
French Novelists 217 
 
 modern as those of Parisian life in the middle of 
 the present century tolerable. The 
 
 DUMAS. 
 
 ^ plan is the plan of Balzac, the hand 
 
 is the hand of Dumas, and it is 
 impossible that the inefficiency of the workman- 
 ship should not be felt. There is no attempt 
 at an impression of growing horror culminat- 
 ing in the terrible death of Madame de Villefort 
 and her child. The interest is frittered away in 
 endless details and episodes. The narrow escape 
 of Valentine, and the burglarious attempt of 
 Caderousse, are treated at the same length and 
 on the same scale ; and, above all, the dangerous 
 method of introducing long recitals by various 
 characters in order to help on the movement and 
 join the intrigue is unscrupulously resorted to. 
 The first impulse of the reader is to wish that the 
 five last volumes had been condensed to at most 
 two ; it is to be feared that his last is to regret 
 that they were ever written at all.^ 
 
 There are not many writers who lend them- 
 selves less to analysis of their individual works or 
 to extracts from them than the author of Monte 
 Crista. The episode of the bastion Saint-Gervais 
 
 1 Here followed in the Fortnightly Review a long illustrative 
 extract from Les Quarante-Cinq, which was necessitated by the 
 original plan. But translations of Dumas are easily accessible, and 
 though he is not hard to render, it is almost impossible to make 
 extracts of moderate length which will do him justice. I once, 
 after a discussion on the subject with two fervent devotees, came to 
 the conclusion that about twenty pages is the minimum. I have 
 therefore omitted the passage. 
 
2 1 8 Essays on 
 
 in the Trois Mousquetaires, unquestionably his 
 masterpiece in its kind, would occupy- 
 considerably more space than the whole dumas. 
 of this essay. Analysis even of the 
 concisest character of all the works published 
 under his name would take a huge volume, 
 and would assuredly not be worth the doing, 
 still less worth the reading, when it was 
 done. It has sometimes been remarked that 
 most of the later literature of France, despite the 
 innovations and the neglect of the Renaissance 
 and the seventeenth century, recalls some part or 
 other of the abundant and long undiscovered 
 wealth of its mediaeval libraries. There can be 
 little hesitation in any one who knows early 
 French literature with what part of it to identify 
 the novels of our author. He is the descendant 
 of the later trouveres who in the fourteenth 
 century busied themselves with filling up the gaps 
 in the connection of the chansons de geste, and 
 spinning out the already sufficient length of those 
 epics into interminable romans cPaventures. These 
 authors of thirty and fifty thousand line poems 
 rivalled Dumas in their longwindedness, in their 
 skilful working up and repetition of a certain 
 limited number of motives and incidents ; while 
 as industrious completers of the gestes, and as 
 rigid genealogists who discovered that there was a 
 gap between this hero and his grandfather, and 
 that that hero's great-uncle had been wrongfully 
 deprived of his due celebration, they represent the 
 
French Novelists 219 
 
 spirit which led Dumas to carry D'Artagnan 
 and Chicot and Richelieu through 
 
 ALEXANDRE j , _ , -^ 
 
 DUMAS, dozens and scores of volumes. One 
 could rename his novels in mediaeval 
 style with ease. Les Trots Mousquetaires is La 
 Chevalerie Artagnan, Vingt Ans Aprh is Les 
 Enfances Raoul, and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne 
 might be either Le Couronnement Charlon, or, 
 substituting thirteenth-Century for seventeenth - 
 century notions, perhaps Le Montage Athos. Only 
 Dumas has the advantage over the forgotten verse- 
 writers, his predecessors, that he set, or helped to 
 set, the example of a style instead of taking it up 
 when it had been already worked to death, and 
 the merit of knowing how to infuse into almost 
 all his work sparks of life and touches of nature. 
 
 Whether the parallel will be completed by the 
 utter neglect of his work after a short time we 
 must wait to see. That much of it will go the 
 way of all but the best fictitious literature, cannot 
 for a moment be doubted. Whether any will 
 survive is a question less easy to answer. The 
 danger to which writers like Dumas are exposed, 
 as a rule, is that there is not enough idiosyncrasy 
 in their work to keep it fresh in men's memory. 
 Every age, or almost every age, produces for itself 
 specimens of the "talented improvisatore " who 
 has energy enough to produce enormously, and 
 originality enough to launch his work in popular 
 favour. Every age too naturally prefers its own 
 practitioners in this manner, because they can hit. 
 
2 20 Essays on 
 
 its own tastes, and because the ephemeral adorn- 
 ments and fashion of their work are 
 
 , ., 1 i J J ■ ALEXANDRE 
 
 such as it understands and appreci- ^umas. 
 ates. The next age has no such in- 
 ducements to read work of little permanent 
 literary value. That Dumas is one of the 
 princes of all such improvising writers I have 
 no doubt whatever, and that he possesses the 
 element of something far better than improvisa- 
 tion must I think be evident to careful readers 
 of him. 
 
 In order to estimate his deficiencies and at the 
 same time the merits which accompany them, I 
 do not know a more curious exercise than the 
 comparison of one of these books, say La Reine 
 Margot or the Mousquetaires, with Gautier's 
 Capitaine Fracasse. They are in intention exactly 
 similar. But Gautier had one thing which Dumas 
 had not, an incomparable literary faculty ; and 
 Dumas had what Gautier had not, the knowledge 
 how to engineer a novel. The consequence is 
 that, while Le Capitaine Fracasse is a magnificent 
 piece of writing, it is only a second-rate story, and 
 that La Reine Margot, though offering no special 
 quotations or passages to the memory, is a book 
 which it is impossible to put down till you have 
 finished it. Such things as the Ch&teau de la 
 Mis^re, as the description of the swordsman's 
 garret and his tavern haunt, and above all as the 
 wonderful duel between Lampourde and Sigognac, 
 Dumas was utterly incapable of writing. He 
 
French Novelists 221 
 
 never wrote positively badly, but his writing 
 never attracts admiration for itself. 
 ^ DUMAs.^^ ^* ^^ °°* negligent, but on the other 
 hand it is not careful. The first word 
 that comes into his head is used. Probably 
 it is not a bad word, and serves very well to 
 convey the impression intended. But of art, of 
 careful choice, of laborious adaptation of words 
 and phrases and paragraphs, there is none. It is 
 even capable of being argued whether, consistently 
 with his peculiar plan and object, there could have 
 been or ought to have been any. The presence 
 in a novel of incident of passages of the highest 
 literary value may be plausibly contended to be a 
 mistake, as well as an unnecessary extravagance. 
 When the palate is tempted to linger over in- 
 dividual pages, to savour them slowly, and to 
 dwell on the flavour, the continuity of interest of 
 the story proper runs a danger of being broken. 
 On the other hand, if the interest be strong 
 enough to induce rapid reading, it is impossible 
 to do justice to the vintage that is set before one. 
 It is not, therefore, either by accident or from 
 incapacity that the great masters of style in 
 fictitious writing, like Merimde and Gautier, have 
 usually preferred to write short stories. It is 
 rather from a sense of incongruity. A story that 
 takes at shortest half an hour to read may, without 
 wearying the appetite for it as a story, have a 
 couple of hours spent upon it. But supposing 
 that the time necessary to read Les Trois 
 
222 Essays on 
 
 Mousquetaires is half a day, no one -who has 
 this appetite at all will consent to 
 
 , ,, 1 -i TVT • ALEXANDRE 
 
 Spend three days over it. Nor again ^umas. 
 in such a. story is it possible, as it 
 is with one of a different kind, to read first 
 for the story and afterwards for the style. A 
 novel of incident that allows itself to be treated 
 in this way is a bad novel of incident, and if it be 
 good it must be read just as rapidly the seventh 
 time as it is the first. 
 
 There are two classes of persons to whom I 
 cannot hope that my estimate of the novelist who 
 has had most readers during the last half-century 
 of any writer in Europe will be satisfactory. The 
 first is made up of those whose critical method 
 consists in invariably requiring of one class of 
 writer the notes of another ; in demanding that a 
 poet shall choose his subjects on the principles of 
 a preacher ; that a novelist's works shall be 
 suitable for delivery in the schools ; that a 
 historian shall chime in with their tastes and 
 sympathies ; that, in his estimate of facts, a man 
 devoted to one science shall say nothing which 
 disagrees with the prevalent ideas among the 
 followers of another. For my part I prefer to 
 judge a poet as a poet, a novelist according to the 
 requirements of novel-composition, a theologian as 
 a theologian, arid a man of science according to 
 the laws of his own pursuit There is, however, 
 a second way of judging, which is almost equally 
 if not so glaringly unreasonable, and there are 
 
French Novelists 223 
 
 more practitioners of it in novel -criticism than 
 in any other division of critical practice. 
 
 ALEXANDRE t>i ^, , , .. , 
 
 DUMAS. Ahese are the people who, as it has 
 been said, "find fault with Onestar 
 because he is not brilliant like Twostars, pathetic 
 like Threestars, philosophical like Fourstars ; " 
 who concentrate their attention upon what he 
 has not said and done rather than on what he 
 has ; and who forget that in no class of com- 
 position is the field so wide, in none are the 
 crops to be cultivated so various, and in none is 
 partial excellence more to be looked to, and 
 universal success less to be required. Such 
 people ask Gautier for a series of moral tales, 
 Flaubert for a harmony in rose-pink and sky-blue, 
 Sandeau for a sensational novel, Charles de Bernard 
 for a study in Parisian back slums, Murger for 
 silver fork details and accurate acquaintance with 
 the ways of high life. Each of these writers has 
 some special subject or style in which he is re- 
 markable, and this is what, as it seems to me, the 
 critic has chiefly to look to. In the same way 
 Dumas has the faculty, as no other novelist has, 
 of presenting rapid and brilliant dioramas of the 
 picturesque aspects of history, animating them 
 with really human if not very intricately analysed 
 passion, and connecting them with dialogue match- 
 less of its kind. He cannot as a rule do much 
 more than this, and to ask him for anything more 
 is unreasonable, though in rare passages he rises 
 to a much greater height. But he will absorb 
 
224 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 your attention and rest you from care and worry 
 
 as hardly any other novelist will, and 
 
 unlike most novelists of his class, his d^jias. 
 
 pictures, at least the best of them, do 
 
 not lose their virtue by rebeholding. I at least 
 
 find the Three Musketeers not less but more 
 
 effectual for its purpose than I found it thirty, 
 
 twenty, ten, even five years ago, and I think there 
 
 must be something more in work of such a virtue 
 
 than mere scene-painting for a background and 
 
 mere lay-figures for actors. 
 
VII 
 TH^OPHILE GAUTIER 
 
 Many years ago it happened that I was asked 
 by an ancient lawyer, whose years, 
 GAUTIER. gf3.vity, and possession of the right of 
 moral judgment which fathership of a 
 family bestows were unquestionable, to lend him 
 Gautier's most famous novel. When the volume 
 was returned, it was with the commendation, " It 
 is a most beautiful book." I was pleased with the 
 words — in the first place, because they were 
 different from the usual banal expression of satis- 
 faction with a novel ; and secondly, because the 
 verdict is the exact verdict which properly 
 describes the character, according to my judgment, 
 not merely of this particular book, but also of 
 almost all the better works of its author. The 
 extraordinary feeling and affection for beauty — 
 physical and tangible beauty, perhaps, first of all, 
 but also most truly beauty of the intellectual, 
 ideal, and even moral order — which distinguishes 
 Gautier, can hardly escape even the least critically 
 
 Q 
 
2 26 Essays on 
 
 disposed reader ; and the marvellous way in which 
 this worship colours his work, and 
 animates it as if by reflection, is as q^utier. 
 little to be missed. There is not one 
 of the hundred different forms of literature which 
 he practised in which it does not appear : poems, 
 novels, criticisms of art and letters, travels, 
 biographies, even the merest newspaper articles, 
 which are articles and nothing more, are informed 
 and saturated with it. The over-leniency with 
 which he has been charged as a reviewer, by 
 those who deem a critic to be nothing if not 
 a devil's advocate, has no other source than this. 
 The smallest spark of the divine spirit, the merest 
 flash of sonnet or stanza, never escaped him ; and 
 he had no care to comment on the pages whence 
 beauty was absent, if only he could find some 
 lines in which it was present. So with his travels. 
 Recognition of the beautiful in Spain or Turkey 
 might not be strange, but nothing could well be 
 more abhorrent to a Gascon and a poet than the 
 Bloomsbury districts of London, and indeed the 
 general aspect of this city, forty years ago ; yet 
 Gautier manages somehow to give a pleasant 
 impression of it. He expatiates on the beauties 
 of that London haze which not one Londoner in 
 a thousand ever thinks of; he gives us credit for 
 the antique effect of our old buildings — few 
 enough. Heaven knows ; and he can see, what 
 some of us think no little of themselves for having 
 independently discovered, that Waterloo Bridge is. 
 
French Novelists 227 
 
 or rather was, one of the finest of all actual and 
 possible bridges. All this is not mere 
 GAUTiER. rose-pink optimism, nor is it the para- 
 doxical and not uncommon desire to 
 admire what no one else has admired. It is 
 simply the result of an infinitely happy disposition, 
 and of a mental aptitude for unconsciously re- 
 jecting all the chaff and retaining all the grain. 
 
 The peculiarity is at least as evident in his 
 original as in his critical and descriptive works. 
 There is hardly any author in whose books — though 
 we know that his press slavery weighed heavily on 
 him, and that he was far from a fortunate man — 
 such perpetual sunshine reigns. Even the un- 
 happy endings are somehow or other mixed with 
 consolation. If Madeleine de Maupin quits her 
 lovers, it is because, like Doralice in Dryden's 
 Mariage ct la Mode, she knows that not to enjoy 
 (or at least not to go on enjoying) is the only 
 secret of continual enjoyment. If Octave de 
 Saville's soul in Avatar quits his body once too 
 often, we are made to feel the happy-release part 
 of it more keenly than the disappointment. Even 
 in La Morte Amoureuse it is doubtful whether II 
 Signor Romualdo's souvenirs did not console him 
 for the pious terrors of Romuald the priest. 
 Nowhere is there the least trace, not even in his 
 most fantastic stories, of the love of the horrible 
 and revolting which almost all the other early 
 Romantics more or less intermittently display. 
 Compare, for instance, Les J eune- France with 
 
2 28 Essays on 
 
 Borel's Champavert. There is almost Gautier's 
 power in some of the tales in the latter, 
 
 TTTkOPHIITE 
 
 notably in Dina ; but can any one qj^u^ier. 
 imagine Gautier having written it ? The 
 gratuitous and wanton horror of the thing, the 
 careful and yet would-be insouciant atrocity, make 
 it a masterpiece in its kind ; but the kind, one 
 feels, is bad. The author has not, like Baudelaire, 
 found the beautiful in the horrible. He has 
 fallen into the power of the spirits he has tried to 
 conjure, and is servant instead of master. In Les 
 Jeune-France there is no trace of this, and, what 
 is more, the very immorality loses its ugliness, 
 even at the cost sometimes of becoming almost 
 moral for the purpose. Celle-ci et Celle-ld, the 
 most shocking of all to decent proprieties, is quite 
 paternally moral in its restoration of a prodigal, 
 not indeed to the paths of virtue, but to the paths 
 of amiable and comparatively harmless license. 
 And, generally, the author's fancy for happy 
 endings has led him into far more respectable 
 denouements than the reconciliation of Rodolphe 
 and Mariette. In his largest work, Le Capitaine 
 Fracasse, virtue is triumphant in the most irre- 
 proachable way, and the sentiments of the hero 
 and heroine would do honour to Amadis and Oriana, 
 while their conduct puts that of Esplandian's too 
 hasty parents to the blush. Than Militona, again, 
 there could not possibly be a more moral story ; 
 and, with some variations, much the same may be 
 said of La Toison eTOr and of Jean et Jeannette. 
 
French Novelists 229 
 
 No one has ever ventured to impugn the character 
 of Spirite, or of the Roman de la Momie ; 
 
 THeOPHTT p 
 
 GAUTiER. ^"*i though Fortunio is perhaps an ex- 
 ception to the general run, and is to my 
 fancy a far more immoral because more heartless 
 book than the adventures of Mademoiselle de 
 Maupin herself, it stands almost alone. Gautier 
 is lax, but he is seldom or never heartless. The 
 ugliness of mere libertinage has so thoroughly 
 impressed him that he carefully eschews it, and 
 little as he pretended to write for boys and girls, 
 I must confess that there is hardly a book of his 
 which does not seem to me almost of the nature 
 of a moral tonic after a- good deal of later 
 literature, English as well as French, and especially 
 after a course of the French novelists who have 
 succeeded him. 
 
 In this digression, which was hardly avoidable 
 in dealing with the author of a book which created 
 such a scandal as Mademoiselle de Maupin, I have 
 said all that is necessary on the moral aspect ot 
 Gautier, and it may be summed up to the effect 
 that his ardent admiration for beauty preserved 
 him from all the uglier faults of immorality, and 
 often led him back to the accepted code, though 
 by a somewhat roundabout way. The author of 
 Une Larme du Diable, with its exquisite tenderness 
 and respect for innocence, ought to be safe from 
 reproach on this head. To pass once for all to 
 the purely literary view, it is not certain, paradox 
 as it may seem, whether this intense affection for 
 
230 Essays on 
 
 beauty and this rare power of disengaging it, 
 even though the charm of Gautier's 
 work be due thereto, have not affected ^^uxfER.^ 
 that work injuriously, as far as his 
 general reputation goes. It is indisputable that 
 his subjects are very often inferior to his treat- 
 ment, and in the general estimate all doubtless 
 does depend on the subject. His early and hercu- 
 lean study of style made him, almost before he 
 came to man's estate, a perfect workman, able to 
 treat any subject in the absolutely best manner. 
 But the defect of being able to write beautifully 
 about broomsticks is that broomsticks are apt to 
 get too much written about. It is certainly, as 
 has been observed, a singular thing that a man 
 should write his best book at four-and-twenty, and 
 thereafter go on writing for forty years, never doing 
 bad work, rarely doing indifferent work, but also 
 never surpassing his ddbut. It would be shallow 
 to call this idleness, and though forced occupation 
 on subjects chosen rather for than by the writer 
 may have had much, it had not everything to do 
 with it. It was, at least partly, a natural result of 
 the power to see and be content with seeing the 
 beauty of everything that presents itself If prim- 
 roses were full of beauty and suggestion to every- 
 body, nobody, it is too likely, would have taken 
 the trouble to fetch us camellias. Gautier, like 
 other poets, was chercheur d'infini, but his infinite 
 lay in expression, not in invention, and he found 
 it sufificient. 
 
French Novelists 231 
 
 If it be thought that I am long in coming to 
 the discussion of the proper subject 
 GAUTiER. °^ *^'^ paper — the merits of Gautier 
 as a novelist — I must plead in excuse 
 that it is not easy to split up his varied char- 
 acters and treat them separately. His choice 
 of literary forms, like his choice of subjects, seems 
 to have been mainly fortuitous or compulsory. It 
 is true that some of his best work happens to have 
 been fiction, but yet he is not pre-eminently a 
 novelist. He himself always wished for the title 
 of poet as his special description, and certainly he 
 deserved it. Unfortunately, we have no business 
 now with that side of his talent. It has attracted 
 less attention in England than any other, which 
 is certainly strange, unless it be that admirers of 
 Gautier remember the fate of the Roi Candaule, 
 and are perhaps unwilling to call the public to 
 share the delight they have themselves experi- 
 enced in reading La Chimlre and Le Ckdteau du 
 Souvenir, the elegy on Cldmence and Le Ther- 
 modon. 
 
 One at least of Gautier's characteristics as a 
 novelist is sufficiently obvious at first sight, and it 
 must be a dull person who requires to be told 
 which of the four pseudonyms of the Croix de 
 Bemy, the novel which he wrote in conjunction 
 with Sandeau, M6ry, and Madame de Girardin, 
 hides his authorship. Had he written novels 
 otherwise than as Aramis wore his uniform — par 
 interim — it is probable that this characteristic 
 
232 Essays on 
 
 would not have been so marked. But, writing as 
 he did under the pressure of constant 
 occupations of a different kind, it ™autier. 
 came easiest to him to rely chiefly on 
 his unequalled faculty of description, and to 
 neglect somewhat the elaboration of plot and 
 character. Hence it follows that his shorter 
 stories, which are very numerous, are in some 
 respects better than his longer, because the rage 
 for word-painting is kept more within bounds. 
 Le Roman de la Momie is scarcely more than one 
 long translation, into Gautier's exquisite literary 
 language, of the results of discovery as to the 
 manners, customs, and furniture of the ancient 
 Egyptians. Militona, pretty as it is, has the 
 faintest possible current of action, barely enough 
 to float the author's picturesque reminiscences of 
 bull-fights and other Spanish ways. Of Spirite 
 little is likely to dwell in the memory of any but 
 spiritualists, except the equipments of the chambers 
 of Guy and his widow. On the other hand, the 
 smaller stories derive from this very peculiarity 
 great part of their charm. La Toison d'Or brings 
 Antwerp before us most delightfully as a back- 
 ground to Gretchen and her convertite. The 
 Pompeian properties of Arria Marcella could not 
 be more skilfully disposed, and the very erudition 
 which is somewhat tedious in the Momie, is delight- 
 ful in Une Nuit de Cl^op&tre and Le Rot Candaule. 
 Once, and once only, did the great artist in words 
 fail utterly, if, as I suppose, dulness is failure in 
 
French Novelists 233 
 
 novel-writing. La Belle Jenny I find myself, not- 
 withstanding a long apprenticeship to 
 GAUTiER. *^^ reading of books, whatever their 
 unliveliness, almost unable to read. 
 But this is exceptional. No one has ever sur- 
 passed Gautier in the writing of short sketches 
 which are half stories and half articles, such 
 as the records of his adventures with the 
 mummy's foot, with Alphonse Karr's opium-pipe, 
 and with the club of seekers of an artificial para- 
 dise who consumed haschish in the H6tel Pimodan. 
 FortuniOyJettatura, and Avatar rank about half-way 
 between the mere sketch and the regular novel, 
 and are all striking works. The first is worth 
 cortiparing with Edgar Poe's Domain of Arnheim 
 as an attempt to imagine the creation of a sort of 
 private paradise of gorgeousness, but it has the 
 human interest which, with all his powers, Poe 
 seldom managed to give. The sublime and after 
 all useless self-sacrifice of the jettatore, Paul 
 d'Aspremont, crowns a most admirable arrange- 
 ment of the famous Italian superstition. But I 
 think that Avatar is my own favourite of the three. 
 The idea of the interchange of the bodies and 
 souls of two rivals in the interest of one, is a 
 capital starting-point. The device adopted for 
 saving the honour of the Countess Prascovie, im- 
 perilled by this exchange, is admirable in its deli- 
 cacy and truth, and the duel scene is a delightful 
 imbroglio. None of these indeed surpasses La 
 Morte Amoureuse, with which I shall try to deal 
 
234 Essays on 
 
 at greater length. But that is because La 
 Morte Amoureuse is simply unsur- 
 
 , . THiOPHILE 
 
 passable. gautier. 
 
 Of the rest there still remain to be 
 dealt with the t\vo long works, Mademoiselle de 
 Maupin and Le Capitaine Fracasse. They are 
 both remarkable books, though very differently 
 remarkable, and the fact that the same man 
 should have written them both, is sufficient 
 proof in itself of his marvellous versatility. It 
 is difficult to deal with the first in the way I 
 have adopted in some others of these essays, 
 not merely because of its breaches of the pro- 
 prieties, but on account of the plan on which it 
 is written. A mixture of letters and narrative, 
 dealing almost entirely with emotions, and scarcely 
 at all with incidents, it defies narrative analysis. 
 It would seem that Goethe, who in many ways 
 influenced Gautier, is responsible to some extent 
 for its form, and perhaps for the fact that As You 
 Like It plays an even more important part in it 
 than Hamlet plays in Wilkelm Meister. No one 
 who has read it can fail thenceforward to associate 
 a new charm with the image of Rosalind, even 
 though she be one of Shakespeare's most gracious 
 creations ; and this I know is a bold word. But, 
 in truth, it is in more ways than one an unspeak- 
 able book. Those who like may point to a couple 
 of pages of loose description at the end, a dialogue 
 in the style of a polite Jacques le Fataliste in the 
 middle, a dozen phrases of a hazardous character 
 
French Novelists 235 
 
 scattered here and there. Diderot — no strait- 
 laced judge— remarked long ago, and 
 GAUTiER. truly enough, that errors of this sort 
 punish themselves by restricting the 
 circulation, and diminishing the chance of life 
 of the book, or other work, that contains them. 
 But it is not these things that the admirers of 
 Mademoiselle de Maupin admire. It is the wonder- 
 ful and final expression, repeated, but subtly shaded 
 and differenced, in the three characters of Albert, 
 Rosette, and Madeleine herself, of the aspiration 
 which, as I have said, colours Gautier's whole 
 work. If he, as has been justly remarked, was the 
 priest of beauty. Mademoiselle de Maupin is cer- 
 tainly one of the sacred books of the cult. The 
 apostle to whom it was revealed was young, and 
 perhaps he has mingled words of clay with words 
 of gold. It would be difficult to find a Bowdler 
 for our Madeleine, and impossible to adapt her to 
 the use of families. But those who understand as 
 they read, and can reject the evil and hold fast 
 the good, who desire sometimes to retire from the 
 meditation of the weary ways of ordinary life to 
 the land of clear colours and stories, where there 
 is none of this weariness, who are not to be scared 
 by the poet's harmless puppets or tempted by his 
 guileless baits, they at least will take her as she is 
 and be thankful. 
 
 Thirty years passed between the appearance of 
 Mademoiselle de Maupin and the appearance of 
 Le Capitaine Fracasse. Yet the Captain was in 
 
236 Essays on 
 
 the order of thought the elder. In the heyday 
 of the romantic movement, when every 
 one hastened to print suivant k rituel qautier. 
 de Renduel, as Banville sings, the fate 
 of the books was various. Some got them- 
 selves printed at once, and then disappeared, 
 to be chronicled a generation later by the pious 
 care of Charles Asselineau, the Old Mortality 
 of Romantic literature, to be disputed when a 
 rare copy turned up, and to be bought at 
 a price which would have originally purchased 
 half the impression. Others, like Gaspard de la 
 Nuit, lay long in manuscript, and saw the light 
 only when their authors had quitted it. But a 
 still larger number never got beyond the state of 
 titlehood and of advertisement on the backs of 
 their more fortunate brethren. Such was Hugo's 
 Quiquengrogm, such Les Contes du Bousingo, 
 which was to be the united effort of the younger 
 Hugonic Cdnacle — Gdrard de Nerval, Borel, and 
 the rest. Such also for thirty long years was Le 
 Capitaine Fracasse. At last the author was pressed 
 to execute the work. He set about it, and first 
 the introduction, Le Ckdteau de la Misere, and 
 then the body of the book, were completed. It 
 was executed strictly in the style of the date of 
 its conception, not of that of its appearance. It 
 is a roman de cape et d'ipie, of the school of 
 Dumas, but written with a pen which Dumas 
 never wielded, and with a knowledge of the 
 literature and style of its time to which the author 
 
French Novelists 237 
 
 of Les Trois Mousquetaires could not pretend. 
 The temptation to the besetting sin 
 
 XHEOPHIL.E /• 
 
 GAUTiER. °' over -description. — if sin it can be 
 called which gives us such exquisite 
 work — is not always resisted ; but the gait of the 
 story is lively enough, and no lack of incident 
 can be complained of. The Baron de Sigognac, 
 a Gascon gentleman, has succeeded to a ruined 
 chateau and a vanished estate. His father, a 
 companion of Henry IV in Henry's early and 
 impecunious days, had finally expended the last 
 of a fortune which successive ill-luck, as decided 
 as that of Ravenswood or Redgauntlet, has 
 brought to nothing. The sole remnant is the 
 family mansion, the Chateau de la Misere, with 
 its few valueless acres of demesne, in which the 
 young baron, with his single faithful servant Pierre, 
 his dog Miraut, and his cat Beelzebub, vegetate 
 rather than live. The description of the castle is 
 a marvel. Judged, perhaps — as in one's own 
 despite one must judge it — from the novel-critic's 
 standpoint, it is doubtless a fault in composition 
 to expend thirty pages on a merely preliminary 
 sketch. But in itself it is perfect. Even Hood's 
 Haunted House, one of the least generally valued 
 masterpieces of English literature, is scarcely to be 
 compared with it. The gradual but hopeless 
 dilapidation of the building, the age, uselessness, 
 and misery of the dependents — in sketching whom 
 Gautier's love for cats and dogs has found almost 
 as vivid expression as in his Minagerie Intime 
 
238 Essays on 
 
 and in the Tableaux de Siige — the ghostly presence 
 of the family portraits, a hint perhaps 
 from Sintram, for Gautier, like all ™f u^reR.'' 
 great artists, borrowed as much as he 
 invented — the deserted garden, the empty stables, 
 the meagre fare, all have their chasing and 
 enshrinement in his imperishable language. The 
 influence which wakes up this Dolorous Gard 
 and sleeping castle is an odd one. A company 
 of strolling players pass the castle, and their 
 waggon breaks down. Each member of the 
 troupe has his description : the pedant, the tyrant, 
 the jeune premier, the Scapin, the Bobadil, the 
 soubreite — a soubrette, by the way, of the earliest, 
 for his gracious Majesty Louis XIII had been 
 long on the throne when Pierre Corneille substi- 
 tuted her for the duenna in stock -pieces — the 
 chief heroine, the inginue, the duenna herself, are 
 all elaborately painted. As he entertains these 
 strange guests, or rather as they entertain him 
 (for the larder of Castle Sigognac is not calculated 
 for a dozen hungry and sudden visitors), the thought 
 strikes the baron that he will join the troupe, at 
 any rate as a means of reaching Paris, the only 
 place to mend broken fortunes or make new ones. 
 The place of poet to the company, with the duty 
 of adjusting Hardy's pieces and such like — a task 
 which those who have studied those triumphs of 
 dramatic art will scarcely envy the Baron de 
 Sigognac — is open, and the charms of Isabelle 
 the ingenue settle the question. So the strangely 
 
French Novelists 239 
 
 assorted company sets out, and before long they 
 meet one of the provincial noblesse, 
 GAUTiER. ^^ Marquis de Bruy^res, who knows 
 Sigognac, notwithstanding that the 
 baron, in his pride of poverty and race, has 
 kept aloof from his equals, and who respects 
 his incognito, taking it merely for a method 
 of pursuing Isabelle. The marquis — here is 
 another reminiscence of Wilhelm Meister — in- 
 vites the troupe to his chateau, with certain 
 private designs on the soubrette, and a good deal 
 of subordinate intrigue goes on there. But at 
 length the journey is resumed, and is continued 
 through much stress of weather and hard fare 
 to Poitiers. There a halt is made, for the city is 
 full of country society, and full houses may be 
 expected. Meanwhile the Bobadil has died, and 
 Sigognac takes his place with the stage name 
 of " Le Capitaine Fracasse." The Marquis de 
 Bruyeres, in pursuit of his beloved, comes to the 
 town, and much interest is excited in Sigognac's 
 incognito, which is still assigned to the same 
 reason. Nor is the assignment unjust, for Isabelle 
 and the baron have become altogether devoted 
 to one another, though with a perfectly pure affec- 
 tion ; the lady being virtue incarnate and hav- 
 ing some left-handed strains of gentle blood in 
 her — the gentleman having escaped the liber- 
 tine complexion of his time by dint of his 
 solitary bringing-up. But all the noblesse of Poi- 
 tiers are not thus virtuous. A certain Due de 
 
240 Essays on 
 
 Vallombreuse becomes violently enamoured of Isa- 
 belle, and cannot believe either in her 
 honour or in the position of Sigognac. c^utier. 
 He tries at first to administer to the 
 latter the treatment which, half a century and 
 a century later, Voltaire and Dryden had to 
 suffer, but Sigognac's valour, and the assistance 
 of his stout comrades, frustrate the attempt. 
 Then the baron has recourse to Bruy^res, 
 and forces the duke to fight him fairly. The 
 would-be ravisher is of course discomfited, but 
 he evidently means further mischief ; and the 
 troupe, who have by this time thoroughly identified 
 their interests with Sigognac's, make for Paris. 
 When they have arrived there, the danger soon 
 reappears. Vallombreuse, finding that his own 
 led captains and retainers are unequal to the task, 
 resorts to hired bravoes to accomplish the discom- 
 fiture of Sigognac and the abduction of Isabelle. 
 This gives occasion to chapters describing the 
 bravoes Lampourde and Malartic, and their haunts 
 both at home and at the tavern of the Radis 
 Couronni, which yield in nothing to the truand 
 chapters of Notre Dame de Paris, and consequently 
 excel everything else of the same kind. Lam- 
 pourde, the first swordsman of the day, is com- 
 pletely discomfited in single duello by Sigognac, 
 and thenceforward, being an artist at heart, swears 
 eternal allegiance to his conqueror. His crony, 
 Malartic, who is entrusted with the business of 
 abduction, is more fortunate. By a ruse he 
 
French Novelists 241 
 
 succeeds in abstracting Isabelle from Sigognac's 
 guardianship and conveying her to 
 GAUTiER. *^^ deeply-moated fortress of Vallom- 
 breuse. But the valiant players, with 
 the baron at their head, are soon on the track, 
 and by the aid of a gipsy girl whom Isabelle 
 has befriended, they reach Vallombreuse. The 
 handy expedient of felling a tree, which drops 
 across the moat and forms a bridge, succeeds, and 
 for some minutes a most exciting fight follows 
 between the defenders of innocence and the 
 villains. The invincible Sigognac overcomes in 
 turn Malartic and — only just in time to save 
 Isabelle — Vallombreuse himself, when suddenly 
 there enters an august personage and charges 
 all to drop their daggers. This personage is no 
 less than the father of Vallombreuse, and, as it 
 happens, also the father of Isabelle. He treats 
 his son with just indignation, but at the same 
 time hints to Sigognac and his friends that 
 though he acknowledges the justification of their 
 actions, he can hardly forgive them his son's 
 death, and that they had better withdraw speedily. 
 So they retire somewhat crestfallen, the right of 
 guardianship in Isabelle having evidently passed 
 to her father ; and Sigognac, his dream over 
 and his heart irrecoverably lost, retires once more 
 to the Chateau de la Mis^re. But Vallombreuse 
 does not die, and his convalescence, without 
 rendering him unhealthily moral, makes him 
 determined to do justice to the gentleman whom 
 
 R 
 
242 Essays on 
 
 he has so deeply wronged. He departs on an 
 embassy to Sigognac, after he and 
 his father have on the one hand """f u™ 
 tested Isabelle's constancy by pro- 
 posing to her the most tempting matches, 
 and have on the other consulted the baron's 
 Gascon pride by procuring him lucrative em- 
 ployment from the king. Sigognac does not 
 want much entreating. He marries Isabelle, 
 who has received an independent fortune from 
 her father ; and it is not till she, with Vallom- 
 breuse's help, and unknown to her husband, has 
 restored Sigognac and changed the Castle of 
 Misery to one of plenty, that she lets him re- 
 visit the place. But Gautier could not lose an 
 opportunity of giving one of his characteristic 
 touches. The old cat Beelzebub dies half of 
 indigestion and half of joy at beholding his master 
 once more, and as Sigognac insists on burying 
 his favourite in the garden, he uncovers the buried 
 treasure of the last of his prosperous ancestors. 
 The members of the troupe are accommodated 
 with suitable places in the household of the 
 baron, now become a great man — the colonel of 
 a regiment and the governor of his province ; and 
 so finishes in peace and plenty the history of Le 
 Capitaine Fracasse. 
 
 As a contrast to this rapid narrative sketch, I 
 shall now give a translation as nearly as possible 
 in extenso of La Morte Amoureuse, unquestionably 
 the finest of Gautier's minor tales. It is with 
 
French Novelists 243 
 
 reluctance that I attempt to curtail it in any 
 way, for it is a story which one can 
 GAUTiER. hardly touch without spoiling, but the 
 necessities of space make some omis- 
 sions unavoidable^ — 
 
 You ask me, my brother, if I have ever loved. I answer 
 "Yes." But it is a wild and terrible story, a memory 
 whose ashes, with all my sixty-six years, I hardly dare to 
 disturb. To you I can refuse nothing, but I would not 
 tell the tale to a less experienced soul. The facts are so 
 strange that I myself cannot believe in their actual occur- 
 rence. For three years I was the victim of a diabolical 
 delusion, and every night — God grant it was a dream — I, 
 a poor country priest, led the life of the lost, the life of the 
 worldling and the debauchee. A single chance of too 
 great complacency went near to destroy my soul ; but at 
 last, with God's aid and my patron saint's, I exorcised the 
 evil spirit which had gained possession of me. Till then 
 my life was double, and the counterpart by night was 
 utterly different from the life by day. By day I was a 
 priest of the Lord, pure, and busied with holy things. By 
 night, no sooner had I closed my eyes than I became a 
 youthful gallant, critical in women, dogs, and horses, 
 prompt with dice and bottle, free of hand and tongue ; and 
 when waking time came at dawn of day, it seemed to me 
 as if I then fell asleep and was a priest only in dreams. 
 From this sleep-life I have kept the memory of words and 
 things, which recur to me against my will ; and though I 
 have never quitted the walls of my parsonage, those who 
 hear me talk would rather think me a man of the world 
 and of many experiences, who has entered the religious 
 life hoping to finish in God's bosom the evening of his 
 stormy day, than a humble seminarist, whose life has been 
 
 ^ A complete translation has appeared since by two friends of 
 mine, Messrs. Andrew Lang and Paul Sylvester, under the title of 
 The Dead Leman. Nevertheless I reprint this. 
 
244 Essays on 
 
 spent in an obscure parish, buried deep in woods, and far 
 removed from the course of the world. 
 
 Yes, I have loVed — as no one else has th^ophile 
 loved, with a mad and wild passion so violent gautier. 
 that I can hardly understand how it failed to 
 break my heart. 
 
 After rapidly sketching the history of the early 
 seminary days of the priest Romuald, his complete 
 seclusion and ignorance of the very names almost 
 of world and woman, the tale goes on to the day 
 of his ordination. He is in the church, almost in 
 a trance of religious fervour ; the building itself, 
 the gorgeously robed bishop, the stately cere- 
 monies, seem to him a foretaste of heaven, when 
 suddenly — 
 
 By chance I raised my head, which I had hitherto 
 kept bowed, and saw before me, within arm's length as it 
 seemed, but in reality at some distance and beyond the 
 chancel rails, a woman of rare beauty and royally apparelled. 
 At once, as it were, scales dropped from my eyes. I was 
 in the case of a blind man whose sight is suddenly restored. 
 The bishop, but now so dazzling to me, became dim, the 
 tapers in their golden stands paled like the stars at morning, 
 and darkness seemed to pervade the church. On this 
 background of shade the lovely vision stood out like an 
 angelic appearance, self-illumined, and giving rather than 
 receiving light. I dropped my eyelids, firmly resolving 
 not again to raise them, that so I might escape the distrac- 
 tion of outward things, for I felt the spell more and more, 
 and I hardly knew what I did ; but a minute afterwards I 
 again looked up, for I perceived her beauty still shining 
 across my dropped lashes as if with prismatic glory, and 
 encircled by the crimson halo that to the gazer surrounds 
 the sun. How beautiful she was ! Painters, when in 
 their chase of the ideal they have followed it to the skies 
 
French Novelists 245 
 
 and carried ofT therefrom the divine image of Our Lady, 
 never drew near this fabulous reality. Nor 
 TH]£oPHiLE are the poet's words more adequate than the 
 GAUTiER. colours of the limner. She was tall and 
 goddess-like in shape ' and port. Her soft 
 fair hair rolled on either side of her temples in golden 
 streams that crowned her as with a queen's diadem. Her 
 forehead, white and transparent, tinged only by blue vein- 
 stains, stretched in calm amplitude over two dark eyebrows 
 — a contrast enhanced still further by the sea-green lustre 
 of her glittering and unfathomable eyes. Ah, what eyes ! 
 One flash of them was enough to settle the fate of a man. 
 Never had I seen in human eyes such life, such clearness, 
 such ardour, such humid brilliancy ; and there shot from 
 them glances like arrows, which went straight to my heart. 
 Whether the flame which lit them came from hell or heaven 
 I know not, but from one or the other it came, most surely. 
 No daughter of Eve she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps 
 — who knows ? — something of both. The quarrelets of 
 pearl flashed through her scarlet smile, and as her mouth 
 moved the dimples sank and filled by turns in the blush- 
 rose softness of her exquisite cheek. Over the even 
 smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders played a float- 
 ing gloss as of agate, and a river of large pearls, not 
 greatly different in hue from her neck, descended towards 
 her breast. Now and then she raised her head with a 
 peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver through the ruff 
 which enshrined her like a frame of silver filigree. 
 
 The strange vision causes on Romuald strange 
 yet natural effects. His ardent aspiration for the 
 priesthood changes to loathing. He even tries 
 to renounce his vows, to answer " No " to the 
 questions to which he should answer " Yes," and 
 thus to comply with the apparent demand of the 
 stranger's eyes. But he cannot. The awe of the 
 ceremony is yet too strong on his soul, if not on 
 
246 Essays on 
 
 his senses and imagination ; and the fatal words 
 are spoken, the fatal rites gone through, 
 despite the promises of untold bliss ™f "nER.'' 
 which the eyes, evermore caressing and 
 entreating, though sadder, as the completion of the 
 sacrifice approaches, continue to make him. 
 
 At last it was over — I was a priest. Never did face of 
 woman wear an expression of such anguish as hers. The 
 girl whose lover drops lifeless at her side, the mother by 
 her dead child's cradle. Eve at the gate of paradise, the 
 miser who finds his buried treasure replaced by a stone, the 
 poet whose greatest work has perished in the flames, have 
 not a more desolate air. The blood left her countenance, 
 and it became as of marble ; her arms fell by her side, as 
 if their muscles had become flaccid j and she leant against 
 a pillar, for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, 
 with a livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent 
 my tottering steps towards the church door. The air 
 seemed to stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, 
 and on my head seemed to rest the whole crushing weight 
 of the dome. As I was on the point of crossing the 
 threshold a hand touched mine suddenly — a woman's hand 
 — a touch how new to me ! It was as cold as the skin of 
 a serpent, yet the contact burnt like the brand of a hot 
 iron. " Unhappy wretch ! What have you done ? " she 
 said to me in a low voice, and then disappeared in the 
 crowd. 
 
 On the way to the seminary, whither a comrade 
 has to support him, for his emotion is evident to 
 all, a page, unnoticed, slips into Romuald's hand a 
 tablet with the simple words, " Clarimonde. At 
 the Concini Palace." He passes some days in a 
 state of almost delirium, now forming wild plans 
 of escape, now shocked at his sinful desires, but 
 
French Novelists 247 
 
 always regretting the world he has renounced, and 
 still more Clarimonde. 
 
 THEOPHILE 
 
 GAUTiER. I do not know how long I remained in 
 this condition, but as in one of my furious 
 writhings I turned on my bed I saw the Father 
 Serapion standing in the middle of the cell gazing 
 steadily at me. Shame seized me, and I hid my face 
 with my hands. "Romuald," said he, at the end of a 
 few minutes, "something extraordinary has come on you. 
 Your conduct is inexpUcable. You, so pious, so gentle, 
 you pace your cell like a caged beast. Take heed, 
 my brother, of the suggestions of the evil one, for he is 
 wroth that you have given yourself to the Lord, and lurks 
 round you like a ravening wolf, if haply a last effort may 
 make you his." 
 
 Then, bidding him redouble his pious exercises, 
 he tells him that he has been presented by the 
 bishop to a country cure, and must be ready to 
 start on the morrow, and so leaves him. Romuald 
 is in despair at leaving the neighbourhood of 
 Clarimonde. But his seminarist inexperience 
 makes him feel more than ever the impossibility 
 of even discovering her, and the hints of Serapion 
 have in a manner reawakened his conscience. He 
 departs on the morrow without protest. They 
 quit the city, and begin to climb the hills which 
 surround it. 
 
 At the top I turned round once more to give a last look 
 to the place where dwelt Clarimonde. The city lay wholly 
 in the shadow of a cloud ; its blue and red roofs were 
 blended in one general half-tint, above which here and there 
 white flakes of the smoke of morning fires hovered. By 
 some optical accident a single edifice stood out gilded by a 
 ray of light, and more lofty than the mass of surrounding 
 
248 Essays on 
 
 buildings. Though more than a league oif, it seemed 
 close to us. The smallest details were visible 
 — the turrets, the terraces, the windows, and th£ophile 
 even the swallow -tailed vanes. "What is gautier. 
 that sunlit palace yonder ? " I asked of 
 Serapion. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and 
 after looking he answered, " It is the palace which Prince 
 Concini gave to the courtesan Clarimonde. Terrible things 
 are done there." As he spoke, whether it were fact or 
 fancy I know not, it seemed to me that I saw a slender 
 white form glide out on the terrace, glitter there for a 
 second, and then disappear. It was Clarimonde ! Could 
 she have known that at that moment, from the rugged 
 heights of the hill which separated me from her, and which 
 I was nevermore to descend, I was bending a restless and 
 burning gaze on the palace of her abode, brought near me 
 by a mocking play of light, as if to invite me to enter? 
 Ah yes ! she knew it doubtless, for her soul was bound to 
 mine too nearly not to feel its least movements ; and this 
 it must have been which urged her to climb the terrace 
 in the cold morning dews, wrapped only in her snowy 
 nightgear. 
 
 But the die is cast, and the journey continues. 
 They reach the modest parsonage where Romuald 
 is to pass the rest of his days, and he is in- 
 stalled in his cure, Serapion returning to the 
 city. Romuald attacks his work desperately, 
 hoping to find peace there, but he very partially 
 succeeds. The words of Clarimonde and the 
 touch of her hand haunt him constantly, and 
 sometimes even stranger things happen. He sees 
 the flash of the sea-green eyes across his garden 
 hedges ; he seems to find the imprint of feet, 
 which are assuredly not those of any inhabitant of 
 the village, on the gravel walks. At last one 
 
French Novelists 249 
 
 night he is summoned late to the bedside of a 
 dying person, by a messenger of gor- 
 GAUTiER. g^ous dress and outlandish aspect. 
 The journey is made in the darkness 
 on fiery steeds, through strange scenery, and in 
 an unknown direction. A splendid palace is 
 at length reached — too late, for the priest is 
 met by the news that his penitent has already 
 expired. But he is entreated, and consents, at 
 least to watch and pray by the body during the 
 night. He is led into the chamber of death, and 
 finds that the corpse is Clarimonde. At first he 
 mechanically turns to prayer, but other thoughts 
 inevitably occur. His eyes wander to the appear- 
 ance and furniture of the boudoir suddenly put to 
 so diiTerent use : the gorgeous hangings of crimson 
 damask contrasting with the white shroud, the 
 faded rose by the bedside, the scattered signs 
 of revelry, distract and disturb him. Strange 
 fancies come thick. The air seems other than 
 that to which he is accustomed in such chambers 
 of the dead. The corpse appears from time to 
 time to make slight movements ; even sighs seem 
 to echo his own. At last he lifts the veil which 
 covers her, and contemplates the exquisite features 
 he had last seen at the fatal moment of his 
 sacrifice. He cannot believe that she is dead. 
 The faint blush-rose tints are hardly dulled, the 
 hand is not colder than he recollects it. 
 
 The night was now far spent. I felt that the moment of 
 eternal separation was at hand, and I could not refuse 
 
250 Essays on 
 
 myself the last sad pleasure of giving one kiss to the dead 
 lips of her, who, living, had had all my love. 
 Oh, wonder ! A faint breath mingled with thAophile 
 mine, the eyes opened and became once gautier. 
 more brilliant. She sighed, and uncrossing 
 her arms she clasped them round my neck with an air of 
 ineffable contentment. " Ah ! " she said, with a voice as faint 
 and as sweet as the last dying vibrations of a harp, "is it you, 
 Romuald ? I have waited for you so long that now I am 
 dead. But we are betrothed to one another from this 
 moment, and I can see you and visit you henceforward. 
 Romuald, I loved you ! Farewell ; this is all I have 
 to say ; and thus I restore the life you gave me for a 
 minute with your kiss. We shall soon meet again." Her 
 head fell back, but she still held me encircled. A furious 
 gust of wind forced in the window and swept into the 
 room : the last leaflet of the white rose quivered for a 
 minute on its stalk and then fell, and floated through the 
 open casement, bearing with it the soul of Clarimonde, 
 The lamp went out, and I sank in a swoon. 
 
 He wakes in his own room, and hears from his 
 ancient gouvernante that the same strange escort 
 which carried him off has brought him back. 
 Soon afterwards his friend Serapion comes to visit 
 him, not altogether to his delight, for he rightly 
 suspects the father of some knowledge of his 
 secret. Serapion announces to him as a matter of 
 general news that the courtesan Clarimonde is dead, 
 and mentions that strange rumours have been current 
 respecting her — some declaring her to be a species 
 of vampire, and her lovers to have all perished 
 mysteriously. As he says this he watches 
 Romuald, who cannot altogether conceal his 
 thoughts. Thereat Serapion — 
 
French Novelists 251 
 
 " My son," said he, " it is my duty to warn you that 
 your feet are on the brink of an abyss ; take 
 thAophile heed of falling. Satan's hands reach far, 
 GAUTiEK. and the grave is not always a faithful gaoler. 
 Clarimonde's tombstone should be sealed with 
 a triple seal, for it is not, say they, the first time she has 
 died. May God watch over you." Saying this, Serapion 
 slowly went out, and I saw him no more. I soon recovered 
 completely, and returned to my usual occupations ; and 
 though I never forgot the memory of Clarimonde and the 
 words of the father, nothing extraordinary for a time occurred 
 to confirm in any way his ill-omened forebodings, so that I 
 began to believe that his apprehensions and my own terror 
 were unfounded. ' But one night I had a dream. Scarcely 
 had I fallen asleep when I heard my bed-curtains drawn, 
 the rings grating sharply on the rods. I raised myself 
 abruptly on my elbow and saw before me the shadowy 
 figure of a woman. At once I recognised Clarimonde. 
 She carried in her hand a small lamp of the shape of those 
 which are placed in tombs, and the light of it gave to her 
 tapering fingers a] rosy transparency which, with gradually 
 fainter tints, prolonged itself till it was lost in the milky 
 whiteness of her naked arm. The only garment she had 
 on was the linen shroud which covered her on her death- 
 bed, and she tried to hold up its folds on her breast as if 
 shame-stricken at her scanty clothing. But her little hand 
 was not equal to the task ; and so white was she that the 
 lamplight failed to make distinction between the colour of 
 the drapery and the hue of the flesh. Wrapped in this 
 fine tissue, she was more like an antique marble statue of a 
 bather than a live woman. Dead or alive, woman or statue, 
 shadow or body, her beauty was unchangeable, but the green 
 flash of her eyes was somewhat dulled, and her mouth, so 
 red of old, was now tinted only with a faint rose-tint like 
 thattof her cheeks. The blue flowerets in her hair' were 
 withered and had lost almost all their petals ; yet she was 
 still all charming — so charming that, despite the strangeness 
 of the adventure and the unexplained fashion of her entrance, 
 no thought of fear occurred to me. She placed the lamp 
 
252 Essays on 
 
 on the table and seated herself on the foot of my bed ; then, 
 bending towards me, she spoke in the soft 
 and silvery voice that I have heard from none th^ophile 
 but her. " I have kept you waiting long, dear gautier. 
 Romuald, and you must have thought that 1 
 had forgotten you. But I come from very far — from 
 a place whence no traveller has yet returned. There is 
 neither sun nor moon, nor aught but space and shadow ; no 
 road is there, nor pathway to guide the foot, nor air to 
 uphold the wing ; and yet here am I, for love is stronger 
 than death, and is his master at the last. Ah ! what sad 
 faces, what sights of terror, I have met ! With what pains 
 has my soul, regaining this world by force of will, found 
 again my body and reinstalled itself! With what effort 
 have I hfted the heavy slab they laid upon me, even to the 
 bruising of my poor feeble hands ! Kiss them, dear love, 
 and they will be cured." She placed one by one the cold 
 palms of her little hands against my mouth, and I kissed 
 them again and again, while she watched me with her 
 smile of ineffable content. I at once forgot Serapion's 
 advice, I forgot my sacred office ; I succumbed without 
 resistance at the first summons, I did not even attempt to 
 repulse the tempter. 
 
 She tells him how she had dreamed of him long 
 before she saw him ; how she had striven to pre- 
 vent his sacrifice ; how she was jealous of God, 
 whom he preferred to her ; and how, though she 
 had forced the gates of the tomb to come to him, 
 though he had given life back to her with a kiss, 
 though her recovery of it has no other end than to 
 make him happy, she herself is still miserable 
 because she has only half his heart. In his 
 delirium he tells her, to console her, that he loves 
 her " as much as God." 
 
 " Instantly the glitter as of chrysoprase flashed 
 
French Novelists 253 
 
 once more from her eyes. ' Is that true ? — as 
 much as God?' cried she, winding 
 
 THtoPHILE . , t-tc Jl- 
 
 GAUTiER "^"^ arms round me. If tis so you 
 can come with me ; you can follow 
 me whither I will.' " And fixing the next night 
 for the rendezvous, she vanishes. He wakes, 
 and, considering it merely a dream, resumes his 
 pious exercises. But the next night Clarimonde, 
 faithful to her word, reappears — no longer in ghostly 
 attire, but radiant and splendidly dressed. She 
 brings her lover the full costume of a cavalier, and 
 when he has donned it they sally forth, taking first 
 the fiery steeds of his first nocturnal adventure, 
 then a carriage, in which he and Clarimonde, heart 
 to heart, head on shoulder, hand in hand, journey 
 through the night. 
 
 Never had I been so happy. For the moment I had 
 forgotten everything, and thought no more of my priesthood 
 than of some previous existence. From that night forward 
 my existence was as it were doubled, and there were in me 
 two men, strangers each to the other's existence. Some- 
 times I thought myself a priest who dreamt that he was a 
 gallant, sometimes a gallant who dreamt that he was a 
 priest. ... I could not distinguish the reality from the 
 illusion, and knew not which were my waking and which 
 my sleeping moments. Two spirals, entangled without 
 touching, form the nearest representation of this Ufe. The 
 young cavaher, the coxcomb, the debauchee, mocked the 
 priest ; the priest held the dissipations of the gallant in 
 horror. Notwithstanding the strangeness of the situation, 
 I do not think my reason was for a moment affected. The 
 perceptions of my two existences were always firm and clear, 
 and there was only one anomaly which I could not explain, 
 and this was that the same unbroken sentiment of identity 
 
254 Essays on 
 
 subsisted in two beings so different. Of this I could give 
 myself no explanation, whether I thought my- 
 self to be really the vicar of a poor country THiopHiLE 
 village, or else II Signor Romualdo, lover in gautier. 
 possession of Clarimonde. 
 
 The place, real or apparent, of II Signor Romu- 
 aldo's sojourn with his beloved is Venice, where 
 they inhabit a gorgeous palace, and where Romu- 
 ald enters into all the follies and dissipations of 
 the place. He is unalterably faithful to Clari- 
 monde, and she to him ; and the time passes in a 
 perpetual delirium. But every night — as it now 
 seems to him — he finds himself once more a poor 
 country priest, horrified at the misdeeds of his other 
 personality, and seeking to atone for them by 
 prayer and fasting and good works. Even in his 
 Venetian moments he sometimes thinks of Sera- 
 pion's words, and at length he has especial reason 
 to remember them. 
 
 For some time Clarimonde's health had not been very 
 good ; her complexion faded from day to day. The doctors 
 who were called in could not discover the disease, and after 
 useless prescriptions gave up the case. Day by day she 
 grew paler and colder, till she was nearly as white and as 
 corpse-like as on the famous night at the mysterious castle. 
 I was in despair at this wasting away, but she, though 
 touched by my sorrow, only smiled at me sweetly and sadly 
 with the fatal smile of those who feel their death approach- 
 ing. One morning I was sitting by her. In slicing some 
 fruit it happened that I cut my finger somewhat deeply. 
 The blood flowed in crimson streamlets, and some of it 
 spurted on Clarimonde. Her eyes brightened at once, and 
 over her face there passed a look of fierce joy which I had 
 never before seen in her. She sprang from the bed with 
 
French Novelists 255 
 
 catlike activity and pounced on the wound, which she began 
 
 to suck with an air of indescribable delight, 
 
 THioPHiLE swallowing the blood in sips, slowly and care- 
 
 GAUTiEK. fully, as an epicure tastes a costly vintage. 
 
 Her eyelids were half closed, and the pupils 
 
 of her sea-green eyes flattened and became oblong instead 
 
 of round. . . . From time to time she interrupted herself 
 
 to kiss my hand ; then she began again to squeeze the edges 
 
 of the wound with her lips in order to draw from it a few 
 
 more crimson drops. When she saw that the blood ran no 
 
 longer, she rose with bright and humid eyes, rosier than a 
 
 May morning, her cheeks full, her hands warm yet no 
 
 longer parched, fairer in short than ever, and in perfect 
 
 health. " I shall not die ! I shall not die ! " she said, 
 
 clasping my neck in a frenzy of joy. " I can live long and 
 
 love you. My life is in yours, my very existence comes 
 
 from yoa A few drops of your generous blood, more 
 
 precious and sovereign than all the elixirs of the world, 
 
 have given me back to life." 
 
 This scene gave me matter for much reflection, and put 
 into my head some strange thoughts as to Clarimonde. 
 That very evening, when sleep had transported me to my 
 parsonage, I found there Father Serapion, graver and more 
 careworn than ever. He looked at me attentively and said, 
 " Not content with destroying your soul, are you bent also 
 on destroying your body? Unhappy youth, into what 
 snares have you fallen ! " The tone in which he said this 
 struck me much at the time ; but, lively as the impression 
 was, other thoughts soon drove it from my mind. How- 
 ever, one evening, with the aid of a glass, on whose tell-tale 
 position Clarimonde had not counted, I saw her pouring a 
 powder into the cup of spiced wine which she was wont to 
 prepare after supper. I took the cup, and, putting it to 
 my lips, I set it down, as if intending to finish it at leisure. 
 But in reality I availed myself of a minute when her back 
 was turned to empty it away, and I soon after went to bed, 
 determined to remain awake and see what would happen. 
 I had not long to wait. Clarimonde entered as soon as she 
 had convinced herself that I slept. She uncovered my 
 
256 Essays on 
 
 arm and drew from her hair a little gold pin ; then she 
 murmured under her breath, " Only one drop, 
 one Uttle crimson drop, one ruby just to tip xHioPHiLE 
 the bodkin ! As you love me still I must not gautier. 
 die. Ah, poor love ! I am going to drink 
 his blood, his beautiful blood, so bright and so purple. 
 Sleep, my only treasure ; sleep, my darling, my deity ; 
 I will do you no harm ; I will only take so much of your 
 hfe as I need to save my own. Did I not love you so 
 much I might resolve to have other lovers, whose veins I 
 could drain ; but since I have known you I hate all others. 
 Ah, dear arm, how round it is, and how white ! How shall 
 I ever dare to pierce the sweet blue veins ! " And while 
 she spoke she wept, so that I felt her tears rain on the arm 
 she held. At last she summoned courage ; she pricked me 
 slightly with the bodkin and began to suck out the blood. 
 But she drank only a few drops, as if she feared to exhaust 
 me, and then carefully bound up my arm after anointing it 
 with an unguent which closed the wound at once. I could 
 now doubt no longer : Serapion was right. Yet, in spite of 
 this certainty, I could not help loving Clarimonde, and I 
 would willingly have given her all the blood whereof she 
 had need, to sustain her artificial life. Besides, I had not 
 much to fear ; the woman was my warrant against the 
 vampire ; and what I had heard and seen completely re- 
 assured me. I had then well-nourished veins which were 
 not to be soon drawn dry, nor had I reason to grudge and 
 count their drops. I would have pierced my arm myself 
 and bid her drink. I was careful to make not the slightest 
 allusion to the narcotic she had given me, or to the scene 
 that followed, and we lived in unbroken harmony. But my 
 priestly scruples tormented me more than ever, and I knew 
 not what new penance to invent to blunt my passion and 
 mortify my flesh. Though my visions were wholly invol- 
 untary and my will had nothing to do with them, I shrank 
 from touching the host with hands thus sullied and spirit 
 defiled by debauchery, whether in act or in dream. To 
 avoid falling into these harassing hallucinations, I tried 
 to prevent myself sleeping ; I held my eyelids open, and 
 
French Novelists 257 
 
 remained in a standing posture ; striving with all my force 
 against sleep. But soon the waves of slumber 
 THiopHiLE drowned my eyes, and seeing that the struggle 
 GAUTiER. was hopeless, I let my hands drop in weari- 
 ness, and was once more carried to the 
 shores of delusion. . . . Serapion exhorted me most fer- 
 vently, and never ceased reproaching me with my weakness 
 and my lack of zeal. One day, when I had been more 
 agitated than usual, he said to me, "There is only one 
 way to relieve you from this haunting plague, and, though 
 it be extreme, we must try it. Great evils need heroic 
 remedies. I know where Clarimonde was buried ; we must 
 disinter her, and you shall see the real state of your lady- 
 love. You will hardly be tempted to risk your soul for a 
 vile body, the prey of worms and ready to turn to dust. 
 That, if anything, will restore you to yourself," For my 
 part, I was so weary of this double life that I closed with 
 his offer. I longed to know, once for all, which — priest or 
 gallant — was the dupe of a delusion, and I was resolved to 
 sacrifice one of my two lives for the good of the other — 
 yea, if it were necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an 
 existence as I was leading could not last. . . . Father 
 Serapion procured a mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, 
 and at midnight we set out for the cemetery, whose plan 
 and arrangements he knew well. After directing the rays 
 of the dark lantern on the inscriptions of several graves, we 
 came at last to a stone half buried under tall grass, and 
 covered with moss and lichen, whereon we deciphered this 
 epitaph, " Here lies Clarimonde, who in her lifetime was 
 the fairest in the world." '"Tis here," said Serapion ; and, 
 placing his lantern on the ground, he slipped the crowbar 
 into the chinks of the slab and essayed to lift it. The 
 stone yielded, and he set to work with the spade. As for 
 me, stiller and more gloomy than the night itself, I watched 
 him at work, while he, bending over his ill-omened task, 
 sweated and panted, his forced and heavy breath sounding 
 like the gasps of the dying. The sight was strange, and 
 lookers-on would rather have taken us for tomb-breakers 
 and robbers of the dead than for God's priests. The zeal 
 
 S 
 
258 Essays on 
 
 of Serapion was of so harsh and savage a cast, that it gave 
 him a look more of the demon than of the 
 apostle or the angel, and his face, with its th^ophile 
 severe features deeply marked by the glimmer gautier. ; 
 of the lantern, was hardly reassuring. A 
 cold sweat gathered on my limbs and my hair stood on 
 end. In my heart I held Serapion's deed to be an abomin- 
 able sacrilege, and I could have wished that a flash of 
 lightning might issue from the womb of the heavy, clouds 
 which rolled low above our heads and bum him to ashes. 
 The oWls perched about the cypress trees, and, disturbed 
 by the lantern, came and flapped its panes heavily with 
 their dusty wings, the foxes barked in the distance, and a 
 thousand sinister echoes troubled the silence. At length 
 Serapion's spade struck the coffin with the terrible hollow 
 sound that nothingness returns to those who intrude on it. 
 He lifted the lid, and I saw Clarimonde, as pale as marble, 
 and with her hands joined ; there was no fold in her snow- 
 white shroud from head to foot; at the comer of her 
 blanched lips there shone one little rosy drop. At the 
 sight Serapion broke into fury. "Ah! fiend, foul harlot, 
 drinker of gold and blood, we have found you ! " said he, 
 and he scattered holy water over corpse and coffin, tracing 
 the sign of the cross with his bmsh. No sooner had the 
 blessed shower touched my Clarimonde than her fair body 
 crumbled into dust, and became nought but a hideous 
 mixture of ashes and half-bumt bones. " There, Signer 
 Romuald," said the inexorable priest, pointing to the 
 remains, "there is your mistress. Are you still tempted 
 to escort her to the Lido or to Fusina?" I bowed my 
 head; a mighty ruin had taken place within me. I re- 
 turned to my parsonage, and II Signor Romualdo, the 
 lover of Clarimonde, said farewell for ever to the poor 
 priest whose strange companion he had been so long. 
 Only the next night I again saw Clarimonde. She said to 
 me as at first in the church porch, "Poor wretch, what 
 have you done ? Why did you listen to that frantic priest .' 
 Were you not happy ? And what harm had I done you 
 that you should violate my grave and shamefully expose 
 
French Novelists 259 
 
 the misery of my nothingness ? Henceforward all com- 
 munication between us, soul and body, is 
 TH60PHILE broken. Farewell, you will regret me." She 
 GAUTiER. vanished in the air like a vapour, and I saw 
 
 her no more. 
 Alas ! she spoke too truly. I have regretted her again 
 and again. I regret her still. The repose of my soul has 
 indeed been dearly bought, and the love of God itself has 
 not been too much to replace the gap left by hers. This, 
 my brother, is the history of my youth. Never look at 
 woman, and let your eyes as you walk be fixed upon the 
 ground ; for, pure and calm as you may be, a single 
 moment is sufficient to make you lose your eternal peace. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured, by narrative and 
 translation, to give some idea of the characteristics 
 of Gautier's narrative work. Of that work as a 
 whole it may briefly be said that many of the 
 tales, now usually published as nouvelles and 
 romans, are of the first order of excellence, to be 
 read again and again ; that Le Capitaine Fracasse, 
 except in parts, is of the second ; that Made- 
 moiselle de Maupin occupies an exceptional position ; 
 and that the rest are of a decidedly lower rank. 
 Hence, as generally happens with writers who 
 have tried many different literary forms, it does 
 not do to judge Gautier by his novels alone. The 
 exquisite charm which distinguishes him is felt in 
 them, but is not, perhaps, clearly disengaged and 
 distinguished till his other work is compared. 
 With an estimate of his work generally we are 
 not now concerned. Perhaps only he himself, 
 in such a notice as those admirable pieces of 
 criticism which he has given to Heine and to 
 
26o Essays on 
 
 Baudelaire, could have done himself justice. He 
 had affinities to both these writers, 
 and also, possibly in still greater ™autier.^ 
 measure, to Thackeray. All four were 
 strongly tinctured, more strongly, indeed, than 
 any of their contemporaries, with the spirit 
 of irony — fiercer and more tenderly pathetic 
 in Heine, more philosophical and practical in 
 Thackeray, sadder and less wide of view in 
 Baudelaire, more playful in Gautier. Spleen et 
 id^al, the motto which Baudelaire chose for him- 
 self, might perhaps be paralleled in Gautier's case 
 by the alteration. Verve et iddal. The possession 
 of this mixture made him a humorist — the most 
 considerable humorist, if we stick to the proper 
 sense of that word, that France has produced 
 since the seventeenth century. His humour is 
 not confined to his novels by any means, though 
 it is abundantly present in them, and adds greatly 
 to their charm. It is a playful variety, the very 
 reverse of savage, and certainly partaking nothing 
 of the grimness and melancholy which certain 
 critics would have us associate with the quality. 
 He constantly saw, as all ironists and humorists 
 see, the contrast of actual and ideal ; but for the 
 most part his inexhaustible faculty of enjoyment, 
 and the alchemy by which he could extract 
 beauty from everything, saved him from at any 
 rate the appearance of all but very transient fits 
 of melancholy. He had, too, with all his pre- 
 tended laziness, an unconquerable appetite for 
 
French Novelists 261 
 
 work, the sovereignest cordial for any tendency 
 to pine for what is not. He says 
 GAUTiER. himself that he wrote some three 
 hundred volumes ; and, counting news- 
 paper work, there can be little doubt that he 
 did. I have already referred to most of the forms 
 which this activity took, and nothing more remains 
 to be noticed but his charming ballets, of which 
 in masque days Ben Jonson would have been 
 proud, and the mere descriptions of which (we 
 fortunately have them from his own hand) are in 
 themselves half-finished tales and wholly delightful 
 works of literary art. Perhaps some of these 
 have helped to expose him to unmerited rebukes. 
 It has been frequently brought against him as 
 reproach that he acquiesced in the Empire ; and 
 not over-wise things have been said about his 
 materalism " finding its ideal in the f6tes of St. 
 Cloud." The reproach is worse than unjust ; it 
 is unintelligent. No writer ever lived whose 
 talent and spirit were more utterly non-political 
 than Gautier's. He had consistently, and from 
 the very first, declined to join in the republicanism 
 and humanitarianism of some of his contem- 
 poraries. If he had any particular political senti- 
 ment it was a lazy hatred of what he calls, in 
 almost his latest work, la stupidity ^galitaire ; 
 and this feeling is to be found expressed in 
 Mademoiselle de Maupin as clearly as in the 
 Tableaux de Si^ge. 
 
 To my own mind, nothing better pictures 
 
262 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 Gautier than the words of an early poem of his 
 own — 
 
 THiOPHILE 
 
 Une jeune chimfere aux Ifevres de ma coupe, gautier. 
 Dans I'orgie a donn^ le baiser le plus doux ; 
 EUe avait les yeux verts, et jusque' sur sa croupe 
 Ondoyait en torrent I'or de ses cheveux roux. 
 
 Des ailes d'^pervier tremblaient k son dpaule ; 
 La voyant s'envoler je sautai sur ses reins ; 
 Et faisant jusqu'k moi ployer son cou de saule, 
 J'enfongai comme un peigne une main dans ses crins. 
 
 EUe se d^menait hurlante et furieuse, 
 Mais en vain, je broyais ses flancs sur mes genoux ; 
 Alors elle me dit d'une voix gracieuse 
 ' Plus claire que I'argent, " Maitre, oil done allons nous ? " 
 
 Par delk le soleil et par delk I'espace 
 Ou Dieu n'arriverait qu'apr^s I'Aemit^ ; 
 Mais avant d'etre au but ton aile sera lasse ; 
 Car je veux voir mon r6ve en sa r&litd. 
 
 His style had all the strangeness, the charms, 
 and the capabilities of the creature he describes, 
 and his mastery over it is not exaggerated in 
 the poem. Not unfrequently, too, he went a long 
 way on his adventurous journey. But the reflec- 
 tion embodied in the penultimate line generally 
 occurred to him, and then he contented himself 
 with flights less ambitious and sometimes hardly 
 ambitious enough. 
 
VIII 
 
 JULES SANDEAUi 
 
 There are a good many different ideas floating 
 about English literature and English 
 sAND^EAu thought on the subject of French novels. 
 It is sometimes held — justly enough in 
 the main — that the superiority of workmanship 
 which has long distinguished French literature in 
 so many other departments marks it here also. 
 The necessity of a beginning, middle, and end, 
 which critics declare to be incumbent upon all 
 works of literary art, from tragedies to leading 
 articles, is supposed to be better recognised to 
 the south than to the north of the Channel. In 
 character-drawing the French are allowed to be at 
 a certain disadvantage, from their habit of depict- 
 ing types rather than individuals ; but even this 
 has its merits as assisting what Pope would have 
 called the correctness of the total effect. Their 
 dialogue is stiffer but more careful than that of 
 the average English novelist, and in description 
 they can, at the least, hold their own. People 
 
 ^ See Preface. 
 
264 Essays on **■ 
 
 who take this view — professional critics for the 
 
 most part — would probably say that 
 
 the best English novels are superior to san"deau. 
 
 the best French, but that if we take 
 
 the run of Mudie's shelves and compare their 
 
 contents with the gray and yellow volumes of 
 
 Messrs. L^vy, Plon, Hetzel, Hachette, and Char- 
 
 pentier, the advantage from a literary point of 
 
 view is very decidedly in favour of the latter. 
 
 This, I have said, is what may be called the 
 professional view. The general public which reads 
 French novels reads them mainly from a notion 
 that they are more amusing than English fiction. 
 Whether this is so depends a good deal on the notion 
 of amusement entertained by the reader. On the 
 whole, it may be suspected that it is to some 
 extent a survival from the days of the elder Dumas 
 and other writers, who certainly outmatched any 
 English rivalry in their particular line. To this 
 day Thackeray's verdict on Dumas has not been 
 reversed by any competent judge, and no fictitious 
 ordinary exists at which a man may satisfy his 
 honest and uncritical hunger for mere amusement 
 with better and more abundant food than is pro- 
 vided by the dozen volumes that take him from 
 D'Artagnan's setting forth on the buttercup- 
 coloured pony down to his death as he clutches the 
 marshal's baton, or by the other dozen which include 
 La Dame de Monsoreau, Les Quar ante-cinq, and La 
 Reine Margot. But this is only one special variety 
 of French fiction,avariety, too, which has long ceased 
 
French Novelists 265 
 
 to be cultivated. Those who read for the story- 
 should be fairly warned that in an aver- 
 sANDEAu, ^S^ French novel of later days there is, 
 as a rule, less of that element than in an 
 English one,thoughwhat there is maybe better man- 
 aged and, to some people, of a more attractive kind. 
 The last word brings us to yet a third idea 
 about French fiction much more prevalent than 
 either of the other two, and sometimes, it is to be 
 feared, in the case of the graceless, responsible for 
 the notion about amusement. It is supposed that 
 French novels are generally, as Mr. Browning has 
 roundly put it, " scrofulous," that they deal with 
 subjects which to the English novelist are more 
 or less taboo, and which, if he does deal with them, 
 he has to handle in a very cautious and guarded 
 manner. In short, not to waste words on a simple 
 matter, the inevitable ingredient of love, without 
 which a novel would not be a novel, is supposed 
 in a French romance necessarily to take the form 
 of adultery, practised or proposed. To hear some 
 people talk it might be imagined that all French 
 novels were mere sporting treatises, dealing with 
 the lore and incidents of the Ckasse aux mariies, 
 and that no love which is not in the common 
 phrase guilty has a chance with the French 
 novelist. Moreover, as usually happens in such 
 cases, the belief in the fact has been acconipanied 
 by all sorts of deductions and corollaries from it, 
 and by much curious speculation as to its causes. 
 The more ingenuous Englishman is given to 
 
266 Essays on 
 
 believe that the picture of family infelicity is a 
 faithful copy of French home life, and 
 shakes his head when better-informed sandeau. 
 persons assure him that conjugal in- 
 fidelity is after all not so very much commoner, 
 in the departments at least, than in English country 
 life. Others addicted to " sociological " argument 
 ask. What else can you expect when mariages de 
 convenance are the rule, and when opportunities 
 such as an English girl has of making her own 
 choice, and of postponing that choice till she has 
 had her fill of harmless flirtation, are unknown ? 
 Others not destitute of shrewdness (if the fact for 
 which they endeavour to account were only a 
 little better authenticated) point out that the 
 catastrophe of the ideal French matron is not 
 such a very surprising reaction from the altogether 
 fantastic position assigned to the i&esX Jeune fille, 
 that creature of mysterious poetical longings, of 
 aspirations "which nobody but a mother can 
 apprehend," and of a composition decidedly too 
 sylph-like to reconcile herself to such a prosaic 
 institution as marriage. The most practical and 
 downright of the interpreters seek their explana- 
 tion in certain peculiarities of the relations between 
 French husbands and French wives, which it does 
 not need a study of the Physiologie du Mariage to 
 discover ; and all alike agree that it is very sad 
 and very shocking, and that French novels as a 
 rule are by no means suitable companions to the 
 bread and butter even of ovir tolerably emancipated 
 
French Novelists 267 
 
 English misses. I have already hinted that there is 
 some slight doubt in this, as in another 
 sANDEAu. f^inous case, whether the fish is in fact 
 capable of being put into the vessel 
 without causing an overflow. But perhaps the 
 real explanation of the literary part of the pheno- 
 menon is best found by referring to a very similar 
 one in our own literary history. Even those who 
 are not acquainted at first hand with the Restora- 
 tion drama, know something of the four-handed 
 duel which it excited between Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, 
 Charles Lamb, and Macaulay. Here, as in the 
 case before us, a form of literature which was sup- 
 posed to busy itself with representing real life 
 chose to represent this life as governed by, to 
 say the least, a total absence of moral principle. 
 Notwithstanding this, I do not suppose that there 
 is very much need for the average Englishman to 
 disturb himself with the idea that his great-grand- 
 mother's great-grandmother was no better than 
 she should be. In neither case perhaps were 
 actual examples of the types represented very far 
 to seek. There were probably a good many 
 Bellmours and Berinthias then in England, and 
 there are doubtless a good many Fannys and 
 Bussys now in France. But for the most part the 
 moral atmosphere and the list of dramatis personce 
 are both as arbitrary as Charles Lamb wished to 
 prove. The angelic and riveuse maiden ; the 
 husband, sometimes brutal, sometimes merely 
 respectable, but always indifferent to the singularly 
 
268 Essays on 
 
 vague desires of his spouse ; the young man who 
 appears like a revelation of happiness 
 to the interesting mental invalid, are sai«)eau. 
 all purely stock types of the kind 
 always more common in a literature careful of form 
 than in one careless of it, and capable of being 
 matched with a hundred other similar types in 
 other branches. No doubt the production of 
 such types in literature does to a certain extent 
 tend to reproduce them in real life, and this is 
 what Lamb went wrong in overlooking. But to 
 suppose that the type necessarily originated in 
 real life, or even that it of necessity occurs largely 
 there, is certainly a mistaken way of arguing. 
 
 Whether, however, the prevalence of this par- 
 ticular variety of " scrofula " in French literature 
 be great or small, and whatever cause we may 
 assign for that prevalence, it is certain that the 
 author whose name stands at the head of this 
 article must have been very early and very effect- 
 ually touched for the evil. Most of Sandeau's 
 works, and beyond all question the best of them, do 
 not deal with the subject of illicit love at all, and in 
 the few that do so deal the cause of morality is 
 as effectually served by the invariably disastrous 
 effects made to follow on adultery, as by the 
 total absence of anything like loose descriptions. 
 It would be difficult to find in a score of novels 
 and as many minor tales a single passage at 
 which even the nice morality of Wycherley's 
 Olivia could find an excuse to put up its virtuous 
 
French Novelists 269 
 
 fan. Even where the love which is the basis of 
 the story is not in accordance with 
 
 SANDEAU. 
 
 ^ ^^ law and order, there are certain 
 
 marked differences in its treatment. 
 The husband is hardly ever made ridiculous, and 
 he generally has the best of the position, in 
 fact as well as in law, a state of things 
 which must be admitted to be a triumph no less 
 of the author's artistic skill than of his moral 
 principles. M. de Belnave, in Marianna, M. de 
 Rouveres, in Fernand, are perhaps given to 
 making too long speeches — a common and be- 
 setting sin of Sandeau's ; but they manage to get 
 themselves remarkably well out of a position 
 which has been the familiar hell of ridicule 
 for no one knows how many generations. In 
 short, this particular and awkward pas de trois is 
 to Sandeau merely one among others to be treated 
 now and then, and handled artistically when occa- 
 sion serves, not an indispensable ingredient in 
 every ballet and masque which he sets before 
 the public. His way of regarding the sexes and 
 their relations is, on the whole, not very different 
 from that to which we are accustomed in English 
 fiction, save, perhaps, that, especially in his earlier 
 work, he is wont to be rather too Turkish in 
 adopting the proverb, " If you set butter in the 
 sun it will melt," and to put more strongly than 
 strict common sense and experience require 
 the theory of the mysterious and transcendental • 
 besoins of the feminine sex, and the necessity of 
 
270 Essays on 
 
 continually guarding it against temptation. At 
 the same time his studies in this direc- 
 tion are frequently marked by great s/^deau. 
 psychological knowledge and skill. 
 The two novels I have just mentioned contain 
 each some striking evidences of this. In Fer- 
 nand there is something almost appalling in 
 the scientific manner in which the husband 
 chains the two culprits together by the tie of 
 honour in the one case, of guilty affection in 
 the other, sure that while the former holds the 
 latter will break down under the strain, and at 
 last avenge him doubly. In Marianna the steps 
 by which the heroine, after being abandoned and 
 argued with by her lover as to the justice and 
 necessity of the abandonment, is at last herself 
 brought to feel exactly the same emotion, or rather 
 the same absence of it, from the results of which in 
 another she formerly suffered, are admirably drawn. 
 But in these paths the author did not long walk. 
 
 Jules Sandeau cannot be called on the whole a 
 novelist of an extensive repertoire. Indeed, in very 
 many cases, his scenes as well as his characters 
 repeat themselves. The former are almost invari- 
 ably taken from the department of the Creuse, 
 his own birthplace and, as he often says, the least 
 betoured and least bewritten part of France, or 
 else from the districts of Brittany, in the im- 
 mediate neighbourhood of Nantes. His favourite 
 characters, though of course more numerous, are 
 also not very difficult to count. A nobleman of 
 
French Novelists 271 
 
 the old style returning to his diminished estates 
 after the emigration or after 181 5, 
 sANDEAu. ^^^ daughter, and one or more aspir- 
 ants to his daughter's hand, supply 
 the cast of perhaps his best books. La Maison 
 de Penarvan, Mademoiselle de Kirouare, Made- 
 moiselle de la Seiglikre. Another group, the 
 best of which are Fernand, Marianna, and, to 
 a certain extent, Valcreuse, displays the usual 
 trio of husband, wife, and lover ; the first, as I 
 have said, rarely objectionable — perhaps the only 
 exception is in Le Docteur Herbeau — the second 
 incomprise, and suffering extensively from what 
 our fathers called the vapours ; the last ardent 
 and insinuating, but eventually very sick of his 
 bargain. In a great many other novels these 
 types reappear partially and piecemeal, reinforced 
 of course to a certain degree by others. Nearly 
 all are drawn from either the old noblesse and 
 their contemporaries, or from the generation of 
 1830. The Empire figures but little, Bernard 
 Stamply, in Mademoiselle de la Seiglikre, being 
 almost the only Imperialist character of import- 
 ance. Generally speaking, the author is decidedly 
 on the side of the past. He speaks intelligently 
 enough of the defects of the noblesse, and has by no 
 means a mere bric-a-brac affection for them. But 
 at the same time the defects of their adversaries 
 and successors appear to strike him, as it is 
 natural that they should strike a man whose 
 literary and artistic sympathies are especially 
 
272 Essays on 
 
 developed, with peculiar repugnance. While he 
 does not at all flourish the white 
 cockade, and while he is as severe sandeau. 
 upon the Emigrants as any one can 
 possibly desire, he contrives to put the case of 
 the nobles very strongly, and to bring the 
 French ultra - Conservative's undying horror of 
 Radicalism nearly as vividly before us as MM. 
 Erckmann-Chatrian have exhibited the devotion 
 of another class of Frenchmen to the principles 
 of '89. In these, as well as in his more scattered 
 personifications, he has an extraordinary delicacy 
 of touch. There is, except in some early work, 
 very little esprit, only just enough to be excused 
 by Gautier's remark that it is pardonable some- 
 times to display that quality, pour prouver aux 
 sots qu'on pourrait itre leur igal. 
 
 Occasionally there is a tendency to over- 
 indulgence in long speeches and disquisitions, 
 and to discourses about the characters, while the 
 characters themselves are left in the cold. This 
 is particularly noticeable in Madame de Sommer- 
 ville (the earliest independent work) and in 
 Marianna, two novels whose length is out of all 
 proportion to their interest, though in Marianna, 
 at least, there is plenty of interest for a story of 
 more modest dimensions. Un Heritage, the only 
 novel the plot of which is laid out of France, is 
 another which sins a little by not being drawn to 
 scale. But this is a fault out of which the author 
 soon grew, and most of his later work is admirably 
 
French Novelists 273 
 
 planned. Among his other excellencies it is fair 
 to notice a power of interspersing 
 sANDEAu. unobtrusive reflections, showing not 
 a little knowledge of human nature 
 out of the ordinary range of the novelist's ob- 
 servation. Such, for instance, are his remarks 
 in divers places on convalescence and its 
 effects ; remarks which, but for the extreme 
 improbability of the thing, might almost have 
 been translated from Charles Lamb. But his 
 characteristics will be best shown by a somewhat 
 detailed account of one or more of his works. To 
 begin with, I shall take Mademoiselle de Kirouare, 
 a short novel, hardly going beyond the dimensions 
 of a nouvelle, but one! which I think excellently 
 illustrates its writer's style and way of going to 
 work. Mademoiselle de K^rouare is the daughter 
 of a Vendean chief who in 1 8 1 5 returned to his 
 half-ruined chiteau, and to hardly anything else. 
 He had no thought of begging at the foot of the 
 throne for compensation, and the throne had no 
 thought of making him any. So he contented 
 himself with growing old at K^rouare, in the 
 society of his only daughter. 
 
 Marie de Kdrouare grew up in the feudal castle like a 
 flower in a Gothic vase. Her childhood enlivened the 
 sombre dwelling; her youth embellished it with a divine 
 charm. At sixteen she was at once the delight and the 
 pride of her father, and they still talk of her at Clisson, 
 where on Sundays and holidays she went to hear mass. 
 She was, indeed, a beautiful girl, with a grave face, but at 
 the same time ready enough to smile; and showing the 
 
 T 
 
274 Essays on 
 
 stately dignity of the Kerouares, tempered by the sweet 
 light of youth. From her mother she in- 
 herited a delicate and tender soul ; from her jules 
 father's family a character of chivalrous ad- sandeau. 
 venture, which had been fostered by her 
 solitary nurture. From her cradle her father had en- 
 tertained her with tales of war ; everything around reminded 
 her of the Vendean struggle, full as it was of heroism of all 
 kinds ; so that, in an atmosphere of glorious memories, on 
 a soil still volcanic, under a sky haunted by mighty shadows, 
 her imagination was naturally excited early, and was not 
 likely to linger in the beaten paths of reality. This pre- 
 cocious fanaticism was, however, softened by a disposition 
 of perfect sweetness. On horseback, with floating hair, 
 she was an Amazon ; attending on her father, she reminded 
 one of Antigone. He was, indeed, the one passion of her 
 little life. She loved him with no common affection, but 
 her heart's needs did not as yet go further, and when M. 
 de Grandlieu presented himself to ask of the Count de 
 K^rouare his daughter's hand, Marie had simply never 
 thought of other loves and other ties than those which 
 bound her to her father. 
 
 The suitor who thus presents himself is the 
 son of an old brother-in-arms of the Count's, to 
 whom Marie has been informally betrothed from 
 her cradle. He is young, rich, handsome, and 
 nobly born, his only fault being an invincible 
 reserve and coldness of manner. He makes no 
 overt objection to the suggestion to which Marie's 
 youth and the Count's fondness for his daughter 
 give some colour, that the marriage shall be put 
 off for a few years, and Marie, glad of the respite, 
 and not dreaming that M. de Grandlieu enter- 
 tains any particular affection for her, soon forgets 
 all about the engagement except that she is 
 
French Novelists 275 
 
 accustomed to see her suitor at her side, and 
 that sometimes the signs of tenderness 
 sANDEAu. breaking through his reserve rather 
 astonish her than affect her in any 
 other way. Meanwhile a sister of M. de 
 Kdrouare, who has offended him by a mesalliance, 
 makes her appearance, intent on a reconciliation, 
 and brings with her her son, an interesting youth 
 of an impulsive character. The recovered rela- 
 tions make a three months' stay at the chateau. 
 M. de Grandlieu is accidentally called away for 
 the whole time, and Marie as a matter of course 
 falls in love, girl-fashion, with her boy cousin. 
 Octave. After his departure she says nothing 
 about it, but gradually grows silent and distraite, 
 much to the concern of her father and (secretly) of 
 her lover, though the latter preserves his im- 
 passiveness, and only irritates her by showing her 
 in his silent way the more attention the more sulky 
 she is. All this time she dares not tell her secret 
 to either, though the day of her marriage is now 
 approaching, and the anger of M. de K^rouare 
 against his brother-in-law and nephew is stirred 
 up again by the part that the former takes in the 
 opposition to Charles X. At length, when she 
 is one night alone with her father, Marie takes 
 partial courage. He sees her weeping, and de- 
 mands to know the cause. At last she speaks — 
 
 " Father," she said, " if you must know it, I do not 
 love M. de Grandlieu. When I allowed your word and 
 mine to be given, I thought it possible that I might in time 
 
276 Essays on 
 
 bring myself to love him. It seemed to me easy then ; it 
 
 seemed to me that my inclination could not 
 
 long run contrary to your wishes. Forgive jules 
 
 me, I was wrong. I have tried hard ; I have sandeau. 
 
 struggled long with my heart. I have suffered 
 
 and waited in vain, and I feel that I must give up the effort. 
 
 The day of my wedding is at hand, and it is that, father, 
 
 which is killing your child." 
 
 M. de K&ouare did not speak, but his brow was over- 
 cast At last he said, in a slow and grave tone, " Are you 
 quite sure, my daughter, that you cannot love M. de 
 Grandlieu ? " 
 
 " Yes, father ! " she cried. 
 
 " Are you certain that you can never love him ? that the 
 marriage revolts your tastes and instincts ? and is it this 
 which is killing my dearest child ? " 
 
 "Yes, father," she murmured. 
 
 After a long silence, longer than the former, M. de 
 Kdrouare rose. " Daughter," he said, " for the sake of 
 your happiness I will do what I would never have done to 
 save my own life in the days when I loved life best. May 
 our ancestors pardon me for failing thus to observe their 
 ancient loyalty ! For your sake I am going to ask back 
 from a man of honour the word which you and I have 
 freely pledged him." 
 
 But at the very moment when the letter is 
 about to be written to the rejected suitor, he 
 himself appears. He has, of course, known 
 nothing of Marie's troubles, and his visit, directly 
 as it concerns them, is of an entirely independent 
 nature. He has been mixing in the Legitimist 
 intrigues which 1830 excited anew in La Vendue ; 
 his share has been discovered ; the popular 
 vengeance is already directed against him, and he 
 feels that his fortune is but a precarious one. 
 
French Novelists 277 
 
 Accordingly he comes, of his own accord, to 
 restore to M. de K^rouare and his 
 sANDEAu. daughter the word that they pledged 
 him in his prosperity. " It does not 
 become him to drag others to share his own ruin." 
 The revulsion of feeling which this conduct, 
 especially considering M. de Grandlieu's ignorance 
 of her own feelings, produces in a girl of Marie's 
 temperament and education may easily be guessed. 
 At once, and before her father can reply, she 
 speaks : " Monsieur de Grandlieu,'' said she, in a 
 clear and steady voice, "if it is not for you to 
 drag us down in your ruin, it is for us to follow 
 you there. Your poverty is dearer to us than 
 your fortune. As long as this house stands your 
 refuge is here, and, if it is true that you love me, 
 here, sir, is my hand." Her father's rapture, as 
 he thus sees the point of honour more than 
 satisfied, instead of insulted, as he had feared, 
 is easy to imagine, and his untranslatable cry, 
 " Bien I mon sang ! " expresses it finely. Nor do 
 the scruples of Grandlieu shake Marie's resolution. 
 She even insists on the marriage taking place 
 quickly, although in private, and when the glow 
 of the impulse is over her mental sufferings are 
 worse than ever. On the eve of the wedding 
 she writes a despairing letter of apology to Octave, 
 of whom, since his departure from Kdrouare, she 
 has seen and heard nothing. She begs him to 
 pardon her ; implores him to allow her to die 
 without his malediction, and then proceeds to 
 
278 Essays on 
 
 array herself for the sacrifice. On the very 
 morning Grandlieu once more presents 
 himself. " Mademoiselle," he says, " are sandeau. 
 you certain that you are not merely 
 obeying a generous impulse? Are you sure 
 that you have no repugnance in allying your 
 destiny with mine? Did I not, without know- 
 ing it, take unfair advantage of a moment 
 of enthusiasm and excitement, of which I 
 had unintentionally and undesignedly been the 
 cause ? Did I not surprise you into consent ? 
 Do not allow yourself to be fettered by bash- 
 fulness, but tell me, Marie, for there is still time. 
 You are dearer to me than life ; yet I would not 
 accept my happiness at the cost of a single tear 
 of yours." But Mademoiselle de K^rouare has 
 learnt her part too well. She is resolved to lose 
 evetything, fors I'honneur, and they are married. 
 
 At the end of the day, however, the almost 
 inevitable breakdown comes. She wanders alone 
 into the grounds of the chiteau, and by the bank 
 of the river where she had exchanged her ill-starred 
 vows with Octave, her position at last presents 
 itself to her fully. In a sort of delirium she 
 roams about for hours, and at length the chiteau 
 is alarmed. But she returns at last and presents 
 herself to her husband. To him then and too late 
 she confesses that she does not and cannot love 
 him, that she cannot bring herself to be a wife to 
 him, and that though Octave is but a memory to her, 
 to that memory she will remain faithful. Grandlieu 
 
French Novelists 279 
 
 accepts the situation as only a man of his stamp 
 could accept it. He refuses to separ- 
 sANBEAu. ^^^ itova. his wife, or to afflict M. de 
 Kdrouare's last days with any open 
 scandal. He will not avenge himself on Octave, 
 whose identity, indeed, he does not know and 
 scorns to ask ; he will respect Marie's wishes and 
 he hardly even reproaches her. Through the 
 fever which her excitement and exposure have 
 brought on, he nurses her assiduously, and after- 
 wards so orders their life that no one suspects 
 anything wrong. But he has a refuge. He busies 
 himself more and more in Legitimist plots, hoping, 
 or rather certain, thus one day to be able to free 
 his wife from her fetters and himself from his 
 misery, by his own death. Gradually a conviction 
 of this resolve forces itself upon Marie ; and as at 
 the same time his unceasing care and the silence 
 of Octave, who had never given a sign, have had 
 a certain effect upon her mind, she becomes deeply 
 moved, and even makes certain advances to her 
 husband, which he repels, though with perfect 
 gentleness. At last, thinking her completely 
 recovered in health, he gives her a letter which 
 had arrived during her illness, and which he has 
 kept unread, from no jealous motives, but simply 
 for fear of over-exciting her. It is from Octaye ; 
 and the irony of fate may be easily divined. 
 Octave has never thought again of his boy-and- 
 girl flirtation with his cousin, has himself been 
 long married, congratulates her heartily on her 
 
28o Essays on 
 
 own wedding, and rallies her, not too delicately, 
 on the romantic tone of her epistle. 
 
 JULES 
 
 Marie read the letter through twice, the sandeau. 
 first time with an air of incredulity, the 
 second with a cold and steady glance. Then she placed 
 it quietly in its envelope, and the envelope in her 
 pocket. Having done this she remained for a long 
 time seated at the foot of the oak, with her head resting 
 on her hands, calm, silent, and without movement. What 
 passed in her ? To understand this one must oneself 
 have buried a living person in the oubliette of one's own 
 heart, When she rose she was radiant and transfigured. 
 It seemed to her that God had just drawn her from nothing- 
 ness, and that the splendour of creation was before her for 
 the first time. She passed her hands over her face with the 
 gesture of one who would recollect herself, and then cast a 
 look of delight on all around. All around was festival and 
 joy. The birds sang at full throat pitch ; the winged insects 
 strewed the air with ruby, amethyst, and emerald ; the haze 
 which some hours before enveloped woods and uplands had 
 disappeared, and all nature was sunning itself in the warm 
 kisses of the light. Even so was it in Marie's soul ; she 
 heard new voices singing within her, and she saw the image 
 of her husband disengaging itself from the mist in which it 
 had so long been wrapped. It was a kind of revelation, 
 and her whole being was drenched in unknown delight. 
 
 She returns to the chateau in the same half- 
 bewitched condition, anticipating a complete ex- 
 planation and a happy future. But the just gods 
 have no such fate in store for her. As she reaches 
 her home her husband is quitting it ; and though 
 they meet, he naturally enough mistakes the origin 
 of the delight which her face shows, sets it down 
 to the letter she has received from her lover, and 
 hurries off to an insurgent rendezvous. The result 
 
French Nbvelists 281 
 
 is, of course, a certainty. M. de Grandlieu refuses 
 
 quarter and all chance of escape, and 
 
 sANDEAu. ^^^^ defending a farmhouse against the 
 
 troops. His wife and father-in-law 
 
 survive him but a short time, and M. Octave 
 
 Duvivier, heir-at-law of the chateau of Kdrouare, 
 
 sells it for a cotton-factory. 
 
 The story is simple enough, and the somewhat 
 antique and heroic passions which it depicts may 
 not be much to the taste of the present day, which 
 must have a modern element in one kind or another 
 in its fiction, whatever it desires in its furniture. 
 For myself I must confess that "pour Chim^ne 
 j'ai les yeux de Rodrigue," and that in presence 
 of so exquisitely drawn a picture of the higher 
 manners and morality I cannot be very careful to 
 inquire whether it ever existed out of books, or 
 whether the circumstances of its existence were or 
 were not circumstances the extinction of which is 
 to be regretted. That the author evidently sym- 
 pathises strongly with the characters he draws, I 
 have already said. But the sympathy is thoroughly 
 artistic in character. Short as the story is, no one 
 can possibly wish it either longer or shorter : the 
 former wish being, it may be remarked with leave 
 of a great authority, quite as bad a compliment to 
 the art of a story as the latter. The characters 
 have all the advantages and none of the drawbacks 
 of distinct types. They have the clearness and 
 firm drawing which are natural to their class ; and, 
 at the same time, the individuality, the want of 
 
282 Essays on 
 
 which is that class's besetting sin. M. de Grandlieu 
 is not in the least a prig, despite his 
 somewhat Grandisonian attributes : M. .A^^ff,, 
 
 SANDEAU. 
 
 de Kdrouare is nothing so little as 
 a dummy pere noble, and Marie herself is a 
 perfect heroine. Her mistake, if mistake it be, 
 is almost an inevitable consequence of her dis- 
 position and bringing-up ; and her fate has just 
 sufficient intermixture of destiny to be tragic, and 
 just little enough to retain the human interest 
 which the mere working of inauspicious stars is 
 apt to destroy. The author's comic power is not 
 indeed here shown as it is in the longer and better 
 known Maison de Penarvan ; but, from the nature 
 of the case and the scale of the book, comedy 
 would have been decidedly out of place. 
 
 An admirable example in a totally different 
 style is Catherine. The opening words will best 
 describe its scene — 
 
 St. Sylvain is a poor village in the district of La Marche. 
 You may see there half a dozen thatched roofs clustered 
 round a rustic church, very much as ragged children cluster 
 round their mother; she gathers them lovingly together, 
 and presses them to her bosom to warm them. The country 
 is poor but picturesque, and its special charm in my eyes is 
 that no tourist's indiscretion has ever revealed its secret. 
 In winter you would think it Siberia ; but when spring 
 comes, everything becomes gay, green, flowery, and full of 
 song. The village hides its poverty under a cloak of foliage, 
 which April and May throw over its shoulders ; the bind- 
 weed stars the hedges ; the cherry-trees scatter odorous 
 snow over the footpaths ; and the very thatch itself is 
 transformed into a flower-garden, where wallflowers and 
 
French Novelists 283 
 
 house-leek, bluebells and pellitory, grow and flourish in 
 good understanding with one another. 
 
 sANDEAu. "^^^ central figure of the little 
 > society of St. Sylvain is, of course, the 
 curd, Fran9ois Paty, a priest possessed of all 
 the excellencies of Chaucer's and Goldsmith's 
 parsons, but endowed with considerably less 
 than even forty pounds a year. He has, how- 
 ever, one treasure in his niece Catherine, a girl 
 of seventeen, called by all the country round 
 sometimes La Petite Vierge, from a fancied resem- 
 blance to a picture of Our Lady in the church, 
 sometimes La Petite Fde, from her good deeds and 
 her fairy-like appearance. 
 
 When there was some distress to relieve at St. Sylvain 
 or in the neighbourhood, and the vicar's purse and the poor- 
 box were both empty, Catherine would send to the nearest 
 town and sell her embroidery, or at the worst would mount 
 Annette, her uncle's mare, and go a-begging in the district, 
 sure to return with a coin or two in her bag. As soon as 
 she was seen either in a farmyard or at the gates of a 
 country house the cry would be, " Here is La Petite Vierge 
 on her rounds for the poor ;" and each one would give her 
 a kind word and a contribution. She was known for a 
 dozen miles round, and her apparition was always taken as 
 a good omen. It was she who dressed the church on 
 holidays, sometimes with the flowers she gathered, at others 
 with those which her fingers had made. As for her house- 
 keeping, it was worth seeing ; and so were the cunning 
 repairs she managed to make in her uncle's single surplice 
 and cassock. 
 
 This being the case, it is not to be wondered 
 at that the vicar was proud of his niece, and that 
 he was wont to express this pride to his chief 
 
284 Essays on 
 
 confidant, Monsieur Noirel, the second man in 
 the village, who united the high func- 
 tions of churchwarden and school- s/^pE^u. 
 master to the reputation of possessing 
 considerable hoards, and the actual possession 
 of a son, Claude by name, who assisted in 
 school, performed the functions of clerk with a 
 loud and clear voice, and was unfortunately very 
 ugly. In the opinion of the village, however, 
 there could be no doubt about Catherine and 
 Claude making a match of it ; and Papa Noirel, 
 like a shrewd French peasant, was by no means 
 averse to the idea of a daughter-in-law who, if she 
 had little ready money, was an admirable house- 
 wife, and could be made to keep herself and a 
 good deal more by her embroidery. 
 
 Now, at the moment when the story opens, 
 St. Sylvain was in a very bad way. Times had 
 been hard ; the resources of the vicar and the 
 charity of the neighbourhood had been quite used 
 up, and at the very moment came an episcopal 
 intimation from the Bishop of Limoges that he 
 intended to hold a visitation at the village on the 
 day (soon to come round) of its patron saint. 
 This honour and compliment, for such it was, 
 nearly drove poor Frangois out of his mind. 
 How were himself, his curate, and his church to 
 be made presentable ? How were the Bishop and 
 a dozen clergy to be entertained ? Nobody but 
 Noirel had either money or means, and he, as 
 may be supposed, was not eager to offer. So the 
 
French Novelists 285 
 
 vicar, in placid despair, resolved, after the manner 
 of men and vicars, to leave the 
 sANDEAu. question of the Bishop's reception to 
 fate. Not so Catherine. She re- 
 members one chateau of the neighbourhood 
 where she has never begged ; chiefly, it must be 
 confessed, because begging there seemed hopeless. 
 This was Bigny, the property of a certain Count 
 de Song^res, who had left the country by no 
 means in the odour of sanctity years before, and 
 where a bailiff of evil and ferocious manners 
 reigned in his master's stead. Despite the ill 
 repute of the place, Catherine, escorted some way 
 by Claude, makes the effort, and is received by 
 the bailiff as might be expected. She is refused 
 with all sorts of insults, and the repulse, so 
 different from the treatment she usually meets 
 with, coupled with her despair about the Bishop's 
 reception, quite breaks her down. She sits weep- 
 ing at the foot of a tree for a long time, when 
 suddenly a heavenly apparition manifests itself. 
 
 She had been crying for nearly an hour, and the sun 
 was already lengthening the shadows of the cypresses and 
 pines when she heard sudden barkings. She started up in 
 terror, thinking that Robineau, the bailiff, had actually 
 loosed the mastiffs on her; but she was soon reassured, 
 by finding playful hounds, well mannered and affectionate, 
 licking her hands and frolicking round her. Soon she 
 saw a young man in a plain hunting dress, with gun on 
 shoulder. He was tall and slight. A frock-coat with metal 
 buttons showed a figure as lithe as Catherine's own; a 
 black velvet cap only half hid his golden hair, and his pale 
 and distinguished countenance showed his aristocratic birth. 
 
286 Essays on 
 
 The angelic being in metal-buttoned coat and 
 black velvet cap is the Count's son 
 Roger, but he is no wolf in sheep's s/ndeau. 
 clothing. He consoles Catherine, pre- 
 sents her with a handsome subscription, and 
 when her inexperience has spent all this on vest- 
 ments and such like matters, leaving nothing for 
 my Lord Bishop's creature comforts, he comes 
 once more to the rescue by sending from the 
 chateau, not merely carp and geese, pies and wine 
 of unapproachable excellence, but even plate and 
 linen. Thus the visitation is an immense success, 
 and the excellent Bishop reads his attendant 
 clergy a lecture on the way in which the vicar, 
 without ever grumbling at his tiny stipend, is able 
 to entertain thus royally by means of thrift and 
 good management. Meanwhile Roger has been 
 improving his acquaintance with Catherine, quite 
 in the way of honesty, but much to the dis- 
 comfiture of the good Claude, who, even setting 
 aside his ugliness, is obviously nowhere in com- 
 parison. Roger falls desperately in love with 
 La Petite Vierge, and determines to marry her, 
 she on her side being naturally carried away by 
 the beauty and amiability of the young gentle- 
 man. At this point, however, the Count de 
 Song^res himself appears on the scene. He has 
 been informed of all that has happened, and a 
 good deal more, too, by Robineau, the bailiff; 
 and he has quite other views for Roger. Indeed, 
 he intends him to marry his cousin Malvina, 
 
French Novelists 287 
 
 daughter of an affectionate sister of his. This 
 sister, having made a mesalliance, and 
 sANDEAu. thereby enriched herself, is now ami- 
 ably endeavouring to oust her brother, 
 who had not disdained to borrow from his parvenu 
 brother-in-law, from the family estates. Malvina 
 is determined on a title and a chateau, and 
 the Count does not see why he should not 
 pay his debts with Roger and the worthless 
 estate of Bigny. But he cannot take the high 
 parental line with the young man, for the 
 simple reason that he has wasted all the 
 fortune due to hira from his mother, and there- 
 fore a rupture would be highly inconvenient ; so 
 he feigns amiability, persuades Malvina and her 
 mother to come down to Bigny, and fits up the 
 old ramshackle chateau gorgeously for their re- 
 ception. Malvina cannot resist the idea of visiting 
 the castle of her ancestors, and as she is a very 
 handsome girl the Count does not doubt of 
 succeeding in his designs on Roger. He manages 
 admirably ; as well as Major Pendennis himself 
 He makes no secret of the affair with Catherine, 
 even to his sister and niece, but speaks of it 
 with gentle irony as a generous and poetical 
 outburst of youth. With Malvina his conversa- 
 tion is all of the family arms, the room in the 
 chateau that Charles VII slept in, the jewels that 
 Marie Antoinette gave his mother, and so forth. 
 To his sister he represents the uncertainty of the 
 law and the wisdom of amicable settlements. 
 
288 Essays on 
 
 As to Roger, he simply lets him alone, contrives 
 that he shall be as much as possible 
 in Malvina's company, and blandly ^I^^tlv. 
 puts aside the young man's passionate 
 declarations towards Catherine. Now Roger, 
 for an angel in metal buttons and black velvet 
 cap, is rather a weak-minded young man. He 
 has not the least intention of giving Catherine 
 up, but his appointments with her are ingeniously 
 frustrated ; her image is gradually removed from 
 his mind, and Malvina is certainly pretty. The 
 final stroke is given by a cunning interview, in 
 which Madame Barnajon, the mother, points out 
 to Catherine the injury she will do Roger if she 
 holds him to his word, while La Petite Vierge 
 herself sees the cousins apparently on the best 
 of terms with each other. The denouement, how- 
 ever, is not so simple as it may seem. The 
 good vicar is fatally injured in rescuing a child 
 from a burning house, or rather in endeavouring 
 to do so, for the real rescuer of both is Claude. 
 The latter, who is aware of Catherine's position, 
 and is resolved to play out the part of self-sacrifice 
 which he has begun by refusing (much to his 
 father's disgust) to urge his suit to the vicar's 
 niece, goes off to fetch Roger as a consoler for 
 Catherine, and all meet by the vicar's deathbed. 
 He has never deceived himself as to the lover's 
 amiable but weak character, and is in despair for 
 his defenceless niece. 
 
 When Roger had finished speaking, and had made full 
 
French Novelists 289 
 
 offer of all his worldly goods, Catherine remained musingly 
 silent, and allowed her eyes to wander reflect- 
 
 juLEs ingly from her lover to her uncle, and from 
 
 SANDEAU. her uncle to Claude, who remained modestly 
 
 at the end of the room. Roger still on his 
 
 knees, Frangois half sitting on his bed, awaited her 
 
 answer, the one full of hope, the other of alarm. Claude 
 
 alone expected nothing. Some minutes passed thus. 
 
 During this time, what was passing in Catherine's mind ? 
 Did she by one of those instantaneous acts of intuition, 
 which no analysis can reach, understand the change that 
 had taken place in the Viscount's heart during the last few 
 days ? Did she tell herself that the sacrifice of her whole 
 life was not too much to assure the happiness of her uncle ? 
 Did she blench at the idea suggested by Madame Bamajon, 
 that in accepting Roger she would be placing a stumbling- 
 block in his way ? Or, remembering all that Claude had 
 been and done for her, did she, child as she was, feel 
 irresistibly the desire to reward so much self-sacrifice? 
 We know not. With a sudden movement of despairing 
 tenderness, like a young mother who is separated from her 
 child, she took in both her hands Roger's golden head, and 
 kissed his forehead and his hair : then she rose and went 
 towards Claude. 
 
 " Brother," she said, " you know my heart and its suffer- 
 ings. I do not think I can recover, and if I do I shall 
 keep in my heart a spell of sadness of which time will not 
 relieve me. All that I can promise, and that I promise 
 before God, is to hold unstained the honour of the hearth 
 which gives me the right to sit at it. Have you courage 
 and strength enough to open the door of your house to 
 me?" 
 
 Claude's answer may be guessed, and so the 
 vicar goes to his rest, and Roger to Malvina. 
 
 But the task of the churchwarden's son is not 
 finished. Catherine and he are only betrothed, 
 not married, and even then there is the still 
 
 U 
 
290 Essays on 
 
 longer step between marriage and love. For a 
 year Catherine and her old maid live 
 peaceably enough at Noirel's, Claude sandeau. 
 being as assiduous as ever, but if 
 possible even more respectful. At the end of 
 the year Noirel dies, leaving a still fuller stock- 
 ing than report had credited him with. The 
 marriage can be no longer delayed, and Claude 
 takes up his residence at the neighbouring town 
 to arrange his affairs and make his preparations. 
 They are married, and he takes her, not to the 
 old village home, but to Bigny itself, which he has 
 bought, — Malvina had soon tired of the ramshackle 
 castle — altered, and refurnished as a roomy farm- 
 house. At first she does not know whether to be 
 pleased at the infinite little cares for her comfort 
 which the place shows, or scandalised at his want 
 of delicacy in bringing her to a home necessarily 
 full of the memories of his rival. But in the 
 evening he disappears, and she soon receives this 
 letter — 
 
 Catherine, you are still heart-sick. I am not necessary 
 to you now ; and I feel that my presence would only fret 
 your distress and retard your cure. I am going away, 
 happy enough in the thought that your uncle in heaven has 
 no reason to be dissatisfied with me. Had I thought that I 
 could, without chaining your life to mine, have made you 
 accept the modest affluence which my father has left me, I 
 should have said to you. Take it. But you would not have 
 taken anything. Forgive me for having married you ; I 
 did it only in order to have the right of giving you all. Your 
 fortune is not great, but it is enough to allow you to live 
 pleasantly, to fear no want, and to do some good to your 
 
French Novelists 291 
 
 poor, whose providence you will, I know, continue to be. 
 
 Do not disturb yourself about me ; I am 
 
 JULES taking with me much more than I shall want. 
 
 SANDEAu. I shall try to travel a little, and to become 
 
 less of a bumpkin, by knocking about the 
 world. Try on your part to recover, if not completely, at 
 any rate enough to be able to bear me when I ask you to 
 take me in. You will find a comer somewhere for me, and 
 you shall not find me a nuisance. Besides, if it worries 
 you to see the face at which you used to laugh, I will set 
 out once more on my travels, and will not come back again 
 till you call me. — Your brother, Claude. 
 
 When she had read her letter Catherine first put it to 
 her lips, and then placed it as a talisman next her heart. 
 
 At the end of the year Claude returned. We do not 
 know if he set out again. All that we do know is, that the 
 precise day of his return was the last of the history of La 
 Petite Vierge. 
 
 I have selected these two stories for more 
 particular analysis because they seem to me to 
 show better than any others the peculiarly quiet 
 and delicate art, hardly to be reproduced in 
 any abstract, with which Sandeau treats subjects 
 that would, with less careful workmanship and 
 handling, be ordinary and commonplace enough. 
 Neither of the stories could, perhaps, be termed 
 his masterpiece if we are to look to length and 
 scale as well as to excellence. Probably La 
 Maison de Penarvan, which is also his best 
 known work in England, deserves that title as 
 well as any other. The picture of Rende de 
 Penarvan, last of her race, burying her youth 
 and beauty for years in the joint composition of 
 
292 Essays on 
 
 a history of her house — her collaborator being a 
 most admirably original copy (if the 
 oxymoron be allowable) of Dominie sandeau. 
 Sampson — waking up to real life when 
 she finds that there is still a Penarvan alive 
 and in danger of the two unpardonable sins 
 of Liberalism and a mesalliance, captivating 
 and marrying him almost against his will, forc- 
 ing him into the ranks of the Chouans, where 
 he meets his death, bringing up her daughter, 
 to whom she never forgives her sex, in stern 
 seclusion, turning her off at once for marrying a 
 bourgeois, and only at last melted into humanity 
 by her grandchild, is in many ways an admirable 
 one. Very good again is Mademoiselle de la 
 Seigliere, with its curious theme of an enriched 
 peasant driven by aristocratic wiles to restore to 
 his old seigneur the estate which the latter has 
 forfeited by emigration. Valcreuse deserves special 
 notice both for its merits, and because it illustrates 
 the peculiar theory of feminine weakness as a 
 matter of course to which I have before referred. 
 Madeleine, a well-known book, and one deservedly 
 honoured by the author's future colleagues with a 
 crown, is perhaps a little Utopian in its picture of 
 a young roui, reformed by his cousin, and by the 
 agency of honest labour in which she ingeniously 
 engages him ; but it is a charming sketch. So 
 is La Chasse au Roman, a decorous but most 
 amusing treatment of the same theme which 
 Th^ophile Gautier, in Celle-ci et Celle-la, and 
 
French Novelists 293 
 
 Feydeau in Sylvie, not to mention many others, 
 have also handled, and of which the 
 sANDEAu. familiar English play-title of The Way 
 to Win Him tells the story. Lest it 
 be thought that I am eulogising indiscriminately, 
 let me mention as by no means so successful 
 Le Docteur Herbeau, an exaggerated and painful 
 study of senile folly and its punishment, and 
 Sacs et Parchemins — almost the only one of 
 Sandeau's books which I have found tedious, 
 though it turned into an admirable play. On 
 the other hand, his boy's book, La Roche aux 
 Mouettes, most certainly deserves the honour 
 of translation into English which has fallen 
 to its lot ; and his chief work since the war, 
 Jean de Thommeray, seems to me to merit 
 more favour than it has received, especially for 
 its sketch of 1830 from a new point of view. 
 Sandeau, it may readily be believed, was but 
 half the child of that glorious and stormy epoch, 
 and the illustrations of it to which he seems 
 fondest of alluding are Lamartine and Vigny, not 
 Hugo. Had he been present at the first repre- 
 sentation of Hernani, I can hardly think that it 
 would have been with a red ticket. Finally, it 
 must be noticed that his shortest stories are 
 among the best things he has done. Olivier is 
 spoilt by some obvious improbabilities, but Le 
 Chdteau de Montsabrey, Le Jour sans Lendemain, 
 and Un Dibut dans le Magistrature are perfect 
 in their kind. What that kind is must have been 
 
294 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 already sufficiently, indicated. Scandal there is 
 none in Sandeau's work. Yet the 
 author is steeped to the lips in that sandeau. 
 artistic feeling which, according to some 
 people, inevitably leads to the confounding of 
 moral distinctions, the selection of perilous and 
 dubious subjects, the subjection of everything to 
 the culte f^roce du beau, and so forth. Unless 
 they escape from the difficulty by declaring that 
 Sandeau, not being immoral, cannot be an artist- 
 writer, they must accept the demolition of their 
 cherished delusion, that to praise the art of a 
 writer is a cunning cloak intended to hide a 
 taste for immorality. If La Maison de Penarvan 
 and its fellows are not acceptable to every 
 mood of every mind, that is a drawback which 
 they share with a good deal of literature. It may 
 perhaps require a little time to adjust the eye to the 
 subdued atmosphere of a region " where the world 
 is quiet," where there is passion enough, but passion 
 which rarely tears itself to tatters, and can live, 
 and sometimes die, without shrieking and attitud- 
 inising. But when the eye has got its focus it is 
 apt to return to the spectacle, and to be greatly 
 refreshed and delighted thereby. To use once 
 more in an altered and happier form words which 
 were applied to Sandeau in days long gone by, 
 " Quand on I'aura trouve, on saura le garden" 
 
IX 
 
 OCTAVE FEUILLET 
 (1878I) 
 
 The reader of a certain section of French 
 literature is sometimes tempted to make 
 feuTllet reflections similar to thosewhich occurred 
 to the excellent Babouc during his 
 visit to the city of Persepolis. " II conclut qu'une 
 telle soci^td ne pouvait subsister : que la jalousie, 
 la discorde, la vengeance, devaient ddsoler toutes 
 les maisons : que les larmes et le sang devaient 
 couler tous les jours : que certainement les maris 
 tueraient les galants de leurs femmes, ou en 
 seraient tu^s : et qu'enfin Ituriel faisait fort bien 
 de ddtruire tout d'un coup une ville abandonnde a 
 de continuels d^sordres." It is true that, as in 
 Babouc's case, these lugubrious sentiments are not 
 likely to be unmixed. We read of the Scythian 
 that by degrees " il s'affectionnait a la ville, dont 
 le peuple dtait poll, doux et bienfaisant, quoique 
 Idger, m^disant et plein de vanitd." But still it is 
 a little difficult for persons of other races than the 
 
 ^ See Preface. 
 
296 Essays on 
 
 French, in reading the average novel of French 
 society, to abstain from a certain won- 
 der how French society manages, on ^^^^^_ 
 its own showing, to subsist. For my 
 own part, I do not know any novelist who pro- 
 duces this sensation of wonder more forcibly than 
 M. Octave Feuillet. This is doubtless owing in 
 great part to the excellence of his workmanship, 
 but it is owing also to the moderation of it. M. 
 Feuillet is never eccentric, even though there be 
 in these days a greater license of eccentricity 
 allowed to academicians than of old. He is never 
 abnormal or paradoxical ; he does not go to the 
 ends of the earth to catch one vagary of passion, 
 and then laborioiisly elaborate its strangeness. It 
 is not from him that we should expect the grave 
 remark made by another writer, " Heureuse elle- 
 meme, elle trouvait naturel de faire les autres 
 heureux," — that is to say, the lady referred to was 
 so exceedingly fond of her husband that she could 
 not find it in her heart to be cruel to her lover. 
 M. Feuillet, moreover, appears to be guided by 
 something more than taste and common sense 
 in the selection of his subjects. He proceeds 
 distinctly upon the lines of religion and morality ; 
 he deplores the disorders which he relates as 
 sincerely as may be ; he endeavours as best he 
 can to point out their remedies ; and in his 
 descriptions he very carefully avoids undue com- 
 plaisance and undue luxuriance of language. Yet 
 in almost every one of his larger novels the 
 
French Novelists 297 
 
 principal parts, or some of them, are taken by 
 
 lovers whose love is unrecognised by law, 
 
 FEuiLLET. ^^^ *^^ ^^'-^ °f ^^ general prevalence 
 
 of such love is as much taken for granted 
 
 as by Balzac himself. 
 
 The unpleasant • effect which is thus produced 
 is to my fancy much increased by a curious 
 peculiarity of the author. I do not know whether 
 it be a consequence of the orthodoxy upon which 
 M. Feuillet prides himself, but in almost every 
 case his Adams and their Eves observe strictly 
 the traditional relationship. Eve is always the 
 tempter, and, generally speaking, Adam yields in a 
 half-hearted, remorseful, and (I fear I must say) 
 rather currish manner. This proceeds, not so much 
 from any intellectual conviction uncomplimentary 
 to women, as from a kind of unacknowledged 
 artistic predilection. The particular situation is 
 one that M. Feuillet feels ,he can treat, and he 
 treats it accordingly. It certainly produces in- 
 comparably the finest scenes in his novels, and 
 perhaps the finest of these are those in which the 
 temptation is unsuccessful. I should choose as M. 
 Feuillet's masterpieces the fatal passion of Julia 
 de Trdcceur for her stepfather, and the piteous 
 efforts of La Petite Comtesse to soften the savage 
 breast of her learned lover. Next to these 
 comes the scene in which M. de Camors finds his 
 honour too weak to guarantee him against the 
 fascinations of the Marquise de Campvallon. 
 Varying illustrations of the same theme occur in 
 
298 Essays on 
 
 the Histoire de Sibylle, where Madame d'Estrdny 
 and Clotilde fight for the hero ; and 
 in Les Amours de Philippe, where the peuIllet. 
 part is played twice, once in the vicious 
 sense by Madame de Talyas and once in the 
 virtuous by Jeanne. Even Marguerite, in the 
 Roman dun Jeune Homme Pauvre, wayward as 
 she is, unmistakably makes the first advances. 
 Un Manage dans le Monde indeed is without 
 this motive. But Un Mariage dans le Monde, 
 like all the rest, exhibits M. Feuillet's general 
 theory of what may be called the caducity of the 
 feminine sex. His heroines demand in one way 
 or other to fall, or at least to be fallen in love 
 with. The author would apparently recommend 
 that this weakness should be met by a sort of 
 series of fallings in love on the part of the 
 husband — a rather herculean task which, it must 
 be admitted, has not often been attempted by 
 those to whom it is prescribed. Un Mariage 
 dans le Monde does indeed contain an instance. 
 But the possibility of that instance is chiefly 
 owing to the part played by the house-friend, M. 
 de Kdvern, and, as the author himself feels bound 
 to remark, " les Kdvern sont fort rares." Beyond 
 this M. Feuillet has nothing to recommend except 
 an improvement of feminine education, which he 
 represents as being at a very low ebb in France. 
 This is dispiriting at the moment that our 
 authorities on the subject in England are dis- 
 cussing whether the increase of feminine education 
 
French Novelists 299 
 
 will not end in the disuse of marriage altogether. If 
 
 the water is going to choke us in this 
 
 FEuiLLET. fashion, what are the modest devotees 
 
 of a marriage, which shall be at least bon, 
 
 if, according to the maxim, not ddicieux, to do ? 
 
 However, M. Octave Feuillet is clearly not 
 responsible for this difficulty. He has to do with 
 things as he finds them, and if we are to believe 
 him, what he finds is a lack of culture in women, 
 a lack of sympathy in men, and a lack of principle 
 in both. This latter want he finds to be partially 
 supplied by a sort of vague feeling of honour, and 
 great part of his books is occupied in demonstrat- 
 ing the insufficiency of the substitute. Philippe 
 and M. de Camors are instances of the break- 
 down in men. In the other sex M. Feuillet 
 seems to consider it rather more efficient. The 
 aversion of the ermine to the mud is a phrase 
 which recurs in his books with curious frequency, 
 and nothing but this aversion seems, according to 
 him, to have, as things go, much restraining 
 power over his heroines. 
 
 I have dwelt rather longer than usual upon 
 these peculiarities, because there is much more 
 moral purpose, such as it is, in M. Feuillet 
 than there has been in any French novelist of 
 the first class for a great number of years. To 
 pass to the more purely literary characteristics 
 of his work, the first thing which strikes the 
 critical reader is its remarkably dramatic character. 
 Nearly all French novelists have had more or less 
 
300 Essays on 
 
 to do with the drama, and it is not to any 
 peculiarity of M. Feuillet in this re- 
 spect that I am alluding. But his feuillet. 
 purely narrative work is often much 
 more distinguished by dramatic than by narrative 
 peculiarities. The incident of the tree-climbing 
 in M. de Camors has, I believe, struck several 
 people in this light. So it is with the incident of 
 Clotilde's setting her dog at the madman in Sibylle, 
 and of the Jeune Homme Pauvre's solution of the 
 difficulty at the Tower of Elven. These dramatic 
 moments often, though not always, have little 
 importance in the narrative as such ; and from 
 this arises a sense not exactly of incongruity, 
 but of incompleteness. Another thing which has 
 struck me strongly in M. Feuillet is that his 
 execution is rarely equal to his design. No 
 novelist introduces a subject better, no one has 
 such a faculty of exciting expectation and en- 
 gaging attention. Furthermore — and this is 
 perhaps additional proof of his specially dramatic 
 faculty — no one knows so well how to arrange 
 all the accessories of his story. His descriptions 
 are not only models of style, but models also of 
 proportion ; his by-play is excellent ; his comic 
 interludes (usually supplied by some self-indulgent 
 old lady of the inveterate Parisian type) are 
 capital. No one has hit off more admirably 
 the woman of the Second Empire, whose one 
 ambition was to be tapageuse in dress and in 
 conduct, whether the tapage be the comparatively 
 
French Novelists 301 
 
 refined manner of La Petite Comtesse and Madame 
 de Rias, or the mere boisterous vulgarity 
 PEuiLLET. °^ Mesdames Bacqui^re and Van Cuyp, 
 who run races up and down a drawing- 
 room with their feet in their husbands' hats. 
 But with all this excellence of design and of 
 detail the central interest is often badly preserved. 
 When about two-thirds of the book have been 
 read, a great disposition to yawn is apt to come 
 over one, an incurable desire to count the re- 
 maining pages, to look at the end, to resort to 
 any illegitimate means of finishing. The real 
 end of M. de- Camors is at the cruel death of the 
 general ; the real catastrophe of Sibylle is the 
 dinner-party where Raoul makes his unfortunate 
 profession of unfaith. Bellah, which, despite 
 much charming description, I think quite un- 
 worthy of its author, has neither beginning nor 
 end, properly speaking, though the beginning 
 would have been an admirable one for a different 
 book. It is not so with the Roman dun Jeune 
 Homme Pauvre or with Julia de Tricoeur, and 
 these I shall accordingly take for abstract. 
 Neither has the attempt at elaborate analysis of 
 character which distinguishes M. de Camors, and 
 neither comes quite up to the pathos of La Petite 
 Comtesse. But for several reasons they are better 
 suited to my purpose. 
 
 Julia de Trdcoeur is the daughter of an ac- 
 complished and amiable but good-for-nothing 
 father and of an angelic mother — rather a favourite 
 
302 Essays on 
 
 pedigree with M. Feuillet, it may be observed. 
 Her father does his utmost to spoil 
 her, and succeeds very fairly, so that f°uillet. 
 she is the terror of her grandmother 
 and of all her mother's friends. Madame de 
 Trdcoeur is released from her rather trying 
 •partnership by the death of her husband when 
 Julia is still very young, and as soon as a decent 
 period of widowhood has elapsed, her mother, the 
 Baroness de Pers, decides that she had much 
 better marry again, a proposal to which the dis- 
 consolate widow is by no means averse. She has 
 a cousin, and the cousin has an inseparable friend. 
 Their names are respectively Moras' and Lucan ; 
 they have lived together, have fired their shots in 
 the American Civil War together, and resemble 
 each other in being persons of great probity and 
 honour. Clotilde de Trdcoeur has fixed her 
 affections upon the friend, and the friend is 
 nothing loath to receive them. The great obstacle, 
 however, is Julia, .who is passionately devoted to 
 the memory of her father, and of whose violent 
 temper her mother stands in considerable awe. 
 The young lady indeed abstains from quarrelling 
 with her mother when the announcement is made 
 to her. But nothing will induce her to see or 
 enter into friendly relations with her father's 
 supplanter, and accordingly, when the marriage 
 approaches, she retires to a convent. After a 
 time a fancy seizes her to take the veil, and she is 
 on the point of so doing when Pierre de Moras, 
 
French Novelists 303 
 
 her mother's cousin, avows his love for her, and 
 
 asks her hand in marriage. She accepts 
 
 FEuiLLET ^^'^ rather startling change of plan 
 
 without much reluctance, but she still 
 
 refuses to see her stepfather, M. de Lucan, and 
 
 sets off with her own husband to Italy. In her 
 
 letters to her mother, however, she shows some 
 
 signs of relenting, and it is at last arranged that 
 
 she and her husband shall come and pass the 
 
 summer at M. de Lucan's chateau, near Cherbourg, 
 
 for, as may be noticed in passing, M. Feuillet's 
 
 country scenes are almost invariably Norman. It 
 
 is thus that the meeting takes place : — 
 
 It was in the beginning of June. Clotilda set out early, 
 and Lucan followed on horseback at a slow pace some two 
 hours later. The roads of Normandy are charming at this 
 season. The hawthorn hedges perfume the country, and 
 throw their tufts of rosy-tinted snow here and there over 
 the edge of the path. The slopes of the ditches are covered 
 with a. profiision of fresh greenery dotted with wild flowers, 
 the whole making under the bright morning sun a charming 
 feast for the eye. M. de Lucan however, contrary to his 
 custom, gave but divided attention to this spectacle of 
 Nature in her smiles. He was occupied to a degree which 
 surprised himself by his approaching meeting with his step- 
 daughter. Julia had been so constantly in his thoughts 
 that she had left on them an exaggerated impression. He 
 tried in vain to reduce this to its due proportions, which 
 were after all only those of a child, once a spoiled child, 
 now a returning prodigal. He had grown accustomed to 
 clothe her in his fancy with mysterious importance, and 
 with a sort of fatal power of which he found it difficult to 
 disrobe her. He felt amused and half irritated at his own 
 folly. But he could not avoid a sensation of curiosity and 
 vague disquiet at the moment of seeing face to face the 
 
304 Essays on 
 
 sphinx whose shadow had so long disturbed his hfe, and 
 who was at last about to come under his roof. 
 At length an open carriage, covered with an octave 
 awning of sunshades, appeared at the top fehillet. 
 of a rising ground. Lucan saw a head 
 leaning out of the carriage and a handkerchief waving; 
 then he set forward at a gallop. Almost at the same 
 instant the carriage stopped, and a girlish figure jumped 
 lightly out. She turned to say a word to her travelling 
 companions, and then came forward alone to meet Lucan. 
 Not wishing to be outdone, he dismounted, gave his horse 
 to the groom, and walked forward eagerly to meet the lady 
 whom he did not know, but who evidently was Julia. She 
 came towards him at an unhurried pace, with a gliding 
 step, and a slight swaying motion of her figure. As she 
 came near she pushed back her veil, and Lucan recognised 
 in her youthful face, in her large and somewhat melancholy 
 eyes, in her beautiful brows, some traces of the child he 
 had once known. When Julia's glance met his the pale 
 face reddened. He bowed low, and, smiling, said, " Wel- 
 come." — "Thank you," said she, with a voice whose grave 
 melody struck him ; " we are friends, are we not ? " and 
 she held out both her hands to him. He was about to 
 draw her towards him, but feehng a faint resistance in her 
 arms, he contented himself with kissing the wrist of her 
 gloved hand. Then pretending to regard her with an 
 admiring gallantry, which for the matter of that was sincere 
 enough, " I really think," said he, " that I ought to ask you 
 to whom I have the honour of speaking." — " You think me 
 grown," said she, with a smile which showed her dazzling 
 teeth. " Immensely," he replied, " immensely. I do not 
 wonder at Pierre." 
 
 So the meeting passes off, the friends glad to 
 meet again, Madame de Lucan delighted with 
 Julia, and Lucan himself admiring his step- 
 daughter's beauty, and half amused, half pleased 
 by her quaint manner. Julia immediately takes 
 
French Novelists 305 
 
 a great fancy to the chateau, and this increases 
 her stepfather's approbation of her. 
 FEuiLLET. ^'^^ displays, however, a certain flighti- 
 ness, often amusing herself by mimick- 
 ing her rather solemn and prosaic husband, by 
 burlesquing Italian music, and so forth. Every 
 now and then, too, when she is alone with 
 her stepfather, slight relapses of temper appear, 
 of which, however, he takes little notice, putting 
 them down as the remains of her spoilt -child 
 humours. About a fortnight after her arrival 
 a ball takes place in the neighbourhood, and 
 as both Madame de Lucan and M. de Moras 
 have no particular affection for balls, they go 
 home early, leaving Julia to be escorted back 
 by her stepfather. She makes a gesture of 
 impatience when she is told of the arrangement, 
 but says nothing. 
 
 About an hour afterwards she grew tired of being wor- 
 shipped, and asked for her carriage. As she was wrapping 
 herself up in the hall Lucan offered to help her. " No," 
 she said pettishly, "please don't. Men know nothing 
 about it." Then she threw herself into the carriage with 
 an air of weariness. However, as the horses started she 
 said in a more amiable tone, " Won't you smoke ?" Lucan 
 thanked her, but did not avail himself of the permission ; 
 and then, as he settled himself in his comer, he said, " You 
 are very beautiful to-night, my dear child." — " Sir," said 
 Julia, coolly but positively, " I forbid you to think me 
 beautiful, and to call me your dear child." — " Very well," 
 said Lucan ; " you are not beautiful, then, you are not dear 
 to me, and you are not a child." — " A child ! " she answered ; 
 " I should think not." She buried her face in her veil, 
 
 X 
 
3o6 Essays on 
 
 crossed her arms, and leant back in her corner where the 
 moonlight from time to time flashed on her 
 white skin. " May I go to sleep ? " asked octave 
 she. " Why, of course," he replied. " Shall feuillet. 
 I shut the window?" — " If you like. But 
 won't my flowers annoy you ? " — " Not in the least." After 
 a silence, " M. de Lucan," said Julia. " Well, my dear 
 lady ? " — " Will you be kind enough to give me a lesson in 
 etiquette, for I don't understand it ? Is it allowable and 
 proper to let a gentleman of your age and a lady of mine 
 come home from a ball alone together at two o'clock in the 
 morning ? " — " But," said Lucan, gravely enough, " I am 
 not a gentleman ; I am your mother's husband." — " Ah, 
 yes ! " said she, " you are my mother's husband," and she 
 raised her voice over the words in such a manner that 
 Lucan thought an explosion was about to follow. But she 
 seemed to choke down something and went on almost in a 
 lively tone. "Yes, you are my mother's husband, and it 
 seems to me that you are a very bad husband for my 
 mother." — " You think so," said Lucan quietly. "Why?" 
 — " Because you do not suit her at all." — " Pray have you 
 asked your mother about that, my dear lady ? For it seems 
 to me that she is the best judge." — " There is no need to 
 consult her. One has only to look at you. My mother is 
 an angelic creature, and you are not." — "What am I then ?" 
 — " You are romantic, excitable. ... In fact, just her 
 opposite, and some day or other you will be false to her." 
 — " Never," said Lucan, a little severely. " Are you quite 
 sure ? " said Julia, looking straight at him from the depths 
 of her hood. " My dear lady," answered Lucan, " you 
 asked me just now to be good enough to teach you what is 
 proper and what is not. Well, then, it is not proper that 
 we should make your mother and my wife the subject of a 
 pleasantry of this kind. Consequently it is proper that we 
 should hold our tongues.'' She was silent, made no move- 
 ment, and closed her eyes, but in a minute he saw a tear 
 drop from her long lashes upon her cheek. " I have hurt 
 you, my child," said he; "I beg your pardon most sin- 
 cerely." — « You may spare your excuses," she replied in a 
 
French Novelists 307 
 
 muffled tone, but opening her great eyes suddenly, " I do 
 
 not want them any more than I want your 
 
 OCTAVE lessons. I should be glad to know what I 
 
 FEUiLLET. have done to deserve such a humiliation. 
 
 What harm was there in my words, and 
 
 what else could I have said ? Is it my fault that I am 
 
 alone with you, that I am forced to talk to you, that I 
 
 hardly know what to say? Why am I made to suffer this? 
 
 Why am I asked to do more than I can ? Is not the part 
 
 I have to play daily enough and too much a thousand 
 
 times ? God knows I am tired of it ! " Lucan had some 
 
 difficulty in repressing his painful surprise at this outburst. 
 
 " Julia," he said at last, " you were good enough to tell me 
 
 that we were friends, and I thought it was true. Is it not 
 
 so ? " — " No," she said with energy, and then wrapping 
 
 her veil round her she remained during the rest of the 
 
 journey plunged in a silence which M. de Lucan did not 
 
 disturb. 
 
 Lucan is naturally not a little discomposed at 
 the prospect of renewed family dissensions which 
 this declaration of war opens, and the next day 
 Julia makes matters worse. Her husband con- 
 fesses to his friend that he himself cannot under- 
 stand her, and has not the least hold on her 
 affections. She is as sulky as she can be, and 
 almost insolent to Lucan. The day after, how- 
 ever, her humour again changes, she apologises 
 formally to her stepfather, invites him to go out 
 for a solitary expedition with her, and makes 
 confidences, half- serious and half- playful, as to 
 her aspirations and longings. At this juncture 
 Madame de Pers makes her appearance on the 
 scene, and is half pleased and 'half puzzled at her 
 granddaughter's mood. Julia, however, pays no 
 
3o8 Essays on 
 
 attention to her, and after dinner, though some 
 guests are present to do honour to the 
 baroness, she insists, on pretext of the peuIllS-. 
 heat, that her stepfather shall take her 
 out into the grounds. 
 
 She went out, and Lucan with her. In the hall she 
 waited to wrap herself in her great white veil, hesitated a 
 moment between the garden gate and that of the courtyard, 
 and at last making up her mind said, " Let us go to the 
 Ladies' Walk ; it is coolest there." The Ladies' Walk, 
 which opened at the end of the courtyard in the opposite 
 direction to the avenue, was her favourite spot. It was a 
 gently inclined path leading between the rocky slope of the 
 wooded hills and the edge of a ravine, which seemed to 
 have been part of the moat of the old castle. At the bottom 
 of this ravine a brook ran with a melancholy sound, and 
 after a time lost itself in a small pond, overhung with 
 willows and guarded by two marble nymphs, to whom the 
 Ladies' Walk owed its name, which was of old date. Half- 
 way between the courtyard and the pond the slopes were 
 piled with fragments of walls and broken arches, the relics 
 of the fortifications, and for some paces the ruined buttresses 
 pressed close on the walk, and, crowned as they were with 
 ivy and brier, threw over it a dense mass of shade. At 
 night when the shadow was deepened it looked as if the 
 way were interrupted by a sudden abyss. At the same 
 time the sombre character of the scene had some rehef. 
 The path was neatly gravelled, there were garden seats 
 here and there against the slope ; finally, the grassy inclines 
 which led down to the brook were covered with blue-beUs, 
 with violets, and with dwarf roses, whose odour hung in the 
 confined space like that of incense in a church. 
 
 In this favourable scene Julia's vapours, as 
 our great-grandfathers would have said, come to 
 a climax. After some minutes of her usual 
 enigmatical conversation she says — 
 
French Novelists 309 
 
 " Do you hate me a little now ? " — " A little." — " Please 
 
 be serious. I know that I have pained you 
 
 OCTAVE much. Will you forgive me ? " Her voice 
 
 FEUILLET. had a feeling in it which was not common, 
 
 and which touched Lucan. "With all my 
 
 heart, my child," said he. She stopped, seized both his 
 
 hands. " Is that true ? Have we done with hating each 
 
 other ? " she said low and timidly. " Are you a little fond of 
 
 «ie ? " — " I am very grateful to you," said he with emotion, 
 
 " and I am very fond of you." She drew him gently towards 
 
 her, and he kissed her frankly on the brow which she held 
 
 out to him ; but at the same moment he felt her figure 
 
 stiffen, her head fall back, and she sank powerless in his 
 
 arms. 
 
 It is of course impossible that such a scene 
 should fail to excite a suspicion of its meaning 
 in the least coxcombically inclined of men. 
 Lucan, puzzled and shocked, tries to get over 
 the difficulty by ironical language to Julia when 
 she comes to herself, and, without saying anything 
 to the other inhabitants of the chateau, by with- 
 drawing from her society as much as possible. 
 After a time things go on quietly again, and his 
 apprehension is stilled. 
 
 But Julia has no intention of going on quietly, 
 and another scene of the same kind, but still less 
 ambiguous, is forced upon him. He becomes 
 almost beside himself with agitation and with 
 fear, lest his wife and his friend should remark 
 the state of things. At last there is no longer 
 room for doubt. The quartette have been visiting 
 the range of cliffs which faces Alderney, and Julia 
 has persuaded Lucan to try a footpath to the 
 
3IO Essays on 
 
 summit. They find it scarcely practicable, and 
 
 are in great peril. He has at length 
 
 almost to drag her up. °?7r^7L 
 
 ° ^ FEUILLET. 
 
 At last he had the delight of setting his foot 
 on a space of level ground standing out from the rock. With 
 an effort he drew Julia towards it. Her head bent forward 
 and rested on his shoulder. He heard her heart beat with 
 terrible violence. Little by little this agitation calmed 
 down ; she slowly lifted her head, opened her long lashes, 
 and looking at him with eyes entranced she murmured, 
 " I am so happy ! I could die here ! " He thrust her 
 brusquely at arm's length from him. Then drawing her 
 to him again and grasping her firmly he threw a troubled 
 look on the abyss below. She felt sure that death was at 
 hand. For a moment her face grew pale, then she said, 
 " With you ? Ah, what joy ! " At the same moment they 
 heard voices, the voices of Clotilde and of Moras. He 
 drew his arm from Julia, and without speaking, but with 
 a gesture of command, pointed to the path. "Without 
 you, then," she said gently, but proudly. But she went 
 on. . . . 
 
 In the evening Lucan seeks the Ladies' Walk, 
 and fights out his battle with his own soul. 
 Hitherto he has been sure of himself, but he 
 now finds that the irresistible Venus has set her 
 grasp upon him. The very horror of the crime 
 adds to its attraction, and at the moment Julia 
 herself appears. But he is not wholly conquered, 
 and he hides himself, hoping to escape notice. 
 She sees him, but she understands the movement 
 and its meaning, and passes him with the single 
 word " Farewell ! " pausing only for a moment as 
 she speaks. With one supreme effort he remains 
 silent. 
 
French Novelists 311 
 
 Next morning she throws herself on horseback 
 over the cliff, at the fatal spot, in the 
 
 OCTAVE 
 
 FEuiLLET. pi'esence of Lucan and Moras, who have 
 followed her, but who do not interfere, 
 the husband having in reality penetrated the whole 
 mystery. 
 
 Were it not for the inexpressibly revolting 
 circumstances of the catastrophe, I should call 
 Julia de Tricoeur a perfect story. Tue-la I is 
 one thing. For a joint society, composed of 
 husband and lover, even though the latter be 
 guiltless, to contemplate la while she kills her- 
 self, is another. It is true that suicide is the 
 only ending dramatically possible for Julia, but 
 the circumstances of the suicide might have been 
 differently arranged. Again, it is not pleasant to 
 catch a last glimpse of a heroine as she whips and 
 forces an unfortunate horse to accompany her in 
 her search for worlds not realised. These quite 
 surprising blemishes are evidence of an occasional 
 wrong-headedness at critical points which is charac- 
 teristic of M. Feuillet, and of which I may have 
 to mention some other examples. But with this 
 single exception the story is nearly faultless. The 
 art — difficult to reproduce in excerpts — by which 
 Julia's succumbing to her fatal passion is depicted, 
 is admirable, and not less admirable is that which 
 saves Lucan from the proverbial fate of the man 
 in whose case ladies are willing. He is virtuous 
 without being niais : and his total lack of cox- 
 combry gives him a remarkable advantage over 
 
312 Essays on 
 
 the average French novel hero. Most remarkable 
 of all, however, are the perfect pro- 
 portion and scenic arrangements of j.j.„illet. 
 the piece. The parts of the minor 
 personages are adjusted to a wonderful nicety, 
 and in no novel known to me are the character 
 and quantity of the descriptions so excellently 
 proportioned. In pathos of a certain kind Julia 
 de Tr^comr yields among modern works of the 
 class only to La Petite Comtesse. 
 
 Strikingly different in plan and in sources of 
 interest is Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre, 
 to which must, I suppose, if comparative freedom 
 from faults be taken as the characteristic of a 
 masterpiece, be awarded that position among M. 
 Feuillet's works. It is autobiographic in form. 
 The hero at the age of thirty finds himself left 
 heir to the title of Marquis and to the remains of 
 a singularly embarrassed fortune. He is like many 
 of M. Feuillet's heroes and heroines, the son of 
 an angelic mother and a spendthrift father. The 
 latter has so thoroughly dissipated his fortune and 
 that of his wife, that at the settlement of affairs, 
 which is confided to an old notary and family 
 friend, M. Laub^pin, a balance of some two 
 thousand pounds on the wrong side is all that 
 remains out of a fortune of a hundred times the 
 amount for the young Marquis and his sister 
 Hdl^ne, who is twenty years his junior. When 
 making this dismal announcement, the notary adds 
 that he has a deposit of jewels, which had been 
 
French Novelists 3 1 3 
 
 made secretly by the young man's foreseeing 
 mother, and which need not therefore 
 FEuiLLET. ^^ sacrificed. But the new Marquis 
 de Champcey d'Hauterive does not 
 thus understand honour, and he insists that the 
 creditors shall be paid in full, the deposit giving 
 the means of doing this. The question is then, 
 How he shall maintain himself and his sister ? 
 M. Laub^pin has several suggestions to offer. A 
 speculator will be only too glad of the Marquis's 
 old name as a bait for his prospectus, and offer a 
 round number of paid-up shares in return. But 
 this does not suit the Marquis any more than the 
 retention of the deposit ; nor has the proposition 
 of a rich merchant's daughter, who will be delighted 
 with the title of Marquise, any better success. 
 The consultation thereupon terminates, M. Laub^- 
 pin appearing to be rather pleased than otherwise 
 by the rejection of his offers. It is understood 
 that he is to settle the matter, to pay over the few 
 pounds which may be left, and to look out for 
 some situation which may at least promise bread 
 to his client. 
 
 For a time the young man — Maxime is his 
 name — hears nothing of his lawyer, and being 
 totally destitute of ready money he is on the brink 
 of starvation. He tries to eat the leaves of the 
 trees in the parks, he visits his little sister in her 
 convent, and by immense good fortune carries off, 
 under pretext of giving it to a deserving person, a 
 huge slice of bread which she cannot eat. At 
 
314 Essays on 
 
 last he nearly gives in, and is only saved by 
 the charity of the porter's wife at 
 his lodgings, who has formerly been peuillkt. 
 in his service, and who cajoles him 
 into accepting a dinner. Then M. Laubdpin, 
 who has been on a country visit, returns, and after 
 upbraiding his client and protigi for not inform- 
 ing him of his condition, proceeds to inform him 
 of certain things moderately to his advantage. 
 He has procured him the refusal of an appoint- 
 ment as land-steward to a rich family in Brittany 
 at a fair salary, and besides this he has succeeded 
 in saving about a thousand pounds by legitimate 
 means out of the wrecked inheritance. The worst 
 is therefore past. 
 
 The family honoured with this rather singular 
 land - steward consists of an old sailor and 
 privateersman, who has amassed a great fortune 
 long before in the wars of the Empire, of his 
 widowed daughter-in-law, a creole lady of eccentric 
 but amiable character, and of her only child 
 Marguerite. The grandfather is very old, and 
 practically in his dotage. His family receive the 
 Marquis (who has adopted his family name Odiot, 
 as a more suitable travelling title) very amiably, 
 and he is installed in a separate dwelling, being, 
 however, frequently invited to join the circle at 
 the chateau. The chief frequenters of this circle 
 are, besides an aunt, Madame Aubry, and a young 
 ex-governess. Mademoiselle Helouin, the doctor 
 of the district, and a certain M. de B^vallan, a 
 
French Novelists 315 
 
 gentleman of great estate in the neighbourhood, 
 for whom Maxime conceives a decided 
 
 OCTAVE ,. ... 
 
 FEUILLET. "ISllke. 
 
 He soon becomes rather a mystery to 
 the inmates of the castle, reserved as his situation 
 necessarily makes him. They cannot understand 
 how a land-steward should know all about fashion- 
 able matters not only in Paris, but in foreign 
 capitals and courts, and (which seems more odd 
 to an Englishman) they cannot understand his 
 being a good rider. His accomplishments in these 
 respects even create a certain doubt in Madame 
 Laroque's mind as to his professional capacities, 
 until this doubt is removed by his handing over 
 to her on the renewal of a farmer's lease the 
 premium which his predecessor had always been 
 accustomed silently to pocket. His incognito is 
 also partially betrayed by an old Breton lady 
 who conceives a great fancy for him. This is 
 Mademoiselle de Porhoet, an ancient dame whose 
 possessions are almost limited to blood of the 
 bluest and to a literal Chiteau en Espagne, that 
 is to say, a claim on a vast Spanish property, 
 which she has never been able to establish. 
 
 Meanwhile Marguerite Laroque, the daughter 
 and heiress of the house, is a greater mystery to 
 Maxime than he himself is to his employers. She 
 is very bea.utiful, and not specially inclined to treat 
 him haughtily. It is obvious that the rich M. de 
 Bdvallan is ready to be her very humble servant. 
 But she seems to labour under some undefined 
 
3i6 Essays on 
 
 cause of melancholy, and is almost ostentatious 
 
 in proclaiming her disgust for things 
 
 in general. She, too, is a great favourite peuillet. 
 
 with Mademoiselle de Porhoet, and one 
 
 day the two meet at their friend's house. 
 
 When the talkative old lady had finished her reminiscence, 
 Marguerite kissed her, and waking her dog Mervyn, who 
 slept at her feet, she said that she must go back to the 
 chateau. I made no scruple of setting out at the same 
 time, sure that I was not likely to cause her any annoyance. 
 Setting aside the insignificance of my person and my posi- 
 tion in the young lady's eyes, she is not at all disturbed at 
 the idea of a t6te-k-tSte, her mother having resolutely brought 
 her up in the same liberal fashion in which she herself had 
 been educated in the English West Indian Islands. The 
 English method, as is well known, gives to women before 
 marriage all the independence with which we wisely refuse 
 to entrust them until an abuse of it becomes irreparable. 
 We went out of the garden, therefore, together. I held her 
 stirrup while she mounted, and we set out. After a few 
 steps she said, " It seems to me that I disturbed you very 
 unseasonably. You were enjoying a t6te-k-tSte." — "Yes, 
 mademoiselle, I was ; but as it had already lasted some 
 time I forgive you, and, indeed, am rather obliged to you." 
 — " You are very kind to our poor neighbour. — My mother is 
 quite grateful to you for it. " — ' ' And your mother's daughter ? " 
 said I, smiling. " Oh, for my part I am more difficult to 
 move. If you want me to admire you, you must wait a little 
 longer. I am not in the habit of hastily judging human 
 actions, which have generally more than one aspect. Your 
 behaviour to Mademoiselle de Porhoet looks well, I admit 
 — but — " she hesitated, shook her head, and went on in a 
 serious, bitter, and indeed insulting tone — " but I am not 
 quite sure that you are not paying court to her in hopes of 
 becoming her heir." I could feel myself grow pale. How- 
 ever, reflecting on the absurdity of taking the high tone 
 with a young girl, I restrained myself, and answered gravely. 
 
French Novelists 317 
 
 " Allow me to say, mademoiselle, that I am sincerely sorry for 
 you." She looked much surprised. " You are 
 OCTAVE sorry for me, sir ? " — " Yes, mademoiselle ; you 
 FEuiLLET. must permit me to express to you the respect- 
 ful pity which you seem to me to deserve." — 
 " Pity ! " she said, reining in her horse, and turning slowly 
 upon me eyes half closed with disdain ; " I am so unfortunate 
 as not to understand you." — "Yet it is very plain, made- 
 moiselle. If disbelief in good, mistrust, and a seared heart 
 are the bitterest fruits of lifelong experience, nothing in the 
 world better deserves compassion than the same feelings in 
 the heart of one whose experience of life has not begun." 
 " Sir," replied Mademoiselle Laroque, with a briskness very 
 different from her usual manner, "you do not know what you 
 are talking about, and," she added severely, " you forget to 
 whom you are talking." — " That is quite true, mademoiselle," 
 said I, bowing. " I am speaking a little at random, and I 
 am forgetting a little to whom I am speaking. But you have 
 set me the example in both points." Mademoiselle Mar- 
 guerite, with her eyes fixed on the tree-tops, said to me with 
 haughty irony, " Must I beg your pardon ? " — " Certainly, 
 mademoiselle," I replied, " if one of us has a pardon to beg 
 it is you. You are rich and I am poor ; you can stoop, 
 I cannot." There was a silence, and the working of her 
 countenance told of an inward struggle. Suddenly lower- 
 ing her whip in guise of a salute, she said, "Well, then, 
 pardon me." And with that she struck her horse sharply 
 and set off at a gallop, leaving me alone. 
 
 Mademoiselle Marguerite, however, bears no 
 malice, and the next interview which she has with 
 the steward is a water excursion in which they are 
 accompanied only by an old man-servant. They 
 journey up the neighbouring river, Maxime having 
 an opportunity of displaying his prowess by rescuing 
 her dog and her pocket-handkerchief from the 
 water. Soon afterwards, as if on purpose, she 
 
3i8 Essays on 
 
 takes M. de Bdvallan to the same spot, and makes 
 him renew the experience, which he 
 does with hardly so happy a result, pj-oillet. 
 The discomfiture of her lover does 
 not disconcert her, for soon afterwards Maxime 
 learns that the gentleman is a:ll but accepted. 
 Marguerite herself tells him the reason. She 
 has a morbid dread of fortune-hunters, and 
 has made up her mind not to accept any one 
 whose fortune is not fairly equal to her own. As if 
 matters were not sufificiently complicated, Maxime 
 at this juncture learns that Bdvallan has been 
 carrying on an intrigue with the governess, Made- 
 moiselle Helouin, and the latter, after making a 
 violent effort to entangle the steward also, throws 
 him a formal declaration of war, asserting that she 
 knows who he is, and that M. Laub^pin has sent 
 him to the Chateau Laroque in hopes of mending 
 his broken fortunes by a marriage with the heiress. 
 This view, with embellishments, she communicates 
 to Marguerite, and that suspicious damsel takes 
 fire at once. She publicly insults Maxime by 
 giving him orders as if he were a menial, and only 
 a certain inspiration of Bdvallan's prevents an open 
 quarrel between the two men. This storm past, 
 another soon occurs, for the governess still has 
 Marguerite's ear. Accident conducts her with 
 Maxime to the ruins of the Tower of Elven, known 
 to all wanderers in Brittany, and accident locks 
 them in the ruins together. After he has in vain 
 tried to force the door, the young lady has one of 
 
French Novelists 319 
 
 her ordinary hallucinations. It occurs to her 
 that the Marquis (as she knows Maxime 
 FEuiLLET. *° ^^) ^^^ planned this for the pur- 
 pose of compromising her, and she 
 addresses him in the most outrageous language. 
 Exasperated by this, and determined at any cost 
 to show her the injustice of her suspicions, he 
 swings himself from the top of the tower on to 
 the branch of a tree, and reaches the ground 
 with a broken arm but alive. Then he mounts 
 his horse and manages to reach home, where he 
 puts the household on Marguerite's track without 
 indicating what has passed, and she is rescued 
 without any one knowing that she has had a 
 companion. After this, events march rapidly, as 
 indeed they are bound to do. Maxime, in ran- 
 sacking the family archives as a preliminary of the 
 marriage contract, discovers that old Laroque's 
 fortune was begun by a fraud upon his own 
 ancestors. M. de Bdvallan, dissatisfied with the 
 provisions of the settlement, disgusts his irritable 
 fiancee so much that she breaks off the engagement. 
 The governess is unmasked and banished, and 
 lastly. Mademoiselle de Porhoet, having gained her 
 Spanish castle by Maxime's instrumentality, dies, 
 leaving him heir to a fortune which enables him 
 to marry any one he pleases. It is needless to 
 say whom he does marry ; but the reader will 
 probably be of opinion that unless Marguerite as 
 a wife was rather less suspicious and rather more 
 placid in temper than she was as a maiden, the 
 
320 Essays on 
 
 Marquis de Champcey d'Hauterive must have 
 made a very dubious bargain. It is 
 only fair to the author, however, to say, p^uillet. 
 that this impression is much less vividly 
 produced on the reader of the book than on the 
 reader of an abstract of it. It is another dramatic 
 peculiarity of M. Feuillet's books that they do not 
 lend themselves to abstract. As in the case of a 
 drama, it is possible to give a mere argument of 
 them, or simply to extract scenes, but scarcely to 
 represent them in little. 
 
 In estimating this author's work it is well to 
 remember that he did not make his appearance 
 early as a novelist. Even after he had done 
 so his best known writings were of the class 
 known to readers of French under the titles of 
 Proverbes and Sdnes — trifles dramatic in form and 
 narrative in substance, of which most Frenchmen 
 of letters in our day have written some, Alfred 
 de Musset's being perhaps the best known. M. 
 Feuillet's first prose tale which he cared to re- 
 publish later was, I believe, Onestd, which appeared 
 in 1848, when the author was approaching middle 
 life. It is a Venetian story of the rather ex- 
 travagant order which had been for some time 
 popular — a story of daggers, love, wine, duels, 
 assignations, and all the rest of it. It displays 
 the literary skill which is rarely wanting in its 
 author's work, but does not appear to me to 
 possess much interest. After some years appeared 
 Bellah, an effort in another kind. This is a story 
 
French Novelists 321 
 
 of the Vendean, or, to speak more correctly, the 
 Chouan, contest, the particular episode 
 FEuiLLET. being dated just before the Quiberon 
 expedition. Here, too, there is more 
 promise than performance, the central interest 
 being very small and coming to a decidedly 
 premature conclusion. No such charge can be 
 brought against La Petite Comtesse, which was 
 published about the same time. The story of this 
 novelette is very simple and very sad. A man of 
 letters, past his youth, goes down on a government 
 mission to make drawings of an ancient abbey. 
 Chance throws him into the society of a neigh- 
 bouring country house, the moving spirit of which 
 is the Comtesse de Palme, a type of the fast young 
 lady of the Second Empire. The hero feels and 
 expresses a deep contempt and pity for her brain- 
 lessness, and this little aversion brings them 
 together. She makes advances to him, and he, 
 though hardly aware of it, becomes deeply in love 
 with her. But he has convinced himself that her 
 passion is a mere passing fancy, and that both 
 would repent their union, and so he steadily repulses 
 her. The reaction throws her into the arms of 
 the most worthless of her admirers ; but she soon 
 repents and dies, the too-wise lover falling soon 
 after by the hand of his temporarily successful 
 rival. This is the only novel in which M. Feuillet 
 has in my judgment been wholly successful. The 
 pity of it is the one thought that occurs to the 
 reader, and the infatuation which prevents two 
 
 Y 
 
32 2 Essays on 
 
 people who love each other from being happy is 
 not felt as a drawback. In La Petite 
 Comtesse M. Feuillet indicates his theory p^uillet. 
 as to the causes of feminine weakness 
 and insufficiency in France ; in the Histoire 
 de Sibylle (his part of a curious novel-duel with 
 George Sand) he develops it. Sibylle is an 
 orphan brought up by her grandparents and an 
 Irish governess, Miss O'Neil, in drawing whom 
 M. Feuillet permits himself to indulge in much 
 dubious wit. The orphan is the type, we may 
 suppose, of what young ladies ought to be, and if 
 this be so we can hardly wonder that she excited 
 protests. She is a very religious young lady, and 
 at an early age is caught offering violets at the 
 altar of an unknown god in the woods. She 
 abandons Catholicism because the parish priest 
 sometimes goes to sleep after dinner, and returns 
 to it (converting Miss O'Neil) because he leaves 
 off coffee and becomes strongly ascetic. Then 
 she goes to Paris and plays good angel to her 
 other grandparents, a couple who live in orthodox 
 estrangement from one another. Here she meets 
 her fate, Raoul de Fdrias, a gentleman who is the 
 object of the desires of all his married lady friends. 
 All is going well, when Sibylle suddenly faints at 
 hearing Raoul make profession of infidelity at a 
 dinner-party. After some trouble, however, she 
 converts him also and then dies. 
 
 M. Feuillet's latest [1878] books — for oi Julia 
 de Tricoeur, the Roman dun Jeune Homme Pauvre, 
 
French Novelists 323 
 
 and M. de Camors, enough has been or will be 
 said — are Un Mariage dans le Monde 
 FEHiLLET. ^^^ ^^^ AmouTs de Philippe. Un 
 Mariage dans le Monde is a clever 
 and amusing book, again illustrating the author's 
 views on the conjugal state. The husband is 
 vexed because his wife confuses the eighth and 
 eighteenth centuries, the wife because her hus- 
 band does not like her gaieties. The result 
 is a tacit agreement that each shall go his 
 and her own way. This of course means danger, 
 and the danger is only averted by the devotion of 
 a friend, M. de Kdvern, who saves Madame de 
 Rias from herself The most amusing thing in 
 the book to an English reader is the cause of the 
 indignation with which M. de Rias's excellent 
 mother-in-law regards him. Unfortunately the 
 very difference of manners which makes this 
 amusing prevents it from being more distinctly 
 alluded to. Les Amours de Philippe tells the old 
 story of a young man for whom a cousin is 
 destined, who rejects her in order to follow the 
 example of the prodigal son, and who returns 
 after many days to the slighted maiden. The 
 interval is taken up by two great passions. The 
 first is for an actress, Mary Gerald, who accepts 
 Philippe under the notion that he is a great 
 dramatic poet, and very promptly deserts him 
 when his piece is damned. The second is for 
 Madame de Talyas, the wife of his commander in 
 the war of 1870. In this case it is the lady who 
 
324 Essays on 
 
 insists upon being fallen in love with. Philippe 
 
 is finally extracted from her clutches 
 
 by the bravery and devotion of his jeuillex. 
 
 cousin Jeanne, with whom and with 
 
 a comfortable fortune the scarcely deserving young 
 
 man is at length rewarded. 
 
 I have already noted in Julia de Tric<Bur a 
 curious instance of what may perhaps be called 
 obliviscence on M. Feuillet's part. There are 
 two other instances of similar false notes in his 
 work, which are even more fatal, because, instead 
 of occurring at the end of the book, where the 
 interest is, so to speak, secured and beyond danger 
 of destruction, they occur in its course. One of 
 these is in M. de Camors — the scene, to wit, in 
 which Madame de Tdcle, rejecting Camors's love, 
 proposes as a compensation that she shall 
 educate her daughter as a wife for him. Here 
 again the preposterous takes a touch of the 
 revolting. The topsyturvification, to use a word 
 which Thackeray invented under the inspiration 
 of this very form of literature, becomes altogether 
 too strong. From that moment the reasonable 
 reader holds Madame de T^cle responsible for 
 Camors's future aberrations, and when they arrive 
 he has nothing to say to her but Tu I'as voulu. 
 Again in the Histoire de Sibylla there is a passage 
 which rings false in a somewhat similar way. 
 The wicked heroine Clotilde has set her cap at 
 the hero, has failed, and to console herself has 
 enchanted — to the utmost limits of enchantment 
 
French Novelists 325 
 
 — his scientific and impassible friend Grandrax. 
 
 But she tires of Grandrax, as she 
 FEuiLLET. ^°^^ °^ most things, and what is 
 
 the method which she takes to rid 
 herself of this light of science? First of all 
 she caresses her husband in his presence in a 
 very offensive manner, and when he asks for an 
 explanation, she informs him that she has never 
 loved him, that his dictatorial manner is odious 
 to her, and that he had better go. He goes, 
 takes laudanum, and expires, gesticulating and 
 making gruesome remarks, as if he had wished to 
 add one more to the deathbeds of the philosophes. 
 The reader of the scenes ought to be impressed, 
 but he is not. He gathers from them only the 
 notion that M. Feuillet, unlike the Laureate's 
 Madeline, is far from perfect in love lore. Clotilde 
 is certainly a vulgar vixen, and her husband is an 
 unfortunate person. But the lover has, in nautical 
 phrase, the weather-gage of both. He is long 
 past the stage of being jealous of the husband, 
 and to the lady herself he can reply that if she 
 did not love him, so much the worse for her. 
 In both these cases the false note is fatal to the 
 interest of the following portions of the book. 
 
 There is yet a third charge which I must make 
 against M. Feuillet Skilful draughtsman as he 
 is in many ways, he rarely attains to the drawing 
 of a really representative character. In Julia de 
 Tricoeur and in La Petite Comtesse he is not far 
 from this success, but he does not quite attain it. 
 
326 Essays on 
 
 In his other characters he misses it altogether. 
 It may seem a paradox, but is not 
 so, that the portrayer of a strong in- p^^IlZet. 
 dividuality always at the same time, 
 whether he knows it or not, creates a type. 
 M. Feuillet never portrays a strong individuality, 
 and therefore he never creates a type.-' His 
 most elaborate attempt at this is of course 
 M. de Camors. Camors is intended to be a sort 
 of Marlborough of private life, a man who utilises 
 and enjoys everybody, who hates and loves no- 
 body, who simply exploits the human race. His 
 failure in his plan would not interfere with this 
 conception. Failure in such a plan is pretty 
 nearly certain, and the representation of it is 
 moral to boot. But he not only fails, but fails 
 ludicrously, fails so as to make his plan a mere 
 absurdity. He has only to meet a Lescande, a 
 Madame de T^cle, a General de Campvallon, and 
 he compromises himself at once after the fashion 
 of a schoolboy. He is worse than the fanfaron 
 des vices qu'il n'a pas, he is the fanfaron des vices 
 gu'il ne peut pas avoir, a much more contemptible 
 being. Except in his connection with Madame 
 de Campvallon, where, guilty as he is, he is the 
 victim of a greater and nobler viciousness than his 
 own, he is a painful mixture of coxcomb and prig. 
 It is, in fact, in the choice and conception of 
 
 ^ Unless an exception be made for the heroine of La Morte, a. 
 book written nearly ten years after the text appeared. See below 
 on it and her. 
 
French Novelists 327 
 
 his characters that M. Feuillet's weaknes? consists, 
 just as his strength consists in the 
 FEuiLLET. choice and conception of the frame- 
 work and minor incidents of his stories. 
 It is impossible to lay down offhand the 
 principle that such and such a type of character 
 is unfitted for a hero or a heroine. If the 
 type is rendered sufficiently faithfully and 
 sufficiently forcibly, if it is, in Spinosian phrase, 
 brought sub specie cetemitatis, that is sufficient. 
 From this point of view, though Lord Foppington 
 and Lady Booby are certainly not persons of 
 much moral worth or weight, they conquer their 
 place, a place far indeed from Hamlet and Rosa- 
 lind, but in the same gallery and on the same 
 line. M. Feuillet has contributed no single char- 
 acter of this kind, and the cause is clear. He has 
 not been able to conceive any such contribution. 
 His characters generally have indeed very singular 
 antecedents. Their author is on the one hand 
 strongly impressed by the society, by the prevalent 
 tastes, and by the ordinary views of morality 
 which he sees around him ; in the second place, 
 he is desirous, and very creditably desirous, of 
 fighting on virtue's side rather than on the side 
 of vice ; lastly, he has, though fitfully and at 
 intervals, the artistic impulse of working with a 
 view to nothing but the goodness of the work. 
 These motives, each operating separately, might 
 have each produced something really good. His 
 power of observation, his knowledge of what 
 
328 Essays on 
 
 would interest his readers, his theory of the 
 principles which ought to guide life, 
 and his mastery of the art of writing peuillet. 
 books, are all good, but each seems to 
 trip up the othen He tries to make his 
 heroines fascinatingly sinful and at the same 
 time improvingly moral. The result is that 
 they do not fascinate and that they do not edify 
 us. The term honnite femme is always on his lips 
 when he is describing their temptations. But as 
 one of his French critics remarks with admirable 
 bluntness, " Une honnite femme n'a pas de ces 
 tentations." So also is it with his heroes. They 
 stand shivering on the bank, hesitating between the 
 " I dare not " of their honour and the " I would " 
 of their inclination, until when, as they always do at 
 length, they take the plunge, we have no feeling 
 left for them but rather wearied contempt. M. 
 Feuillet cannot draw a strong immoral character 
 because of his ideas of morality ; he cannot draw 
 a strong moral character because of the hankering 
 which he feels after a certain class and kind of 
 interest, maudlin not to say immoral ; and he 
 cannot write a book which is interesting merely 
 as a book, because of the preoccupations which 
 these different motives cause him. Once, and 
 once only, he has got quite out of his toils and 
 worked with free hands, and the result is La Petite 
 Comtesse. Again in Julia de Tr^cceur a study of 
 real power is produced. It has been thought by 
 some people that the style of analytic novel- 
 
French Novelists 329 
 
 writing is after all not his forte, and that he 
 would have done better to follow 
 FEuiLLET. °"* '^^ paths on which he entered 
 in Bellah and in Onestd. I do not 
 myself see in these books any promise of greater 
 excellence than that which he has elsewhere 
 attained. As a novelist, and it is as a novelist 
 only that I am speaking of him, M. Feuillet seems 
 to me to have had the thus far and no further set 
 before him very clearly. He has undeniable 
 talent, talent so considerable as frequently to 
 appear greater than it really is, and to excite, even 
 in those who estimate it correctly, astonishment 
 that he has done no better. But he is limited. 
 He walks over his dubious and hollow ground 
 with dainty but. uncertain step, and declines alto- 
 gether to pierce to the accepted hells beneath. 
 His vogue, such as it is, appears to be due in 
 part no doubt to real merits of style and work- 
 manship, but still more to his curious sentimental 
 compound of propriety and impropriety, to his 
 faculty of treating dubious subjects in a tone of 
 the strictest virtue, and to his amiable weakness 
 for excusing the sinner, and making him interest- 
 ing, while shaking his head very gravely over the 
 sin. It is consoling, perhaps, to some people to 
 meet with a teacher of undoubted morality who 
 is so thoroughly convinced that offences must 
 needs come, and so well skilled in making the 
 offender amiable. To other people, however, this 
 tone is not agreeable, and they do not find in it 
 
330 Essays on 
 
 an excuse for the shortcomings of these novels 
 considered as works of art. 
 
 OCTAVE 
 
 FEUILLET. 
 
 So far I had written in 1878 
 when M. Feuillet, though his career as a novelist 
 under his own name was far shorter than that of 
 some of his contemporaries, was already well 
 stricken in years. In the interval which has 
 passed since, he has added steadily, though not 
 voluminously, to his total, producing one story, La 
 Morte, of immense popularity and of merit nearly 
 sufificient to rank it with the two above singled out, 
 some others — Le Journal d'une Femme, Histoire 
 (Tune Parisienne, Honneur d' Artiste — of great 
 merit, and some half narrative, half dramatic work, 
 such as Le Divorce de Juliette. Absolutely he has 
 advanced upon rather than fallen back from his 
 previous achievements : relatively his advance is 
 even greater. For during these twelve years his 
 only elder rivals of the first class, MM. Sandeau 
 and Flaubert, have died, the extravagances of the 
 Naturalist school, which were only beginning in 
 1878, have reached their climax, and the art of 
 writing French has steadily declined. To read, 
 therefore, books such as La Morte or Honneur 
 d' Artiste, after reading L'Immortel or La Bite 
 Humaine, gives them an advantage which was not 
 possessed by, say, Julia de Tricoeur, in respect of, 
 say, Madame Bovary. But it would not be fair to 
 deduct too largely from M. Feuillet's merit on the 
 score of the inferiority of his competitors. In 
 
French Novelists 331 
 
 Honneur d' Artiste, indeed, his latest work, some- 
 thing of the old failings noticed above 
 FEuiLLET. ''scurs together with much of the spirited 
 and malicious portraiture and the real 
 pathos there praised. With an unusual survival 
 of the faculty of observation, M. Feuillet has 
 satirised the Americanised young lady of the 
 France of to-day and the fin-de-siecle young man 
 quite as smoothly and with as little of mere senile 
 fault-finding as when thirty years ago he whisked 
 his whip about the ears of their fathers and 
 mothers. He has added to his gallery of imper- 
 fect but striking character sketches in the 
 heroine. Yet, as of old, she is imperfect : not in 
 morals merely (most of us are that), but in art. 
 No one can say that Beatrice de Sardonne, a 
 damsel of high degree but tocherless, might not be, 
 by the machinations of a cruel old baroness, who 
 plays on her sense of honour, induced to refuse 
 the said baroness's nephew, the Marquis de Pierre- 
 pont, who loves her ; that she would not have 
 married, half from pique, half from esteem, the 
 painter Jacques Fabrice, Pierrepont's friend ; that 
 she and the marquis might not afterwards have 
 experienced that sudden and fatal forgetfulness of 
 all but love, which a pleasant English poet has 
 cruelly enshrined in unforgettable verse in regard 
 to an English hero and heroine. Nor is the 
 suicide of Fabrice, when he discovers the fact, and 
 when, to avoid the scandal of a duel, the lot falls on 
 him, impossible, nor even the too-late discovery of 
 
332 Essays on 
 
 Beatrice herself that she loves him and not her lover. 
 Separately each of these things is conceiv- 
 able, and it is not at all impossible that p^uillet 
 an artist, even that this artist, might 
 have made them conceivable in combination. But, 
 to my taste at any rate, M. Feuillet has not done 
 this. His old theory of what I have called the 
 caducity of woman has prevented him from seeing 
 that his Beatrice de Sardonne would not have 
 fallen as he makes her fall, that, had she done it 
 at all, she Would have done it in a different way, 
 and so the sense of " topsyturvification " returns. 
 
 La Morte is a very different book, and whatever 
 may be the final verdict pronounced on it, makes 
 a great addition to its author's titles to fame. Like 
 some of his earlier work, and even more directly, 
 it is a polemic against the modern spirit ; for M. 
 Feuillet, it must be remembered, is always pro- 
 fessedly, and I think in perfectly genuine intention, 
 on the side of the angels. The hero, M. de Vaudri- 
 court, a French gentleman neither better nor worse 
 than most, or perhaps a little better, marries Aliette 
 de Courteheuse, one of those anges de candeur 
 who rather irritate the English reader. At their 
 country house they meet an aged scientific person, 
 M. Tallevaut, with his niece Sabine. Sabine is a 
 young person of great attractions, who has been 
 brought up by her uncle, a freethinker, with a 
 total absence of the ordinary moral and religious 
 education. Bernard de Vaudricourt and she fall 
 violently in love with each other, but as he still 
 
French Novelists 333 
 
 loves his wife, Sabine calmly poisons Aliette, and 
 
 soon afterwards marries the widower, 
 OCTAVE r. •■,.■,. 
 
 FEuiLLET. ^"sr a violent and vigorous scene, at 
 
 which shepits her uncle's teachingagainst 
 his reproaches. Vaudricourt's punishment (though 
 he has no suspicion of the crime) is not long delayed. 
 Sabine quickly tires of him, and is logically im- 
 partial in her disregard of the commandments. 
 Only after the discovery of his disgrace does he dis- 
 cover that Aliette had been murdered. The plot, it 
 will be seen, is very simple, and may, even by those 
 who sympathise with M. Feuillet's point of view, be 
 regarded as a little extravagant. The tendency of 
 agnostic morality in Sabine is certainly exaggerated, 
 and the book is too full of preachings of various 
 kinds. It may even be contended by some who 
 push to an extreme the notion that M. Feuillet can- 
 not draw a whole character, that his Sabine con- 
 fuses rather than blends the characteristics of a 
 ruthless " philosophess " and of a mere vulgar femi- 
 nine aspirant after riches and pleasures. Still it is 
 undeniable that she is, as French slang has it, a 
 " person," and that the central situation of the 
 book is strong, obviously led up to, and strongly 
 worked out, while it is as admirably written as all 
 M. Feuillet's work is. No one of all the younger 
 generations, excepting M. de Maupassant, has 
 produced anything that can vie with it for com- 
 bination of interest and style. 
 
X 
 
 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 (1878^) 
 
 In a letter to Sainte-Beuve, expostulating with 
 the great critic for his judgment on 
 Salammbd, the author asks the judge, pLAiraE^x 
 " Etes-vous bien sfir d'abord de n'avoir 
 pas ob^i un peu trop ^ votre impression nerveuse ? 
 L'objet de mon livre vous ddplatt en soi." Perhaps 
 Flaubert, having been early put on his defence by 
 the prosecution of Madame Bovary, was a little too 
 prone to be piqued at criticism. But it is hardly 
 doubtful that the feeling which, as he thinks, 
 prejudiced even Sainte-Beuve, is one against which 
 the critical reader of his books has to be de- 
 cidedly on his guard. Both Madame Bovary and 
 Salammbd are very apt to produce the unfavour- 
 able nervous impression of which he speaks ; 
 L' Education Sentimentale, with its unbroken pre- 
 sentment of meanness, feebleness, irresolution, 
 vice without glamour, and virtue without charm, 
 
 ^ See Preface. 
 
Essays on French Novelists 335 
 
 is open to the same charge ; and though I myself 
 consider La Tentation de Saint Antoine 
 FLAUBERT, attractive in the very highest degree, 
 I do not know that this is a general 
 opinion. Of the three short stories published 
 later La Legends de Saint Julien is, I should think, 
 beyond reproach, and Un Cceur Simple almost 
 equally so ; but Hirodias is, in defects as well as 
 merits, almost a replica on a small scale of 
 Salammbo. The posthumous and uncompleted 
 Bouvard et P^cuchet never received a final passing 
 through the alembic from its author, and it is not 
 certain that even he could ever have effected that 
 operation. But as it is, the most ardent Flaubertist 
 of intelligence must acknowledge that it is rudis 
 indigestaque moles ; and that the " vanity of vani- 
 ties " of its survey of almost all possible literary, 
 scientific, and practical occupations is not only 
 depressing in the highest degree, but almost 
 unrelieved by the satire of the earlier work. 
 Thus it happens that the reader of this very 
 singular novelist has to win his pleasure at the 
 cost of a considerable effort. Like Saint Julian 
 himself, he has to endure repulsiveness in order to 
 gain the subsequent charm, and even when that 
 charm is gained it is, perhaps, rather the charm 
 of exquisite literature than that of perfect fiction. 
 One thing that distinguishes Flaubert in these 
 days of easy writing is his determined and 
 conscientious patience of workmanship. The 
 short list of books I have already given represents 
 
336 Essays on 
 
 — if we add the unimportant comedy Le Candidat 
 — the whole of his published work, ex- 
 cepting letters, and yet from the first plaubert. 
 appearance of fragments of the Tenta- 
 tion to his death was more than thirty years. 
 Even Thackeray's allowance of two years for 
 the writing of a good novel sinks into insignificance 
 beside this almost Horatian reticence. Flaubert, 
 a man of sixty when he died, had in his lifetime 
 produced about twice as much as one of our 
 quarterly novelists accomplishes in a twelve- 
 month ; but then Flaubert's work is work which a 
 man may be proud of at the close of a lifetime spent 
 upon it, and the quarterly novelist's work is work 
 which, if it cost as many minutes as it has hours, 
 would still have deserved the .^schylean verdict — 
 
 fjA^doi Trepitrtros KovtJMVov^ r evrjdCa. 
 It has sometimes been thought — in my judg- 
 ment erroneously — that much of the character 
 of Flaubert's work was determined by the prosecu- 
 tion of his first book. I believe there is now 
 no difference of opinion about the injustice as 
 well as the unwisdom of that prosecution. Madame 
 Bovary is, I frankly admit, a repulsive book in 
 more ways than one ; but I should as soon think 
 of calling a Dance of Death or a Last Judgment 
 immoral, as of applying that epithet to it. An 
 American critic — Mr. Henry James — has pleas- 
 antly suggested that it might make a useful 
 Sunday School tract, and Mr. James is a person 
 who is (or was) wont to speak with all the 
 
French Novelists 337 
 
 sternness of New England concerning any transgres- 
 sion of the proprieties. But I do not 
 FLAUBERT, think that the author was at all induced 
 by the fate of this first book to aim at 
 topping his part in the effort to obtain successes 
 of scandal. It has always struck me that the 
 outcry over SalammbS arose mainly from the 
 determination of the public to be shocked, and 
 its disappointment at finding nothing to shock 
 it. As for L' Education Sentimentale — in 1 840 or 
 thereabouts it would have been entitled Physiologic 
 de r Homme Manqu^ — there is little enough to 
 scandalise anybody in that vast treasure of pitiless 
 observation, and the Trois Contes contains next to 
 nothing that can be called bravado. Scarcely so 
 much can be said of Bouvard et P^cuchet, but of 
 that later. Flaubert, before the abundant personal 
 revelations which followed his death, gave me the 
 impression of a man of saturnine temperament, 
 who happened to combine in very unusual measure 
 the observing with the imagining faculty, and who 
 probably developed himself with hardly any refer- 
 ence to the opinion of the public or the critics 
 about his successive developments. Nor have 
 those revelations altered my opinion. His work is 
 all worthy of attention, and its extent, fortunately, 
 enables me to give some detailed notice of all of 
 it here. 
 
 It is a peculiarity of Flaubert that he was 
 not merely a little -writing but a late- writing 
 novelist. Some fragments of La Tcntation dc 
 
 z 
 
338 Essays on 
 
 Saint Antoine, which was not in its entirety to be 
 published till long afterwards, appeared 
 in L' Artiste at the time when Gautier plaubert. 
 edited it, more than twenty years earlier. 
 But Madame Bovary was not given to the world 
 until its author had passed the half-way house of 
 his threescore years and ten. It appeared at 
 first in the Revue de Paris, and in this publication 
 some unwise omissions were made, notwithstand- 
 ing the author's protest. Omissions have the 
 force of asterisks — .they are simply provocatives 
 to the prurient ; and Madame Bovary found itself 
 greeted with a ^'fie fie " almost before it was in 
 the hands of the public. Now it so happened 
 that the Second Empire was just at this time 
 very anxious to justify its famous boasts as to the 
 glorification of religion and the guardianship of 
 the family. Madame Bovary was thought to be a 
 proper object of its holy zeal, and was prosecuted 
 accordingly. The proceedings are. appended to 
 the later editions of the book. M. Flaubert was 
 luckier than Baudelaire, for he escaped with a 
 gentle censure. An incident of this kind influences 
 the future of a book in the eyes of almost all 
 readers, and of all critics but a very few. But I 
 need say no more about it, except to reiterate 
 what I have already said, that the prosecution is 
 now defended by nobody. The second title is 
 Mceurs de Province, and the two between them 
 describe more accurately than is the wont of titles 
 the contents. On the one side it is an analytical 
 
French Novelists 339 
 
 description of a new Harlot's Progress; the 
 history of the fall and punishment of 
 
 GUSTAVE , , ^ , 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^ woman who happens to unite strong 
 aspirations after luxury, in both senses 
 of the word, with a superficial sensibility, an utter 
 heartlessness, and an incurable vulgarity of mind. 
 On the other it is a minute account from the 
 outside of the pettinesses of provincial life, 
 recounted not ill-naturedly or satirically, for 
 Flaubert is the most impersonal and passionless of 
 writers, but with fidelity and indifference, which 
 are quite as ruthless as any satire. 
 
 Emma Rouault is the daughter of a farmer of 
 the Pays de Caux in Normandy, who is a widower. 
 He is able to live in a kind of sluttish plenty, 
 and withal to have his daughter educated at a 
 convent. Here she acquires a reasonable measure 
 of accomplishments and a still greater measure 
 of sensibility in its eighteenth-century meaning. 
 She reads endless romances and keepsakes, and 
 dreams the usual dreams of girlhood, except that 
 her dreams are apt to concentrate themselves 
 much more upon Prince Charming's pomp and 
 magnificence than upon his personal characteristics. 
 At last her father takes her to the farm, and she 
 subsides for a time into the uncongenial occupa- 
 tions of the housewife. All things considered, it 
 is of course natural that she should marry the 
 first man that asks her, and it so happens that 
 her father, who is in no position to furnish her 
 with a good dot, is not at all inclined to make 
 
340 Essays on 
 
 any objections. The suitor is, as fate will have 
 it, the doctor of the district, one Charles 
 
 T-> TT • J i GUST AVE 
 
 Bovary. He is a young man and not plaubert. 
 bad -looking, but hopelessly common- 
 place and uninteresting, with barely brains enough 
 to enable him to scrape through his examinations 
 and start himself as a general ' practitioner. He 
 has already been once married, young as he is ; 
 for his mother, who altogether disposes of him, 
 has chosen him a wife as she has chosen him a 
 profession. But this wife is dead, and he now, 
 having been thrown by chance in Emma's way, 
 thinks of choosing for himself They are married, 
 and the description of the wedding guests is an 
 early example of Flaubert's peculiar style and 
 power. Then Emma goes to live with the most 
 honest, most affectionate, and most stupid of men, 
 whose delicacy is pretty well gauged by his 
 leaving the withered wedding bouquet of his dead 
 wife to greet her successor as an ornament of the 
 conjugal chamber. He is on his part more than 
 satisfied with his bargain, and enjoys the same 
 sort of quiet animal felicity as that which possesses 
 a ruminating cow. With Emma, as it may be 
 supposed, things are different. She has married 
 in expectation of all the mysterious delights of 
 which her romances have told her, and as she 
 altogether fails to experience them, she is at first 
 a good deal puzzled. Of such puzzlement there 
 can be only one end, and she gradually begins 
 to hate her husband, to watch with a sort of 
 
French Novelists 341 
 
 fascinated aversion his unrefined ways, his slovenly 
 habits, his stupid and commonplace 
 FLAUBERT, "^^^.^-i^ks. She is absolutely without 
 society. Her home is in that marvel 
 of dreary untidiness, an average French village, 
 and she is one of those women who are always 
 dull without excitement. The climax is put to it 
 all by a casual visit to a neighbouring chclteau, 
 whither the pair are invited with a view to 
 electioneering matters. The dinner, the ball, the 
 costly furniture, the viscounts and dukes, the 
 champagne, and the Persic apparatus generally, are 
 too much for Emma. Her merely passive dulness 
 changes to an active rage because she has not all 
 these things which the great ladies have ; and 
 happening to pick up an embroidered cigar-case 
 which one of the visitors has dropped, she 
 preserves it as a kind of fetish, a relic of the 
 luxury and excitement from which she is debarred. 
 At last she becomes seriously ill, and Bovary, who 
 adores her in his stupid way, is prevailed upon to 
 remove from Tostes, where they have been living, 
 and where he has got together a fair practice, to 
 Yonville, in another district, a larger place and 
 within reach of Rouen. Here Madame Bovary's 
 moral malady is not long in coming to a crisis. A 
 neighbouring squireen, a coarse brute enough, 
 whom she takes for a model cavalier, soon per- 
 ceives that the pear is ripe, and at his first touch 
 it drops. For a time Emma persuades herself 
 that she is happy, and indulges in the wildest 
 
342 Essays on 
 
 eccentricities in order to build up her romance. 
 She is gradually disenchanted, and at 
 last, trying to lash herself into fresh Flaubert. 
 excitement, she suggests elopement. 
 But Rodolphe, the lover, has not the least in- 
 tention of saddling himself with such a burden. 
 The revulsion is, of course, violent, and the usual 
 devotional reaction sets in. But the excellent 
 country priest to whom she has before her 
 transgression tried to explain her spiritual state, is 
 as unwilling and as unable to play the part of 
 spiritual healer as an old-fashioned English parson, 
 and cannot for the life of him make out her drift. 
 " If she is ill at ease," he had asked her at her 
 iirst confidence, " why doesn't she ask her husband 
 to prescribe for her ? " So Emma is not long in 
 returning to her first works. A lawyer's clerk, 
 with whom she had a platonic flirtation before the 
 days of Rodolphe, reappears, and a second liaison 
 is entered upon as rashly as the first, and carried 
 on almost more shamelessly. All this time she 
 has been as extravagant as she has been un- 
 faithful. A cunning village tradesman has got 
 her completely in his clutches. She has obtained 
 from her foolish husband a power of attorney, 
 and has signed bill after bill, until the whole 
 amount is, to her, immense. Payment is suddenly 
 demanded. She tries her old lover in vain ; her 
 new one, frightened at the proposals she makes to 
 him that he shall embezzle the money, leaves 
 her, and she is equally unsuccessful with the 
 
French Novelists 343 
 
 people she knows in Yonville, though she descends 
 to the lowest means of persuasion. At 
 
 GUSTAVE 1 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^^^^ ^'^ despalr she poisons herself with 
 arsenic, and expires in horrible torments. 
 Her husband is totally ruined, but this is nothing 
 in his eyes compared with the loss of her. He 
 neglects his practice, sinks into poverty, and only 
 when he is utterly broken down discovers her 
 treachery by chance. This is the last blow, and 
 he dies of a broken heart, while the one child of 
 the miserable pair becomes a factory-hand. 
 
 I never myself read Madame Bovary without 
 thinking of another masterpiece of French fiction ; 
 and I have no doubt that the comparison has 
 occurred to others also. Madame Bovary and 
 Manon Lescaut are both histories of women whose 
 conduct no theory of morality, however lax, can 
 possibly excuse. Both are brought to ruin by 
 their love of material luxury. Both are not only 
 immoral, but cruelly unfaithful to men who in 
 different ways are perfectly true and faithful to 
 them. Both perish miserably, not in either case 
 without repentance. Why does Emma Bovary 
 repel while Manon Lescaut irresistibly attracts us ? 
 I think the answer is to be found in the ignoble 
 character of the former as compared with Manon. 
 The mistress of Desgrieux loves wealth, splendour, 
 sensuous gratification of all sorts, for themselves, 
 with a kind of artistic passion. They are the first 
 necessity to her, and everything else comes second 
 to this passionate devotion. On the other hand. 
 
344 Essays on 
 
 Madame Bovary sets up lovers, spends her hus- 
 band's money, cheats and deceives him, 
 because it seems to her the proper Flaubert 
 thing to do. Her countesses and 
 duchesses all had lovers and gorgeous garments, 
 so she must have gorgeous garments and lovers 
 too. Her first reflection after transgressing is 
 almost comic — " J'ai un amant !" She has a 
 sort of Dogberry- like conviction that a pretty 
 woman ought to have a lover and everything 
 handsome about her, the same sort of conviction 
 which more harmlessly leads her English sisters 
 to be miserable if they have not a drawing-room 
 with a couch and chairs, and a chimney-glass, and 
 gilt books on the table. Her excesses come from 
 a variety of feminine snobbery, and are not 
 prompted by any frank passion or desire. 
 
 The reproach usually brought against the book 
 is that it is too dreary, and that there is not a 
 sufficient contrast of goodness and good humour to 
 relieve the sombre hue of the picture. I believe 
 myself that the author felt this, and that he in- 
 tended to supply such a contrast in the person of 
 M. Homais, the apothecary of Yonville. It has 
 been suggested that Homais is not intended to be 
 favourably drawn, but I think that this is a mistake. 
 Homais has indeed the slight touch of charlatanism 
 which half- educated and naturally shrewd men, 
 whose lot is cast among people wholly uneducated 
 and mostly stupid, often acquire. But he is an 
 unconscious humbug, and not a bad fellow as the 
 
French Novelists 345 
 
 world goes, besides being intensely amusing. 
 Much of the amusement, indeed, results 
 FLAUBERT. fr°ni thc impassibly saturnine way 
 in which Flaubert directs even the 
 gambols of his puppets. This impassibility is 
 the great feature, as I have said, of all his' 
 books, and notably of this. The stupid common- 
 placeness of Charles Bovary's youth, the sordid 
 dulness of his earlier married life, the more graceful 
 dulness of the second, the humours of a county 
 gathering and' agricultural show at Yonville, the 
 two liaisons with the vulgar roud squire and the 
 dapper lawyer's clerk, the steps of Emma's financial 
 entanglement, the clumsy operation by which 
 Bovary attempts to cure a clubfoot, the horrors of 
 the heroine's deathbed, and the quieter misery of 
 her husband's end, are all told with the material 
 accuracy of a photograph and the artistic accuracy 
 of a great picture. As a specimen of the style I 
 may quote the passage in which Emma's first 
 conscious awakening to her mistake in marrying 
 Bovary is described : — 
 
 She began by gazing all round to see if nothing had 
 changed since her last visit. The foxgloves and the wall- 
 flowers were in the same places, the clumps of nettles still 
 surrounded the great stones, and the blotches of lichen 
 still stretched across the windows, whose closed shutters on 
 their rusty hinges were slowly mouldering themselves away. 
 Her thoughts, at first of no precise character, flitted hither 
 and thither like the greyhound which ran round in circles, 
 barked at the butterflies, hunted the field-mice, or nibbled 
 the corn-flowers at the edge of the wheat. Little by little 
 her ideas grew more definite ; and as she sat on the grass 
 
346 Essays on 
 
 and dug her parasol here and there into the turf, she kept 
 repeating to herself, "Why did 1 marry him?" 
 She asked herself whether she might not by gustave 
 some other chance have fallen in with some flaubert. 
 other husband, and she tried to imagine what 
 these events which had not happened, this life which 
 had never existed, this husband whom she did not know, 
 would have been like. All men surely were not like Charles. 
 He might have been handsome, witty, gentlemanly, attract- 
 ive, like the husbands whom her old schoolfellows no doubt 
 had married. What were they doing now ? In Paris, amid 
 the bustle of the streets, the excitement of the theatres, the 
 brilliance of the balls, they were living lives where the heart 
 had room to expand and the senses to develop. But as for 
 her, her life was as cold as a garret that looks to the north, 
 and ennui like a spider spun its web in the shadow of the 
 corners of her heart. She thought of the prize days at the 
 convent, when she had to go up to the platform to take her 
 crown. With her long hair, her white dress, and her kid 
 shoes, she must have looked pretty doubtless, for the gentle- 
 men as she passed to her place leant over to pay her com- 
 pliments. The courtyard was full of carriages, good-byes 
 were sounding from the windows, and the music -master 
 bowed as he passed with his violin case under his arm. How 
 far off it all seemed ! 
 
 One might multiply passages of this sort almost 
 indefinitely, but one more extract must suffice. 
 For my own part I do not know where to find a 
 greater masterpiece of ironical contrast than the 
 following pair of pictures. The wife, in the hey- 
 day of her passion for Rodolphe, has recovered all, 
 and more than all, her spirit and good looks ; she 
 already dreams of an elopement and of the stock 
 scenery and joys of her novels and her books of 
 beauty. The husband dreams too — of a happy 
 
French Novelists 347 
 
 future, when his daughter shall have her mother's 
 charms — 
 
 GUSTAVE 
 
 FLAUBERT. When in the middle of the night he re- 
 turned from a visit to his patients, he did 
 not dare to wake her. The shade of the night-light 
 threw a circular flicker on the ceiling, and the closed 
 curtains of the little cradle looked like a white tent in 
 the shadow by the side of the bed. Charles gazed 
 at both, and listened to the light breathing of the child. 
 She would soon grow big; every change of the seasons 
 would bring a change on her. He saw her in fancy coming 
 home from school at evening, smiling, with her sleeves 
 stained with ink and her basket on her arm. She would 
 have to go to boarding-school, and that would be expensive. 
 How should they manage ? Then he began to plan. He 
 would take a little farm in the neighbourhood, and manage 
 it himself, visiting it on the way to visit his patients. He 
 would save the proceeds and lay them up in the savings- 
 bank. Then he would invest the sum, no matter how. 
 Besides, his practice would increase. It must, for he had 
 made up his mind that Bertha should be well brought up, 
 that she should be clever, that she should play on the piano. 
 How pretty she would be in fifteen or sixteen years, when 
 she would wear straw bonnets like her mother's in summer, 
 and they would be taken for a pair of sisters ! He fancied 
 her working in the evening by their side under the lamplight, 
 embroidering slippers, managing the house, and filling it 
 with her gracious ways and her cheerfulness. ' Then they 
 would take care to settle her well ; they would find some 
 honest fellow with a good livelihood ; they would make her 
 happy for ever. 
 
 Madame Bovary's dreams are somewhat differ- 
 ent : — 
 
 Behind four horses at full speed she had been travelling 
 for a week to some new country, never to return. From 
 the mountain brow they saw some splendid city with domes, 
 
348 Essays on 
 
 ships, bridges, forests of orange trees, and cathedrals of 
 white marble, with storks' nests in their slender 
 pinnacles. Bells sounded, mules whinnied, gustave 
 the guitars played, and the fountains plashed, flaubert. 
 while their spray as it floated cooled piles of 
 fruit heaped pyramid-wise at the foot of smiling statues. 
 Then one day they came to a fishing-village, whose brown 
 nets were drying on the shore beside the huts. There 
 they would stay and live in a low house with flat roofs, 
 shaded by a palm tree, at the bottom of a gulf on the edge 
 of the sea. They would sail in gondolas, swing in hammocks : 
 their life should be as soft and as easy as their silken gar- 
 ments, as passionate and starry as the nights at which they 
 would gaze. 
 
 The contrast between these aspirations is only 
 less striking than the contrast of the actual to- 
 morrows which light both these fools on their 
 way to dusty death. For the domestic happiness 
 which Bovary forecasts, come shame, ruin, and 
 misery ; for the dissolving-view and opera-scenery 
 delights which Emma promises herself, come cheap 
 debauchery, insult, persecution, cowardly desertion, 
 hideous suffering. There is no fault in the com- 
 position of the picture ; every line tells, every line 
 would be missed if it were away. Perhaps there 
 is some unnecessary exaggeration in the loath- 
 someness, if not in the horror, of the deathbed. 
 Lamartine, who was a sentimental person, is said 
 to have objected to this deathbed because it 
 seemed to him that, heavy as were Emma's 
 crimes, her punishment was heavier still. I do 
 not agree with this, and I do not miss or question 
 the powerful relief which the details give when 
 
French Novelists 349 
 
 one remembers the sybaritic tastes and the horror 
 of the disagreeable which characterised 
 
 GUSTAVE .v • i- Ti i T , r 11 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^^ victim. But I am not sure — fall- 
 ing in to this extent with the tract 
 theory — that M. Flaubert was not reprehensibly 
 influenced in this particular by a desire to 
 point a moral ; and if this be the case it is 
 certainly a painful instance of a lapse into the 
 heresy of instruction on the part of a faithful 
 servant of art. 
 
 Few greater contrasts can be found in fiction 
 than the subject of Flaubert's first book and the 
 subject of his second. Five years after Madame 
 Bovary appeared Salammbd. From the dullest 
 and flattest modernness the author had shifted to 
 remote antiquity — to the nation of which less is 
 known than of any other civilised nation, and 
 which has to us the strangest and most unfamiliar 
 characteristics and history. Salammbd is a Cartha- 
 ginian story, the history of Hannibal's sister. Be- 
 fore writing it, Flaubert visited Carthage, and saw 
 that of the ancient city there was nothing to be 
 seen. He sought out with laborious erudition 
 all the scattered fragments of historical informa- 
 tion that yet exist respecting the city of Dido 
 and Sophonisba, and discovered that there was 
 little to be learnt All his scanty information 
 he has woven into the narrative, supplementing 
 it with the results of his vivid imagination and 
 his endless patience. The merits of the book 
 were violently contested, and on the whole its 
 
350 Essays on 
 
 reception was scarcely favourable. I have already 
 indicated what seems to me to have 
 been one at least of the causes of jlaubert. 
 dissatisfaction. It had been impressed 
 on the public that M. Flaubert was improper, 
 and the expected impropriety was not sufficiently 
 discoverable. From this came disappointment, 
 which, if not respectable, was, perhaps, ac- 
 cording to the ways of this world, only to be 
 expected. Furthermore, there can be little doubt 
 that the barbaric scenery and the shadowy char- 
 acters were not relished. It was said by an acrid 
 critic that Salammbd might or might not be 
 Carthaginian, but that she was not human ; and 
 though the retort, that if it had been otherwise 
 the critic would have said that she might be 
 human but was not Carthaginian, was witty, it 
 was hardly valid. Lastly, it must be admitted 
 that the indulgence in repulsive detail, which is 
 one of the author's undoubted faults, is here rather 
 painfully marked. The book is full of blood and 
 torture, and, perhaps, this is justifiable enough 
 by what we know of Carthage and Carthaginian 
 institutions. But the way in which the leprosy 
 of the suffete Hanno pursues us through it, is 
 surely gratuitous. 
 
 The story opens at the close of the first Punic 
 war. The mercenaries have already begun to 
 clamour for their pay, and the senate, half to 
 appease them, half to spite the absent Hamilcar 
 Barca, have appointed his gardens as the scene 
 
French Novelists 351 
 
 of a great banquet to the army. Wine leads 
 to riot, and the gardens are ravaged 
 FLAUBERT, ^y ^^ drunlcen throng, who, however, 
 refrain from injuring the house or in- 
 sulting Salammb6. The soldiers are cajoled 
 into leaving Carthage, but faith is not kept with 
 them, ' and they at last break out into open 
 mutiny under their historical leaders Spendius 
 and Matho — the latter a Libyan, who has 
 conceived a mad passion for the heroine. The 
 mercenaries besiege Carthage, and it occurs 
 to Spendius, a freethinking half-caste of Magna 
 Grscia, to attempt to carry off the mantle of the 
 goddess Tanit, the sacred Zaimph, the talisman 
 of Carthage. He and Matho penetrate into the 
 city by an aqueduct and achieve their object — 
 the narrative of the capture of the Zaimph being 
 a miracle of description. But Matho cannot bring 
 himself to leave the city without trying the effect 
 of his prize on Salammbd, who is known to be a 
 frantic devotee of the goddess, and he nearly falls 
 into the hands of his enemies in consequence. 
 Then the mercenaries retire to Utica, and the 
 suffete Hanno is sent to chastise them. He is 
 at first successful, but is finally defeated with 
 horrible carnage, and just at this crisis Hamilcar 
 comes home. After a violent debate in the senate 
 full powers are given him, but the forces at his 
 disposal are too small, and he can effect hardly 
 anything against the mercenaries. Salammbd is 
 therefore stirred up by her father confessor (to 
 
352 Essays on 
 
 give old things new names) to attempt the re- 
 covery of the Zaimph. This, after a 
 
 , . . ... •,! GUSTAVE 
 
 mysterious mcantation scene with a plaubert. 
 tame python, she endeavours to do, 
 and she succeeds by her blandishments in 
 carrying it off from Matho's tent. But the 
 effect is not miraculous. The mercenaries 
 still prosper, and the popular fanaticism shifts 
 from the milder goddess Tanit to the terrible 
 Moloch. One of the auto- da- fh common at 
 Carthage is resolved on, and Hannibal himself 
 only escapes the fire by his father's artifice. The 
 citizens gather courage, the Numidian prince, Narr' 
 Havas, who has hitherto supported the mutineers, 
 deserts them for love of Salammb6, and Carthage 
 at last triumphs, her rebellious soldiery perishing 
 almost to a man by a horrible mixture of force 
 and treachery. Matho alone is reserved for the 
 sport of the capital, and dies at Salammb6's feet . 
 after running the gauntlet of hideous torture 
 through the streets. Almost instantly she herself 
 dies, as she pledges the genius of Carthage, " for 
 that she had touched the mantle of Tanit." 
 
 I do not know a more difficult book to judge 
 than Salammhd. At the first reading — at least 
 this was my own experience when about the time 
 of its publication I first read it — its absence of 
 human interest, its profusion of hideous details, 
 its barbaric and unreal world, where the figures 
 seem half shadows, and the scenery and properties 
 leave a confused impression of gold and blood, of 
 
French Novelists 353 
 
 gorgeousness and horror, on the mind, it is difficult 
 to avoid experiencing that nervous im- 
 
 GUSTAVE . r I.- 1 •, .1 1 
 
 FLAUBERT, prcssion 01 which its author speaks. 
 But at every successive reading this 
 disappears. The enormous genius which can 
 thus reconstruct — or invent, if you will — a 
 world so different from the world we know, yet 
 coherent, consistent, possible even, and tallying 
 well with the few known facts of the matter, the 
 absolutely unsurpassed excellence of the descrip- 
 tions, which have the matter-of-fact exactitude 
 that Macaulay was pleased to laugh at in Dante, 
 the power and art of the thing, in short, grow on 
 one strangely. To read SalammbS has an effect 
 something like the described effect of haschish or 
 opium without the unpleasant after-results ; and it 
 may be added that each successive exhibition of 
 the drug is more potent and less deleterious than 
 the earlier experiences, a characteristic not common 
 in artificial paradises. We grow accustomed to the 
 grisly gorgeous world in which we find ourselves, 
 the painting of God's judgments in purple and 
 crimson becomes as natural as it was in a certain 
 Hollow City, and the cruelty and the vigour, the 
 hideous diseases and the terrible worship of the 
 Semite, cease to affect us other than dramatically. 
 If Salammbo is colourless, we remember that 
 Jephtha's daughter owes most of her colour to 
 the " Dream of Fair Women." If Hamilcar is 
 treacherous and cruel, it occurs to us that some 
 casuistry has been expended on the performances 
 
 2 A 
 
354 Essays on 
 
 of Jacob and David. If Hanno is a leper, what 
 was Naaman ? But for all this I do 
 not know that Salammbd is to be plaubert. 
 recommended for general reading. It 
 is altogether an esoteric book requiring initia- 
 tion, training, preliminary ceremonies and efforts. 
 Now the novel -reader, not unjustly, is little in- 
 clined to comply with such a demand. He 
 prefers that his books should please him at the 
 first reading, not at the second, third, or tenth. 
 
 Another long interval — seven years — passed, 
 and Flaubert once more presented himself This 
 time his burden was again of an entirely different 
 nature. Salammbd is hardly more different from 
 Madame Bovary than L'^ducation Sentimentale 
 is from both. There are here no horrors, no 
 splendours, no unfamiliar scenery, no hazardous 
 description. I have already suggested an alterna- 
 tive title for the book, and of such alternatives 
 very moderate ingenuity might supply half a 
 dozen. It is an encyclopaedic sort of novel, and 
 goes some way towards being a whole ComMie 
 Humaine of failure in two volumes. But 
 Flaubert's critics were equal to the occasion. 
 M. de Pontmartin had informed him that 
 Salammbd might be Carthaginian, but was not 
 human. M. St. Ren6 Taillandier now informed 
 him that Frederic Moreau might be human, but 
 was unreadably dull. Dulness, indeed, is a 
 favourite charge against L Education Sentimentale, 
 and one criticism I have read of it pronounces it 
 
French Novelists 355 
 
 full of all sorts of admirable things, but " dead," 
 "sawdust and ashes." Let us see what 
 
 GUSTAVE .. . 11 ,., 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^^ IS really like. 
 
 We are introduced to the hero on 
 board a Seine steamboat which is taking him 
 home at the end of his college days, — college, 
 be it remembered, in the French and Scotch, 
 not the English sense. He meets on board 
 the boat an affable gentleman, one M. Jacques 
 Arnoux, with whose wife Frederic Moreau 
 instantly falls in love, as in 1840 a young 
 gentleman of eighteen years old was bound 
 to do, considering that the lady had black hair 
 and an olive skin, and was therefore strictly 
 comme il faut in the romantic sense. Before 
 he leaves the boat, the affable Arnoux invites 
 him to go and see them in Paris, whither he 
 is soon to return to study law, and he reaches 
 his mother's house convinced of a great passion. 
 As soon as he returns to the capital he makes 
 his call, uselessly at first, but afterwards with 
 better success. Arnoux is the editor of an art 
 journal, and his office is the regular lounging 
 place of a large floating circle of artists, men of 
 letters, amateur politicians, and the like, with most 
 of whom Frederic soon makes acquaintance. He 
 is also, after some little time, made free of the 
 drawing-room as well as the office, and finds 
 Madame Arnoux as charming as he had thought 
 her, but altogether free from coquetry, indeed a 
 model wife and mother, while he himself is much 
 
356 Essays on 
 
 too young and too diffident to lay violent siege 
 to her. His acquaintance, moreover, 
 is not confined to this clique. He plaubert. 
 makes friends up to a certain point 
 with many of his fellow -students. He has 
 introductions to a M. Dambreuse, a provincial 
 seigneur who has amalgamated his de and taken 
 to financing. After a time, too, his school 
 crony, Deslauriers, comes up to Paris and 
 keeps house with him. But he does not take 
 much to the study of the law, and he does not 
 find that his friends and the amusements of Paris 
 give him much pleasure. He discovers, while at 
 home on a visit, that he is much poorer than he 
 thought, and this makes a very disagreeable 
 change in his ideas, the only consolation he has 
 being the small auburn-haired daughter of a rich 
 country neighbour, to whom he reads much 
 romantic literature, and who is immensely fond of 
 him. Suddenly an old uncle dies and leaves him 
 twelve hundred a year. He of course returns to 
 Paris, expecting to lead a perfectly happy life. He 
 renews his old friendships and makes new ones, 
 some of them not of the most edifying descrip- 
 tion, for Arnoux introduces him to a certain 
 Mademoiselle Rosanette, with whom Frederic 
 in his lazy irresolute manner proceeds also to fall 
 in love, though he never ceases to regard Madame 
 Arnoux with the old timid adoration. Thence- 
 forward the book is a chronicle of the history of 
 all these persons, and of many others whom we 
 
French Novelists 357 
 
 have not mentioned. The central figure is still 
 Frederic and his irresolute philander- 
 FLAUBERT. ^"S^ ^'"^"^ Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, 
 the auburn Louise Roque, and Madame 
 Dambreuse, who at last admits him as amant 
 en titre, and after her husband's death wishes 
 to marry him. He is always going to do 
 something, but never does it, and his usual 
 mental attitude is typically represented in a 
 scene where he is on the point of indulging 
 his tender emotions, but reflects that " somebody 
 may come," and so doesn't. There is not a 
 character of the scores which figure in the 
 book that is not in itself a masterpiece. The 
 feminine but somewhat colourless virtues of 
 Madame Arnoux, the amiable vulgarity and 
 matter-of-fact caprice of Rosanette, the calculating 
 coldness of Madame Dambreuse, the feather- 
 headed oddities of Arnoux, who really loves his 
 wife while he is ruining himself on her rival, and 
 who loves art too much to make profit, and profit 
 too much to be an artist, the slangy romanticism 
 of the journalist Hussonet, the crazes of the 
 dauber Pellerin, the amateur politician Regimbart, 
 the honest clerk Dussardier, the fatuous aristocrat 
 De Cisy, the model man Martinon, who "always 
 presents himself in three-quarter profile, and 
 looks as neat as a piece of Sevres china," the 
 vulgar lawyer Deslauriers — are all admirable. 
 But most admirable of all is Frederic himself, 
 good-hearted, not destitute of talent and culture, 
 
358 Essays on 
 
 but unstable as water, given to look at all sides 
 of a question, and so to take none, 
 and subjected to all sorts of humi- pla^be™. 
 liations and disappointments at the 
 hands of men less gifted in every way than 
 himself. Nor is the scenery worthy of less praise. 
 The interiors throughout are perfect. The de- 
 scriptions of a visit to the Alhambra — in the 
 Champs Elys^es, not in Granada — of the fancy 
 ball in Rosanette's apartments, and, above all, of 
 the revolution of 1 848, of which Frederic is in his 
 external way a spectator, yield to few things of 
 the kind. But the greatest attraction of the 
 book is the profusion of Dbserva1;ion and know- 
 ledge of the intricacies of action and conduct 
 which it displays, and which I do not hesitate to 
 say is not excelled in the work of any contem- 
 porary writer. 
 
 To what, then, are we to attribute the com- 
 parative unpopularity of the book, which in some 
 ten years passed through but four editions, while 
 work far inferior could count reappearances by 
 fifties ? I can only recur to my original explana- 
 tion — the explanation suggested by the author 
 himself — that of an unpleasant nervous impres- 
 sion. The reader of U Education Sentimentah 
 does actually journey from Dan to Beersheba, 
 and finds that all is barren. The book comes 
 to no particular end, but years and years after its 
 active story ceases Frederic meets first his early 
 love, Madame Arnoux, and then his early friend. 
 
French Novelists 359 
 
 Deslauriers. Madame Arnoux comes nominally 
 to restore him a sum of money which 
 FLAUBERT. ^^ '^^^ ^'^'^% ^go IcHt hcr husband, 
 but really to make a tacit confession 
 of that regret respecting which Mademoiselle 
 de Lespinasse and a good many other people 
 have wondered whether it is not worse than 
 remorse. Deslauriers and Moreau as they re- 
 view their lives decide that the mere school- 
 boy follies of their early youth are perhaps 
 the happiest times they have known, and so the 
 curtain falls on a "set gray life and apathetic 
 end." Now the novel-reader does not like this. 
 He probably knows in his secret heart that this 
 setness and apathy are the actual end of an 
 enormous number of lives. But he is not accus- 
 tomed to have the fact thus sharply brought 
 before him. The accepted laws of novel-writing 
 require a dhiouement, tragic it may be, arbitrary 
 and insufficient it may be, even to the extent of 
 the traditional marriage bells, but still a dinoue- 
 ment of some sort. The passionless review of folly 
 and weakness which LEducation Sentimentale 
 contains is too cold-blooded for most people to 
 accept. They would rather have downright satire, 
 even of the red-hot brand of Swift, than this cool 
 depicting of failure and impotence. To a certain 
 extent no doubt this is a question of taste and 
 not arguable ; to a certain extent, also, it is one 
 proper to be argued, but not to be argued here. 
 I should only say that to me it appears that 
 
360 Essays on 
 
 Flaubert's process is a perfectly allowable one, 
 and that the result certainly gives me 
 pleasure. If the last remark should j^aotert. 
 appear egotistical, I can only say in 
 excuse that I know no other test of the pleasure- 
 giving properties of a novel, or for that matter 
 of anything else, than its effects on oneself. 
 
 Five years again passed, and then appeared 
 La Tentation de Saint Antoine, a republication in 
 part, and scarcely in strictness to be called a novel, 
 but far too remarkable to be passed over here. It 
 is in semi-dramatic form, the descriptions and 
 scenery being given in the form of stage direction. 
 For his details Flaubert has ransacked all the 
 pictures of Breughel, Teniers, Callot, De Bles, and 
 a score of others, not to mention written fancies, 
 and has added thereto, as usual, very much of his 
 own. The book opens thus : — 
 
 The scene is in the Thebaid on the heights of a moun- 
 tain, where a platform of semicircular shape is surrounded 
 with great stones. The hermit's cell occupies the back- 
 ground. It is built of mud and reeds, is flat-roofed and 
 doorless. Inside are seen a pitcher and some black bread ; 
 in the centre on a wooden stand a large book ; on the 
 ground, here and there, split rushes, a mat or two, a basket, 
 and a knife. Half a dozen paces from the cell there is a 
 tall cross planted in the ground, and at the other end of 
 the platform a gnarled old palm-tree leans over the abyss, 
 for the side of the mountain is scarped. At the bottom of 
 the cliff the Nile spreads like a lake. To right and left the 
 view is bounded by the rocks, but on the side of the desert 
 immense undulations of a yellowish ash colour rise, one 
 above and beyond the other, like the lines of a beach, and 
 far off beyond the sands the mountains of the Libyan range 
 
French Novelists 361 
 
 form a chalklike wall shaded with violet haze. In front the 
 
 sun is setting. To the north the sky is of a 
 
 GUSTAVE gray colour. But towards the zenith purple 
 
 FLAUBERT, clouds like flakes of hair stretch over the 
 
 blue vault. These flakes grow browner, the 
 
 gray paleness spreads over the bluer patches, the bushes, 
 
 the pebbles, the earth become of a hard bronze tint, and 
 
 through space there floats a fine gold-coloured powder, 
 
 hardly distinguishable from the vibrations of the light. 
 
 The saint begins to meditate over his past life. 
 As he recounts it a feeling of bitterness comes 
 over him. His lot as anchorite is so hard and 
 then so useless. Would he not have done better 
 to have used his talents in some worldly employ- 
 ment, and to have lived virtuously but in moderate 
 comfort? While he muses thus and grows more 
 and more discontented with his fate, strange things 
 begin to happen. Shadows flit about ; voices are 
 heard. At last, when, hungry and thirsty, he finds 
 that his water-jug is empty and that the jackals 
 have stolen his last crust, the temptation becomes 
 definite. A mighty table with all sorts of cates 
 arises before him. But he resists this, and all is 
 once more dark. His foot strikes a cup ; it con- 
 tains money — first small silver pieces, then gold. 
 His thoughts go on gradually. With the first 
 piece of money he can buy a sheepskin — even 
 an anchorite may have a sheepskin. Then the 
 ideas of avarice grow for a moment ; he has 
 almost succumbed, and, thinking with a shudder 
 how near he has been to mortal sin, he is on the 
 point of despair. Suddenly a vision seizes him ; 
 
362 Essays on 
 
 he is transported to the capital, is made the 
 emperor's first favourite — his minister 
 — emperor himself even ; then from pt"u^^T. 
 Constantine he becomes in fancy Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, and revels and is degraded like, 
 the great king. But this vision, too, passes, 
 only to be followed by others. The Queen of 
 Sheba comes, fantastically attended, to offer 
 herself to him. When she has departed, his 
 old disciple, Hilarion, appears. He discusses 
 theology and ecclesiastical affairs with Antony, 
 hints evil things of the great bishops of the day, 
 points out discrepancies in the gospels, all in a 
 kind of tentative way, till the saint is puzzled and 
 weary. Once more he is transported to a vast 
 temple or series of temples where all the myriad 
 heresies and fanaticisms of Eastern Christianity 
 are represented. The Gnostic, the Manichsean, 
 the Marcionite, assault him in turns ; Valentinus 
 lectures him on the pleroma ; the feminine devotees 
 of Montanus wrangle as to their master's affection 
 for them ; the lower Gnostic sects celebrate orgies 
 of all sorts in his presence. Then he is wafted 
 into the prisons of the Christian martyrs and the 
 cemeteries where they are buried. In the former 
 he finds the martyrs regretting their rashness, and 
 only sustained in their resolution by pride ; in the 
 latter he discovers mourners consoling themselves 
 in strange but historic fashion for their nightly 
 vigils by the martyrs' graves. Other tempters 
 haunt him next — Simon Magus, an Indian gym- 
 
French Novelists 363 
 
 nosophist, Apollonius of Tyana ; and the last 
 especially almost converts him with 
 FLAUBERT. ^'^ pompous theosophy. Then Hil- 
 arion reappears, and causes all the 
 gods of old, from formless idols to the inhabit- 
 ants of Olympus, to file before Antony. He 
 recounts the chief points of the respective cults, 
 and while he makes them all ridiculous, he puts 
 them in such a fashion as always to recall some- 
 thing similar in the Christian faith or practice. 
 The procession is closed by Jehovah Himself, who 
 laments the overthrow of His service at Jerusalem. 
 At last Hilarion declares himself. He is the 
 devil, ready to show himself, if Antony will, in his 
 proper form. The saint, struck with curiosity, 
 consents, and the devil, obtaining by this consent 
 some power over him, carries him off as on a cloud 
 into space. There he reveals to him the truths 
 of natural philosophy. The sun does not set, 
 there is no firmament, all things are infinite, and 
 the saint receives from the devil explanations 
 more and more Pantheistic, which lead up subtly 
 to the last suggestion, " Suppose there should be 
 no God ? " But Antony has just resolution enough 
 to refuse the fatal answer, and the fiend disappears. 
 The temptation, however, is not over. Two 
 women, one old and withered, one young and fair, 
 dispute , him. One is Death, the other Vice. 
 Death offers him rest. Vice offers him pleasure. 
 They wrangle over him, each striving to show that 
 the joys which the other can offer are paralleled 
 
364 Essays on 
 
 by her own ; and at last they wrestle with one an- 
 other, and disappear, strangely blended 
 in one monstrous figure. Saint An- plaotert. 
 tony has still his philosophical ideas 
 in his head, and he begins to reason somewhat 
 arrogantly on what he has seen. Then the 
 Sphinx and the Chimera present themselves, 
 and these two emblems of philosophical specu- 
 lation argue like mediaeval disputants. They 
 are followed by a procession of the " fauna of 
 fancy" — the pigmies and all the fantastic tribes 
 that Herodotus tells of — the basilisk, the unicorn, 
 and their fellows. All mysteries of the living 
 world pass before Antony, down to the creatures 
 of the microscope, until once more the Pantheist 
 ideal comes back on him, and he nearly blasphemes. 
 Then the day dawns, the sun rises, and in the 
 middle of the sun glows forth the face of Christ. 
 The saint crosses himself and falls on his knees. 
 
 This Temptation is my own favourite among 
 its author's books. It is the best example of 
 dream-literature that I know, and the capacities 
 of dreams and hallucinations for literary treatment 
 are undoubted. But most writers, including even 
 De Quincey, who have tried this style, have erred, 
 inasmuch as they have endeavoured to throw a 
 portion of the mystery with which the waking 
 mind invests dreams over the dream itself Any 
 one's experience is sufficient to show that this is 
 wrong. The events of dreams as they happen 
 are quite plain and matter-of-fact, and it is only in 
 
French Novelists 365 
 
 the intervals, and, so to speak, the scene-shifting 
 of dreaming, that any suspicion of 
 
 GnSTAVE . , ,1 , 
 
 FLAUBERT, strangeness occurs to the dreamer. 
 This truth is fully kept in view in 
 La Tentation, and I do not know any other 
 book in which it is so kept. One views all 
 Antony's experiences exactly as Antony himself 
 would have viewed them. The occasional mis- 
 giving of the supernatural is there ; but the 
 actually supernatural occurrences are related with 
 strict simplicity and verisimilitude. 
 
 In 1877 Flaubert published, under the title of 
 Trois Contes, a volume which has the curious 
 merit of giving in little examples, and very perfect 
 examples, of all the styles which have made him 
 famous. Un Caur Simple displays exactly the 
 same qualities of minute and exact observation, 
 the same unlimited fidelity of draughtsmanship, 
 which distinguish Madame Bovary and L'^duca- 
 tion Sentimentale. La Ldgende de Saint Julien 
 r Hospitalier shows the same power over the 
 mystical and the vague which is shown in La 
 Tentation de Saint Antoine. Hirodias has the 
 gorgeousness, the barbaric colours, and the horror 
 of Salammbd. Of the three I have no hesitation 
 in preferring La L^gende de Saint Julien. The 
 history of the Norman bonne F^licit^, her fidelity, 
 her narrow brain, her large heart, the way in which 
 employers, relations, and all connected with her 
 make use of her and owe her no thanks, is a 
 wonderful tour de force, but it has the defects of 
 
366 Essays on 
 
 its quality. One feels that the author is in effect 
 saying, " I am going to make you, 
 whether you will or no, take an in- Flaubert. 
 terest in this commonplace picture of 
 humble life ; " and though he is successful, 
 there is a certain sense of effort and of 
 disproportion. Hirodias, again, has much the 
 same defects as its prototype. The sketch of 
 Aulus Vitellius is faithfully loathsome, and the 
 scenery of the sketch is as a piece of scene- 
 painting unsurpassable. The breath of the Dead 
 Sea and the desert, the atmosphere of Jewish, 
 Idumaean, and Arab savagery, is all over it ; but 
 the " nervous impression " still stands in the way. 
 In Saint Julien this is no longer the case, and the 
 effect is admirable. 
 
 The legend begins, in true legend -fashion, at 
 the very birth of the saint. He is the son of a 
 wealthy baron and a noble dame who live at peace 
 and in plenty. At his birth marvels are presaged of 
 him by strange visitants, and he is brought up in 
 all the exercises of chivalry. He early develops, 
 however, a certain propensity to bloodshed. He 
 kills the mice in the chapel, the pigeons in the 
 garden, and soon his advancing years give him 
 the opportunity of indulging this taste in hunting. 
 He spends whole days in the chase, caring less for 
 the sport than for the slaughter. One winter day 
 he starts early, and game is more than usually 
 plentiful. He slays insanely without attempting 
 to retrieve his victims, and at last massacres a 
 
French Novelists 367 
 
 whole herd of deer, finding them enclosed in a 
 glen which has no outlet Then — 
 
 GUSTAVE 
 
 FLAUBERT. Across the valley, at the edge of the 
 forest, he perceived a stag, a hind and her 
 fawn. The stag was black and of huge size. His 
 antlers had sixteen points, and his beard was white. 
 The hind, of the pale colour of dead leaves, was brows- 
 ing, and gave suck to the dappled fawn without inter- 
 rupting her steps. The whiz of the crossbow once more 
 sounded and the fawn fell dead. Thereat his mother 
 looking up to heaven belled with a deep voice, agonising 
 and human, and Julian, irritated thereby, stretched her on 
 the ground with a second shot. Then the great stag saw 
 him and made a bound towards him. Julian despatched 
 his last arrow, which hit him full in the forehead and stuck 
 there. But the stag seemed not to feel it. He strode over 
 the bodies, he came nearer and nearer, he was on the point 
 of ripping him up, and Julian shrank back in terror un- 
 utterable. But the mighty beast stopped suddenly, and 
 with flaming eyes and a solemn tone, as of a hoary judge, 
 he said three times, while a bell tolled in the distance, 
 " Accursed one ! ruthless of heart ! thou shalt slay thy 
 father and thy mother." Then his knees tottered, and, 
 closing his eyes, he expired. 
 
 Julian returns to the castle horrified at this 
 prediction, and almost immediately accidents 
 happen which seem on the point of fulfilling it. 
 In alarm he quits his home and becomes a 
 wandering soldier. His success in war is equal 
 to his good luck in the chase, and at last he saves 
 the Emperor of Occitania from the Moslem, 
 marries his daughter, and lives in peace and 
 splendour. But nothing will induce him to hunt, 
 for he fancies that on his abstinence depends the 
 
368 Essays on 
 
 fulfilment of the prediction. His wife tries tc 
 
 combat this idea, and one evening he 
 
 sets out. For a long time no game flaumIt. 
 
 at all appears, and when he meets a 
 
 beast he is either unready for it or he misses 
 
 it. By degrees his ill-luck becomes mysterious 
 
 His lance splinters on the quarry, his arrows stof 
 
 in mid-course. At length — 
 
 All the birds and beasts that he had been pursuing suddenly 
 reappeared and closed round him in a narrow circle. Some 
 were in a sitting posture, others stood upright ; he himsel 
 remained in the midst, frozen with terror and incapable o 
 movement. With a final effort of will he made a step forward 
 and then the birds on the branches spread their wings, th( 
 beasts on the ground stirred their limbs, all accompanied him 
 Before him marched the hyenas, and behind him the wolf anc 
 the boar. The wild bull on his right swung his head from sid< 
 to side, and at his left the serpent writhed through the grass 
 while the panther, arching her back, walked with dainty step; 
 and long strides. He went as slowly as possible for fear o 
 irritating them, and from the thickets there issued in crowds 
 porcupines, foxes, jackals, and bears. He began to run 
 they ran too. The serpent hissed, the slaver of the fou 
 creatures dropped. The wild boar rubbed his heels witl 
 his tusks, the wolf thrust his shaggy head into the hollo-v 
 of Julian's hand. The monkeys pinched him and grinned 
 the polecat glided over his feet. With a blow of his paw i 
 bear knocked off his hat, and the panther, as if in scorn 
 him, tossed away an arrow which she carried in her mouth 
 In all their gestures there was an air of irony ; they watchec 
 him out of the corners of their eyes, and seemed plotting 
 vengeance, till, deafened by the buzzing of the insects 
 blinded by the flapping of the wings, choked by the noisomi 
 breath of the beasts, he walked with outstretched hands 
 and eyes shut like one deprived of sight, and had not evei 
 strength to cry for mercy. 
 
French Novelists 369 
 
 No actual injury comes to him from this 
 ghostly procession. Its effect, how- 
 
 GHSTAVE . ^ ^ , , 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^"^^''> '^ "°^ ^o wam, but to provoke 
 him. He is furious at his impotence 
 to harm ; and when he is at the edge of 
 the forest, though his hideous escort leaves him 
 as the cock crows, fresh delusions of a minor 
 kind beset him. He makes his way to the castle 
 in a mood of baffled rage, ready to break out on 
 any object. During his absence his parents, who 
 have wandered all over the earth to find him, 
 have come to his castle. His wife has received 
 them joyfully, and made them rest in her own 
 couch. Julian returns late and silently, sees a 
 beard on the pillow, and, mad with jealousy, slays 
 at a single blow, as he thinks, his wife and her 
 paramour. He is not long in perceiving his 
 mistake, and the horrible crime he has in conse- 
 quence committed. His resolution is soon taken. 
 He leaves his wife and his riches, and once more 
 becomes a wanderer, but this time a wanderer of 
 a different kind. He turns mendicant friar, giving 
 himself up utterly to penance and good works of 
 all sorts, and finally he establishes himself on the 
 borders of a dangerous river, and ferries over 
 passengers at the hazard of his life and for no 
 reward. At last, one stormy night he is sum- 
 moned to the other side, and there finds a leper in 
 the most loathsome stage of the disease. With 
 superhuman effort he crosses the stream, but his 
 trial does not, as in the kindred instance of 
 
 2 B 
 
370 Essays on 
 
 St. Christopher, cease there. The leper demands 
 
 shelter and hospitality, and Julian 
 
 gives him both, yielding up his whole plIumrt. 
 
 scanty supply of food and drink, — an 
 
 act which results, according to the horrible Jewish 
 
 theory, in the communication of the wretch's disease 
 
 to the inanimate objects he touches. Then he 
 
 demands Julian's bed, and it is given him. But 
 
 he is dying of cold, and Julian must lie down by 
 
 him, clasp him in his arms, revive him with his 
 
 own vital heat. It is done. 
 
 Then the leper embraced him closely and suddenly ; his 
 eyes had the brightness of stars, his hair grew long and 
 shaped like the rays of the sun, the breath of his nostrils 
 was as the sweetness of roses, from the hearth a cloud of 
 incense arose, and the billows of the river sang in harmony. 
 Into the soul of Julian there came an abundance of delight 
 — a joy more than human, and like a mighty wave. But 
 he who held him closer and closer grew and grew till the 
 walls of the hovel on both sides were reached "by his head 
 and his feet. Then the roof parted, and the firmament 
 was seen, and Julian went up the blue spaces of the heaven, 
 face to face with Christ the Lord. 
 
 No discussion of Flaubert's merits would be 
 complete without some notice of the Realism of 
 which he was the chief master. I do not know 
 that this unlucky term has been included in the 
 list of those fallen words whose history has been 
 often bewailed, but the idle mind may contemplate 
 with some interest the realism of William of 
 Champeaux side by side with the realism of M. 
 Zola. In the latter sense it is, as the Marquis de 
 Custine called it, a grossih^e Etiquette enough, and 
 
French Novelists 371 
 
 even, as it seems to me, one of which it is some- 
 what difficult to understand the precise 
 
 GUSTAVE . . , - , ^ . . 
 
 FLAUBERT, meanmg. As a term of abuse it is 
 as intelligible as most terms of abuse ; 
 that is to say, it means that the speaker does 
 not like the thing spoken of But as a classi- 
 fying epithet having any literary or scientific 
 value it appears to me to be of but small 
 account. I suppose, if it means anything, it 
 means the faithful patience and the sense of 
 artistic capacity which lead a man to grapple 
 boldly with his subject, whatever that subject may 
 be, and to refuse tanquam. scopulufn easy general- 
 ities and accepted phrase. This procedure is 
 naturally more striking when the subject matter 
 is of an unpleasant character, and hence the 
 superficial critic runs away with the idea that 
 realism means the choice of unpleasant subjects. 
 From this to the deliberate choosing of unpleasant 
 subjects, in order to qualify for the title of realist, 
 there is only a step. Now, in this sense, I venture 
 to say that there is no reason whatever for affixing 
 the " etiquette " to Flaubert. His subjects are 
 doubtless often unpleasant enough, but I cannot 
 see that there is the faintest evidence of their having 
 been chosen for their unpleasantness. It is, 
 perhaps, a question whether unpleasantness would 
 not predominate in the absolutely faithful record 
 of any life. It has been said that no man would 
 dare to write such a record of his own history ; 
 and all that can be said of Flaubert is that he 
 
372 Essays on 
 
 has dared to do, for certain classes and types, 
 what they dare not do for themselves. 
 The ordinary novel is a compromise plauTeIt 
 and a convention. Of compromises 
 and conventions Flaubert knows nothing. He 
 dares in especial to show failure, and I think 
 it will be found that this is what few novelists 
 dare, unless the failure be of a tragic and strik- 
 ing sort. He draws the hopeful undertakings 
 that come to nothing, the dreams that never in 
 the least become deeds, the good intentions that 
 find their usual end, the evil intentions which also 
 are balked and defeated, the parties of pleasure 
 that end in pain or weariness, the enterprises of 
 pith and moment that somehow fall through. 
 Perhaps this is realism, and, if it be, it seems to 
 me that realism is a very good thing. It is 
 pleasant doubtless to read about Sindbad as he 
 comes home in triumph regularly after every 
 voyage with his thousands or his millions of 
 sequins. But the majority of Sindbads have 
 experiences of a somewhat different sort, and I 
 do not see why the majority also should not have 
 their bard. 
 
 The antagonism, however, which has grown 
 up as a matter of association between real and 
 ideal makes the use of this word realism in this 
 sense distinctly objectionable, for it leads the 
 reader to suppose that a realist must necessarily 
 be unideal. How far this supposition, taken in 
 a prejudicial sense, may lead even grave and 
 
French Novelists 373 
 
 sober judges astray, may be seen in some criticisms 
 
 on our author. One French critic, to 
 
 FLAUBERT, whom I have before referred, M. St. 
 
 Rend Taillandier, persuaded himself 
 
 that Salammbd is an attack on the idea of 
 
 womanhood, that L^ducation Sentimentale is 
 
 an attack on the idea of manhood, and that 
 
 La Tentation de Saint Antoine is an attack oh 
 
 the idea of God ! Of such a bitise as this it is 
 
 not easy to speak seriously ; one can only fall 
 
 back on the Dominie's vocabulary, and exclaim, 
 
 " Prodigious ! " 
 
 Enough must have been said to bear out the 
 contention I have already made that the import- 
 ance of Flaubert is very much greater as a maker 
 of literature than as a maker of novels, though I 
 am far from inferring that in the latter capacity 
 he must not be allowed very high rank. His 
 observation of the types of human nature which 
 he selects for study is astonishingly close and 
 complete ; his attention to unity of character 
 never sleeps, and he has to a very remarkable 
 degree the art of chaining the attention even 
 when the subject is a distasteful one to the reader. 
 He has been denied imagination, but I cannot 
 suppose that the denial was the result of a full 
 perusal of his work. The reader of Madame 
 Bovary only might possibly be excused for 
 making such a charge, the reader of L' Education 
 Sentimentale only would be almost certain to 
 make it. But Salammbo supplies an almost 
 
374 Essays on 
 
 sufficient answer to it, and La Tentation de 
 Saint Antoine, together with the Trois 
 Contes, an answer very much more plaotert. 
 than sufficient. His imagination, how- 
 ever, is poetic rather than fictitious ; it does 
 not supply him with a rush of lively creations 
 like the imaginations of the Scotts and the 
 Sands, but with fantastic and monstrous figures, 
 which his admirable writing power enables 
 his readers to perceive likewise, and that not 
 dimly, nor through a misty and hazy atmo- 
 sphere. There are few things more curious than 
 the combination of such an imagination with 
 the photographic clearness of observation and 
 reproduction which his less imaginative work 
 displays. 
 
 His unpopularity as a novelist, such as it is, 
 arises, I must repeat, in reality principally from 
 the fact that he is a writer who not only deserves 
 but demands to be read twice and thrice before 
 he can be fully enjoyed. I have mentioned my 
 own impression in first reading Salammbo — how 
 I wondered at the lack of interest (as it then 
 seemed to me) which distinguished it, although 
 at the same time I found it impossible to drop or 
 skip it, and how years afterwards I read it again, 
 and then it no longer seemed to me to lack 
 interest, and I was no longer in doubt as to what 
 had made me read it through at first almost 
 against my will. Much the same thing occurs, I 
 think, with all Flaubert's books. One is struck 
 
French Novelists 375 
 
 at first by what can only be called the unpleasant- 
 ness of the subject, and this colours the 
 
 GUSTAVE • •/ ' 
 
 FLAUBERT. Judgment. At the second reading the 
 subject has ceased to engage the at- 
 tention mainly, and the wonderful excellences 
 of the treatment become visible, and at every 
 subsequent reading this excellence becomes more 
 and more apparent. 
 
 How great it is has rarely been denied by 
 competent persons. Even M. Scherer, whose 
 antipathy to certain subjects and certain styles 
 not unfrequently weakened his critical faculty, 
 had to confess how unmistakable was Flaubert's 
 position, comme ^crivain. Hazlitt says somewhere 
 about Shakespeare that he is not for or against 
 his characters. The same thing is eminently 
 true of Flaubert. He is in his own person a 
 sufficient and victorious refutation of the theory 
 which will have it that the artist's choice of 
 subjects must express his personal tastes. Flau- 
 bert is altogether an outsider to his subjects ; as 
 Falstaff would say, they have lain in his way and 
 he has found them. These subjects are in a 
 manner revealed to him, and the details hold 
 therefore much the same place as the exact and 
 careful enumeration of the armies of doubters 
 and bloodmen in Bunyan's Holy War. The 
 extraordinary pains which he takes to secure 
 accuracy in matters of reference are sufficiently 
 shown in the controversy which he carried on 
 respecting Salammbd with an antiquarian critic, 
 
376 Essays on 
 
 and his accuracy in describing his own impres- 
 sions and imaginations may be as- 
 sumed to be equally minute. We p^IumIt. 
 cannot imagine Flaubert suppressing 
 an idea because it was troublesome to express 
 or unpleasant to handle, or in any other way 
 intractable. He is altogether of the opinion of 
 Gautier in his contempt for the writer whose 
 thoughts find him unequal to the task of 
 giving them expression, and he may be assumed 
 to be of Gautier's opinion also respecting the 
 excellence of dictionaries as reading, for his 
 vocabulary is simply unlimited. 
 
 Now all these characteristics are distinctly 
 those of the abstract litterateur rather than those 
 of the novelist. There is probably no other 
 literary form in which they could have been so 
 well displayed as in the novel, certainly there is 
 none in which they would have been so satis- 
 factorily enjoyed. One takes up Flaubert and 
 reads a chapter, or two or three, with hardly any 
 reference to the already familiar story. His 
 separate tableaux are, as I have said, admirably 
 and irreproachably combined. But their indi- 
 vidual merit is so great that they possess interest 
 independently of the combination. He is a writer 
 upon whom one can try experiments with one's 
 different moods, very much as one can try experi- 
 ments with different lights upon a picture. The 
 immense labour which he has evidently spent 
 upon his work has resulted in equally immense 
 
French Novelists 377 
 
 excellence. His cabinets have secret drawers in 
 them which are only discoverable after 
 
 GUSTAVE , ^ ... . ^ . 
 
 FLAUBERT. ^°"& familiarity. It has been justly said 
 of him that he can do with a couple 
 of epithets what Balzac takes a page of laborious 
 analysis to do less perfectly. All this is so rarely 
 characteristic of a novelist, that it has, perhaps, 
 seemed to some people incompatible with the 
 novelist's qualities — a paralogism excusable enough 
 in the mere subscriber to the circulating library, 
 but certainly not excusable in the critic. Flaubert 
 was a novelist, and a great one. As a dramatist 
 or a poet he might, had his genius so inclined 
 him, have been greater still in the general estima- 
 tion ; but he could hardly have been greater in 
 the estimation of those who are content to wel- 
 come greatness in the form in which it chooses to 
 present itself, instead of suggesting that it should 
 suit its costume to their preconceived ideas. 
 
 Since Flaubert's death in 1881 a very unusual 
 amount, not of new matter whereon to found 
 criticism, but of documents important for correct- 
 ing and checking criticism already made, has been 
 published respecting him. In the first place there 
 appeared the posthumous work (on which a few 
 remarks have been inserted above), Bouvard et 
 P^cuchet. This is Flaubert's only failure. In 
 design it is something like a particularisation with 
 immense developments of the plan of Gulliver's 
 Travels : indeed, Flaubert might be accused 
 
378 Essays on 
 
 of having, in it, justified to some extent M. 
 Taillandier's preposterous criticism 
 given above. Two Parisian employis p™^^^ 
 who possess between them a mod- 
 erate fortune, go into the country to enjoy 
 themselves for the remainder of their days, 
 and are most dismally disappointed. They try 
 history only to find, it all apples of Sodom, 
 literature only to be bored and disenchanted, 
 science only to potter and fail, benevolence only 
 for their prot^g^s to turn out worthless, even vice 
 to a certain extent only to find that it is very 
 bitter in the belly and not very sweet in the 
 mouth. In the scenario of the unfinished part it 
 is written, " Ainsi tout leur a craqud dans la main." 
 Now this, though a very ambitious, is not an 
 impossible scheme. The Preacher did it and 
 more than it in a dozen pages long ago : Mr. 
 Thackeray has done not much less in a dozen 
 volumes. Whether in the heyday of his strength 
 Flaubert could have done it is a might-have-been 
 argument of no great importance. As a fact he 
 did not. 
 
 Meanwhile general interest (which at the date 
 of the bulk of this essay was not strong) in Flau- 
 bert had been growing, and his younger friends 
 the Naturalists had been distorting his method, or 
 something as near it as they could reach, in a very 
 surprising manner. Even earlier gossip had talked 
 of a certain club of four — Flaubert, M. Zola, M. 
 Daudet, and the Russian novelist Tourgu^neff— 
 
French Novelists 379 
 
 who met and talked enormities from time to 
 time. Not very long after Flaubert's 
 
 GUST AVE 
 
 FLAUBERT, ^^^th appeared the reminiscences of 
 his much earlier friend, M. Maxime 
 du Camp, which contained a good deal about 
 the author of Madame Bovary, and developed 
 a complete theory about his peculiarities, to 
 the effect that a serious illness which he had 
 had in early manhood had in some curious fashion 
 arrested his creative power — all his ideas having 
 been formed previously — but had left him the 
 merely literary faculty in full strength. This 
 excited no little wrath among Flaubert's later 
 friends, and besides indulging in various polemical 
 writings, they began a series of publications of his 
 letters (and of a few unimportant early works) 
 which has lasted to the present time. By these 
 letters (the earliest instalment of which was an 
 especially interesting correspondence with George 
 Sand) and by other documents, two facts of 
 great interest and importance were made clear. 
 The first was that Flaubert's admirable style 
 (which had struck all fit, however few, readers 
 before) was the result of a perfectly Herculean 
 study of the mot propre ; the second, which had 
 been also anticipated by critics, that Flaubert 
 occupied a very singular middle position between 
 Romanticism and Naturalism, between the theory 
 of literary art which places the idealising of 
 merely observed facts first of all, and is sometimes 
 not too careful about the observation, and the 
 
380 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 theory which places the observation first if not 
 also last, and is sometimes ostenta- 
 tiously careless of any idealising what- Flaubert 
 soever. The publication of these 
 personal details excited, as is the way ol 
 the world, a much wider though perhaps not 
 a more intelligent interest in Flaubert than had 
 previously existed, and discussions on him in 
 current literature have been proportionately more 
 active. But I do not know that there is much 
 to add to the criticism given above. In style ol 
 the less spontaneous and more studied kind 
 Flaubert has few if any superiors ; in satirical 
 contemplation of what is not the joy of living he 
 has even fewer, perhaps none ; in maintaining, in 
 spite of his own realist rummaging of the "docu- 
 ment," the absolute prerogative, and what is more 
 the absolute duty of art to idealise and transcend 
 he stands alone among writers of recent days 
 With a happier temperament and milieu he migh1 
 (it is not certain that he would) have done thing; 
 even better ; with what he had he did greai 
 things. And especially he was a living and writ 
 ing witness, too much of their own to be refused 
 as to the fatal error of the degenerate Realist o: 
 Naturalist school. 
 
XI 
 
 HENRY MURGER 
 
 Of all the words which, by dint of clumsy repeti- 
 tion and misuse, have become unwelcome 
 Mu^ER *-° *^^ ^^^^ °^ Englishmen, there are 
 perhaps few that are more unwelcome 
 than the words Bohemia and Bohemianism. The 
 terms have not, in their modern acceptation, had a 
 long life, and it is even doubtful who invented them, 
 though George Sand has, I believe, the credit of 
 the invention. They have been worked pretty hard 
 even in France. But in England, from causes the 
 discussion of which might be instructive but would 
 certainly be out of place here, they have had 
 singularly ill fortune. The lower variety of novelist 
 and journalist has fastened upon them, and after his 
 kind has altogether perverted their meaning. Some- 
 times it seems to be assumed that anybody who has 
 any sort of connection with literature or art is a 
 Bohemian, and the word would thus apply to colour- 
 grinders and printers' devils. Sometimes, and more 
 often, the assumption is made that Bohemianism 
 
382 Essays on 
 
 consists in more or less senseless and vulgar dissipa- 
 tion, extravagance, and display. Indeed 
 it would appear from certain writers that ,^,'tl™ 
 
 ^•^ MURGER. 
 
 the differentia of the Bohemian man con- 
 sists in smoking cheroots while he is drinking 
 choice claret, and that the differentia of the 
 Bohemian woman consists in wearing blue satin 
 and diamonds when ladies would content them- 
 selves with ordinary apparel. It is no wonder that 
 this sort of ignorant folly should have disgusted 
 people of better taste with the word. The " green 
 uplands of sacred Bohemia " have seemed to the 
 novelist and journalist of wh,om I speak, as suitable 
 a place of deposit for the stale litter of picnics 
 as the uplands of his own country appear to the 
 average sightseer. To put the thing briefly, the 
 Bohemian ideal of France is not unlike Chatterton ; 
 the Bohemian ideal of at least some Englishmen 
 is more like an unamiable Dick Swiveller. 
 
 The careful and affectionate historians of literary 
 curiosities in France have distinguished three suc- 
 cessive Bohemias. The earliest and greatest was 
 the society which met nearly half a century ago 
 in the crumbling buildings of the Rue du Doyenn^, 
 where painters soon to be famous throughout 
 Europe frescoed the walls to compensate for the 
 lack of furniture, and poets supplied the deficiency 
 of firewood with inspiriting sonnets. This first 
 Boh^me sent forth Gautier, Corot, Ars^ne Houssaye, 
 who all lived to reap praise and profit from their 
 tastes and talents ; Gerard de Nerval, who divides 
 
French Novelists 383 
 
 with Murger the honour of being the type of the 
 higher Bohemia, Cdlestin Nanteuil, and 
 
 HENRY 
 
 MURGER. others too long to tell. Of the second 
 Bohemia, which dates from the last ten 
 years of the July monarchy and the early days of 
 the Empire, Murger himself, Champfleury, the in- 
 genious author of Les Excentriques, and Privat 
 d'Anglemont, a little-known man of letters who 
 lived mysteriously and died wretchedly, were the 
 most characteristic figures. , The third and latest, 
 which was only dispersed by the war of 1870 and 
 in a fashion survived it, has a sadder history and 
 a faithful historian. M. Firmin Maillard, in a 
 remarkable series of sketches which appeared in 
 the Parnassian journal La Renaissance, and which 
 were, I believe, afterwards reprinted with additions, 
 gave us the history of this strange hive of paradox, 
 genius, and I fear I must add folly, which gathered 
 in the Brasserie des Martyrs, as Murger's society 
 had gathered in the Caf6 Momus. M. Maillard 
 showed us men who made a real success in art and 
 letters occasionally visiting this palace of literary 
 sin, but never remaining long there. Those who 
 did remain had, with few exceptions, one and the 
 same end, la fosse commune. This curious book 
 (Les Derniers Bohemes, it is called) fully illustrates, 
 though in a negligent, sketchy, and almost phan- 
 tasmagoric fashion, the warnings which Murger 
 himself vainly addressed to his would-be followers 
 years before. The Brasserie is the nominal haunt 
 of the Muses, but these goddesses are not nine but 
 
384 Essays on 
 
 two, the Green Muse of Absinthe and the Brown 
 Muse of Tobacco. The talent that 
 might have done good things if not ^^l^^^^ 
 great ones, wastes itself in paradox, in 
 vain decrying of the accepted reputations of the day, 
 in idle witticisms and careless fleetings of the time 
 which might do for the golden world of Arden, 
 but not for our latter and leaden age. The critic, 
 who ought to be making a serious study, remarks 
 that " Lamartine is a piano, Hugo is a great man, 
 Dupont is a poet ;" and feels that he has done 
 his day's work in the effort. Two great but un- 
 recognised bards are found following in the guise 
 and attitude of mourners a van-load of empty wine 
 casks, and on being asked for an explanation reply, 
 " II faut respecter ses morts." All alike forget 
 that the garden has to be cultivated first ; and 
 before all in time yawns the pauper's grave, whither 
 they have in turn followed their penniless comrades, 
 and where the gravedigger, disappointed of his fee, 
 politely remarks, " Ce sera pour la prochaine fois." 
 Henry Murger and his own set, to do them 
 justice, if they did not justify their Bohemia by 
 turning out from the Cafe Momus any Corot or 
 Gautier, did not descend to the mere tavern- 
 haunting fainiantise of M. Maillard's dolorous 
 heroes ; still less to the yet more ignoble cult of 
 the assommoirs on the " Boul' Mich'/' by which 
 the frequentation of the Brasserie des Martyrs has 
 in its turn been succeeded. The worst Bokeme is 
 above the vadrouilleur. It is admitted that many, 
 
French Novelists 385 
 
 if not the major part, of the scenes that Murger 
 draws are historical, and we have to 
 MURGER. *^^^ account of the mistaken heroism 
 of the " Buveurs d'Eau," as well as of 
 the mere villonesque vagabondage of Rodolphe 
 and Schaunard — the latter a real personage much 
 babbled of by reporters after his death. These 
 two classes represent Bohemians of the upper and 
 lower type. The Buveur d'Eau is a devotee of 
 art or letters who expressly and absolutely refuses 
 to descend to potboiling, even of an honourable, 
 much more of a dubious kind. Nothing will 
 induce him to forge old masters for a picture- 
 dealer, or to write a pamphlet which a stupid 
 deputy is to sign as his own. He even dislikes, 
 if he does not actually refuse, perfectly respectable 
 hack-work, and hence in a majority of cases having, 
 as Murger admits, no striking or exceptional talent, 
 he dies of sheer starvation and hardship. The 
 jovial Bohemian is of a different order. He talks 
 about the dignity of art even more than the water- 
 drinker, but his practical respect for it cannot be 
 said to be excessive. He is not exactly a swindler, 
 though he is apt to regard landlords and publicans 
 as dwellers beyond the line, where there is always 
 the license of war. He has no objection whatever to 
 putting his talents to any profitable use in his pur- 
 suit of " that shyest of game, the five-franc piece " ; 
 but when he has decoyed one of these animals 
 into his clutches, it is sure to escape again directly. 
 Unless he falls utterly under the domination of 
 2 C 
 
386 Essays on 
 
 the two sinister muses, the Bohemian of this kind 
 does not often come finally to the fate 
 of Chatterton and Gilbert. He returns J^^g^^ 
 like the prodigal to his family ; he mar- 
 ries a wealthy widow ; or he adopts some suffici- 
 ently lucrative business. Sometimes even he makes 
 himself a man of letters and of art in reality, and 
 receives from feuilletons and portraits the dailybread 
 which epics and allegorical designs have refused him. 
 Murger himself appears to have tasted both 
 these varieties of Bohemianism. It does not fall 
 within my plan to recount his life at any length. 
 It is sufficient to say that he early experienced the 
 resentment of the father who wishes to turn his 
 son into a maker of coats, and finds that he prefers 
 to be a maker of verses. He obtained a kind of 
 secretaryship to the Russian Count Tolstoy, his 
 duties being (after the tradition probably of 
 Grimm's Leaves) to keep the Czar acquainted with 
 the course of French literature. The duties were 
 light and the payment was lighter, being about a 
 pound a week, but such as it was it made him a 
 capitalist among his penniless fellows. He does 
 actually appear to have edited the great periodical 
 Le Castor, over which his readers have so often 
 laughed, and which, being professedly a trade 
 journal for hatters and bonnet-makers, dealt with 
 the highest subjects of literature and philosophy. 
 It only lasted a few weeks, however, and therefore 
 the " hyperphysic " speculations of Gustave CoUine 
 must have been more limited than the Scenes 
 
French Novelists 387 
 
 de la Vie de Bokeme represent them. At length 
 Murger was introduced to the Artiste 
 MURGER ^^^ '^^^ editor Ars^ne Houssaye. M. 
 Houssaye and Gerard de Nerval at 
 once recognised their colleague's genius, and 
 from that time Murger had no difificulty in getting , 
 his copy taken wherever he chose. For the last 
 dozen years of his life, so M. Fiorentino informs 
 us, there was no journal which was not only too 
 glad to have him. Yet, notwithstanding this, he 
 was always embarrassed. He was by no means 
 a rapid writer, often giving the work of an entire 
 night from sunset to morning to a single news- 
 paper article or scene. He also retained the spe- 
 cially Bohemian habit of never working except 
 when in the vein, and he was not always or often 
 in that vein. Still it may be assumed that during 
 the latter portion of his life he was never in actual 
 distress. The hardships, however, of his youth 
 and early manhood, together with a certain peculi- 
 arity of disposition not attributable to those hard- 
 ships, definitely moulded and coloured the whole 
 of his work, even the latest of it. He never forgot 
 the hunger and the cold which he had suffered, 
 nor did he forget the sight of his comrades who, 
 less fortunate than himself, had actually succumbed 
 to the pressure of want. There is something 
 hideous in the indelible impression which cold in 
 particular seems to have made on him. Through- 
 out his work, often quite unconsciously and in no 
 special connection with the context, we come on 
 
388 Essays on 
 
 little touches which show his shuddering remem- 
 brances of long fireless days in crazy- 
 lodgings with the winter winds blow- jj^^^^ 
 ing in on the lonely student ; of 
 nights when the wretched clothing of the day 
 is added to the bedding, and both together are 
 not enough. But joined to this physical and 
 accidental impression, there is a profound dis- 
 couragement and disbelief in happiness which is 
 less attributable to outward causes. The Ballade 
 du DhespM, his latest poem, seems to express no 
 fancy troubles. Murger's sorrow is not Werther- 
 ism or Weltschmerz. It is not vanity or posing 
 of any sort. It is a simple conviction of the facts 
 that in this world bread is hard to win, and love 
 is impossible to keep. He is to me one of the 
 most melancholy writers in all literature, and the 
 sadness arises from the simplicity of his demands, 
 and the sincerity of his conviction that they can 
 never be granted. At mere Katzenjammer one 
 can generally, if one chooses, laugh. Most people, 
 however much they may admire Werther or Ren6 
 or Childe Harold or the Enfant du si^cle, or 
 Obermann, or the great and recent M. Amiel, are 
 perfectly well aware of the ludicrous points about 
 these gentlemen, which are abundant enough. 
 They are not wholly sincere to begin with, and if 
 they were wholly sincere they would be unreason- 
 able. But there is nothing ludicrous about 
 Murger's sorrow. There is not the slightest 
 affectation about it. There is none of that protest. 
 
French Novelists 389 
 
 expressed or implied, against the upper powers 
 for failing to recognise the extra- 
 
 HENRY J. . . ^, 
 
 MURGER. oramary merit of the complamant, 
 which is the weakest point of Byron- 
 ism. Murger has merely in his own person 
 experienced, and in the general interest bewailed, 
 the old curse of insufficient nourishment for the 
 body, and the old woe of unstable support for the 
 heart. He has reduced his demands to their 
 simplest terms, and the most ingenious economist 
 cannot cut them down further, though he may pos- 
 sibly hint commonplaces about the superiority of 
 the temperament which makes no demands at all. 
 There is no doubt that Murger was saved from 
 the risk of following Chateaubriand, Byron, S^nan- 
 cour, and Musset, of preceding the Genevese pro- 
 fessor, into the perilous borderland between thepath- 
 etic and the ridiculous, by his genuine and healthy 
 sense of humour. He never fails to see the joke of it 
 as well as the pity of it; and when the writer sees the 
 joke the reader is on his side at once. The absurd 
 and the lamentable sides of Bohemianism present 
 themselves to him quite impartially, and he renders 
 them with equal fidelity. We are never asked to 
 make heroes of the unheroic. Murger knows as 
 well as we do that the young man who prefers, in 
 the name of art and letters, hand-to-mouth idle- 
 ness to honest work is a person very little to be 
 respected. He urges pitilessly on the inglorious 
 Miltons that, in the majority of cases, they are only 
 inglorious Blackmores after all. He is as sound as 
 
39° Essays on 
 
 Thackeray on the point of the eccentricities of 
 
 genius. Hence we can take his serious 
 
 and his comic delineations with equal ^^.^'It^ 
 
 ^ MURGER. 
 
 confidence and comfort, knowing that 
 there is neither melodrama in the one nor 
 buffoonery in the other. The fact — which 
 I believe is a fact — that a very large number 
 of the incidents of his tales are personal experi- 
 ences does not add to their interest in my eyes, 
 but in this respect I am probably in the minority. 
 I prefer for my part to pay attention to the legends, 
 good or bad, which are told of his life and his 
 death, only in so far as they bear out the impres- 
 sion of his character given by his works. " Pas- 
 sons aux choses rdelles," said Balzac, "parlons 
 d'Eugdnie Grandet," when they told him of some 
 death or failure. In the same way, when any one 
 talks to us about the Murger of Doctor Dubois's 
 maison de santi, let us say, " Passons aux choses 
 rdelles : parlons des Buveurs d'Eau." 
 
 As they are at present collected, Murger's 
 works fill thirteen volumes of prose and one of 
 verse. I cannot here dwell on his poetry. It is 
 of no rare or exalted order ; but it has great 
 freshness, sweetness, and sincerity, and the single 
 volume which contains it is perhaps more satis- 
 factory to poetical students than a good many 
 volumes of far more famous poets. Three of the 
 pieces, completely enough representative of the 
 rest, have been translated with admirable fidelity 
 and grace by Mr. Lang in his Ballads and Lyrics 
 
French Novelists 391 
 
 of Old France; and I cannot do better than 
 reproduce one of them here. 
 
 HENRY 
 MURGER. 
 
 Old Loves 
 
 Louise, have you forgotten yet 
 
 The corner of the flowery land, 
 The ancient garden where we met, 
 
 My hand that trembled in your hand ? 
 Our lips found words scarce sweet enough. 
 
 As low beneath the willow trees 
 We sat ; — Have you forgotten, love ? 
 
 Do you remember, love Louise ? 
 
 Marie, have you forgotten yet 
 
 The loving barter that we made ? 
 The rings we changed, the sun that set. 
 
 The woods fulfilled with sun and shade ? 
 The fountains that were musical 
 
 By many an ancient trysting-tree — 
 Marie, have you forgotten all ? 
 
 Do you remember, love Marie ? 
 
 Christine, do you remember yet 
 
 Your room with scents and roses gay ? 
 My garret — near the sky 'twas set — 
 
 The April hours, the nights of May ? 
 The clear calm night, the stars above. 
 
 That whispered they were fairest seen 
 Through no cloud-veil ? Remember, love ! 
 
 Do you remember, love Christine ? 
 
 Louise is dead, and, well-a-day ! 
 
 Marie a sadder path has ta'en ; 
 And pale Christine has passed away 
 
 In southern suns to bloom again. 
 Alas ! for one and all of us — 
 
 Marie, Louise, Christine forget ; 
 Our bower of love is ruinous. 
 
 And I alone remember yet. 
 
392 Essays on 
 
 This note of quiet sadness places Murger at a 
 distance alike from B^ranger and from 
 Alfred de Musset, and is repeated in ^^IH^ 
 most of his poetical works. 
 
 The prose works which concern us properly 
 here consist in the main of collections of short 
 tales. It was, indeed, in this specially French 
 kind that Murger excelled. One is almost 
 tempted to say that he could not write a regular 
 novel on a large scale ; certainly he very seldom 
 attempted it. The unfinished story of Les Roicerks 
 de I' Ingenue, which was found among his papers, is 
 entirely different from all his other works, and was 
 evidently intended for a regular romance. M. 
 Ars^ne Houssaye has eloquently analysed it — 
 as it might have been ; but the analysis rather 
 suggests the polygraphic and polypragmatic editor, 
 manager, novelist, and critic himself, than it re- 
 presents Murger. The Scenes de la Vie de Boheme 
 is really what it pretends to be, a series of scenes, 
 and not a connected work. Les Vacances de 
 Camille and Le Pays Latin are but long tales. 
 Adeline Protat and the Sahot Rouge are, indeed, 
 designed on the scale of full-sized novels, and the 
 former is a most charming picture of country life, 
 but it is little more. As Adeline Protat shows 
 the agreeable side of such life, so does the Sabot 
 Rouge exhibit the reverse of the medal. It is, 
 however, at least to my taste, scantily provided 
 with interest. The worse side of the French 
 peasant is powerfully brought out in the hideous 
 
French Novelists 393 
 
 crime by which Derizelles rids himself of the 
 daughter-in-law whom he schemed to 
 
 HENRY 
 
 MURGER. obtain, and the final scene of retribution 
 is, like all Murger's dealings with his 
 enemy, winter, a masterpiece. But these are hardly 
 sufficient to redeem the book as a whole ; though 
 it compares advantageously with later and more 
 famous workings-up of the same theme. 
 
 The shorter sketches, on the other hand, are 
 for the most part pure nectar. Who can possibly, 
 in his dullest or sulkiest moments, take up the 
 Vie de Bohhne without the certainty of laughter ? 
 Whether it is M. Mouton's ideas on journalism, or 
 Schaunard's proposition to keep a tame lobster as 
 a companion and helpmate, painting it red for the 
 sake of cheerfulness, or the P^re Mddecis's day- 
 book, with its extraordinary revelations, the in- 
 exhaustible gaiety is the same, and if the chapters 
 of Mimi and Musette are not exactly gay, they 
 have a charm which is certainly not inferior to 
 that of the lighter portions. Les Buveurs d'Eau, 
 with its revelations of the severer Bohemia we 
 have mentioned, completes the picture appropri- 
 ately from the other side, and the charming sketch 
 HdUne should sufficiently rebuke those who assert 
 that Murger could not draw a modest girl. Then 
 there is the third series of views, not of gaiety and 
 amusement, not of passionate devotion to art, but 
 of simple misery and failure, such as those given 
 in the exquisite sketches of Le Manchon de Frandne 
 — partly and very injudiciously included in the 
 
394 Essays on 
 
 Vie de Bohhme — and La Biographic d'un Inconnu. 
 The single volume, at the head of 
 which stands Madame Olympe, con- J^^^g^ 
 tains samples of great and most 
 varied power. Madame Olympe itself is not 
 of the first class, though it is amusing enough. 
 But how graceful a leaf from the book of artist- 
 life is Comment on devient Coloriste, and what a 
 charming fantasy is Le Victime du Bonheur, the 
 history of a too serious Mark Tapley, who is with 
 the greatest difficulty kept from suicide in his 
 despair of finding occasions for Tapleian jollity! 
 La Fleur Bretonne points once more Murger's 
 mournful moral of woman's inconstancy ; but how 
 fresh and graceful is the treatment of the worn old 
 subject! Le Fauteuil Enchants, a little morality 
 in a dozen pages, is of quite a different kind, yet 
 equally perfect. In Christine there is tragedy, 
 and of the truest. Entre Quatre Murs gives the 
 reverse of La Fleur Bretonne, and, finally, Les 
 Premieres Amours du Jeune Bluet draws the most 
 incomparable picture of boyish love since Rousseau 
 and Mademoiselle de Vulson. 
 
 I have specified the contents of this volume 
 rather because of their miscellaneous and repre- 
 sentative character, than because they seem to me 
 to be above the average of Murger's work. It is 
 often not in the best or most striking of a writer's 
 productions that his idiosyncrasy is most clearly 
 shown, and though the Scknes de la Vie de Boheme 
 and the Buveurs d'Eau between them perhaps 
 
French Novelists 395 
 
 exhausted all of actually novel that Murger 
 had to say, his remaininEf volumes 
 
 HENRY ^ 1 i r , . 
 
 MURGER. ^^^ ^* \.&2.si of equal interest, as 
 showing the inexhaustible freshness ol 
 his manner of saying it. One only of these is 
 hardly worthy of him, and this is the Propos de 
 Ville et Propos de TkMtre. The contents of this 
 volume are neither more nor less than a collection 
 of the short funny paragraphs which used to be a 
 regular department of all newspapers, and which 
 still continue under the heads of faits divers, 
 nouvelles d. la main, and so forth, to figure in 
 most Parisian journals. They are amusing in 
 their way even now ; but if we had a collection of 
 the jokes which Lamb used to elaborate at six- 
 pence apiece for Mr. Daniel Stuart of the Morning 
 Post, it is not probable that it would have added 
 very much to our admiration of the author of Elia, 
 and this is an exactly parallel case. Le Dernier 
 Rendezvous, like the Scenes de Jeunesse, to which 
 it is a complement, is touching enough ; and the 
 Resurrection de Lazare, which is usually bound up 
 with it, is perhaps its author's farthest excursion 
 into the regions of broad farce, if we except Son 
 Excellence Gustave Colline. Of the two, I person- 
 ally prefer the latter. The delegation of the ex- 
 tutor in the first disorders of the revolution of 
 February as envoy to an impossible German 
 principality is a capital idea, and it is not worked 
 out at sufficient length to be tedious. With Lazare 
 the case is different. The glorious confusion of 
 
396 Essays on 
 
 the plot, in which a score of characters are playing 
 at cross purposes, is delightful, and 
 the little touches in the character of m™ ^^1. 
 Blanche, the wise and provident damsel, 
 and Louisa, the imprudent and imaginative, are 
 masterly. But the tariff of the prison of Vin- 
 cennes, where the prisoners are furnished with 
 spiders tame or wild at their pleasure, and with 
 plants, for carrying out the moral of Picdola, is 
 too extravagantly burlesque to be quite in keeping 
 with the central character of Lazare, a young man 
 of excellent talents and morals who gets into the 
 clutches of two fiendish aristocrats. The fiendish 
 aristocrat, male and female, is one of Murger's 
 weakest points, and it is fortunate that he does 
 not very often attempt it. In order to give an 
 idea of his manner I shall not make an abstract 
 of any of his longer works, which are not well 
 suited to that process. There is among his later 
 sketches one which, though I do not think it 
 received his final touches, exhibits his lighter 
 mood admirably. This is La Scene du Gouverneur, 
 which can be given nearly in full. Of his sadder 
 and more poetical -vein, it is hardly possible to 
 find a better example than the charming fantasy 
 piece, which, under the name of Ballade, though it 
 is in prose, appears in his volume of posthumous 
 poems, and which is entitled Amours d'un Grillon 
 et d^une Etincelle. Here is the Scene of the 
 Governor, which bears the sub-title of Souvenirs 
 de Jeunesse : — 
 
French Novelists 397 
 
 Once upon a time I had two friends, whom I shall call 
 HENRY Theodore and Leon. Neither was more 
 MURGEK. *^" twenty years old, and yet — wonderful 
 to say — they were still young, for youth 
 had not yet gone out of fashion. My two friends, 
 who lived together, had for joint use a collection of 
 furniture which appeared to have been selected from the 
 ruins produced by an earthquake. The sternest of bailiffs 
 would have declined to meddle with it. The tables were 
 halt, the armchairs maimed, and when you sat upon them 
 they groaned like a wpunded man whose injured limb is 
 touched. The piano, one long array of false notes, sighed 
 dolefully. The wooden clock struck hours entirely of its 
 own invention. The variations of the barometer were 
 enough to presage tempests and deluges. There was a 
 compass which steadily pointed to the south, and not a 
 piece of furniture in the room but rocked and quivered 
 when a carriage passed in the street. One object, and 
 only one, was in good order ; this was a casket, a real 
 strong box, fit to defy the forty thieves themselves, or even 
 the ingenuity of a modem financier. It was a coifer fit to 
 hold untold gold and wrought like a lock of Quentin 
 Matsys, but its immediate purpose was that of a tobacco 
 jar, and it was not always that it held any tobacco. 
 
 However there was, somehow, good work done on these 
 rickety tables, and sound sleep enjoyed in the scanty 
 stretcher beds, covered as they were with mattresses as 
 thin and as hard as a ship's biscuit. The situation of the 
 room was sufficiently near the sky, but this gave it the 
 advantage of an admirable view. On one side and in front 
 there was the Luxembourg, and behind the eye had a 
 range of gardens, almost in their natural state, to wander 
 over. During the summer the two friends spent most of 
 their time in a large balcony protected by an awning. As 
 they were above hiding their afFai:fs from their neighbours, 
 most of their visitors were received here, and they even on 
 one occasion gave a nocturnal f^te in the Venetian manner 
 which excited much attention in the quarter, and which an 
 officer of police was kind enough to honour with his 
 
398 Essays on 
 
 company. A system of communism prevailed between the 
 friends, not merely as regarded their furniture, 
 but also in financial matters. The amount 
 of their monthly income would indeed have 
 made a modem shopman turn up his nose, and would 
 not at the tariff of our modem pleasures have sufficed 
 to defray the expenses of a single " Sunday out." 
 But in order to assist their economical resolutions 
 and enable them to resist temptation, Leon and Theodore 
 adopted a system which they had seen practised by one of 
 their friends, a poet, who was more wont to take baths in 
 Hippocrene than in Pactolus. The receipt may be useful 
 to other young persons who are at once tender-skinned and 
 extravagant. When their modest income came in, if they 
 received it in gold they first changed it into five-franc 
 pieces. They then further changed these pieces into the 
 smallest silver coin they could get, and, finally, they 
 scattered the sum into a faggot of the thorniest bmshwood 
 procurable. This precaution made the hunt after it so 
 troublesome, and indeed so painful, that when a spendthrift 
 fancy took them they hesitated to gratify it, very much 
 after the manner of a drunkard who prefers sobriety to the 
 trouble of going down to the cellar. Thanks to this 
 economical arrangement, they had sometimes been known 
 not to reach the bottom of their purse much before the 
 fifteenth of the month. On pay-day, however, before con- 
 signing the sum to their thorny cash-box, they were wont 
 to subtract a proportion which was destined half to the 
 needs of the intellect, and half to those of the heart. 
 Under the first head came the acquisition of half a dozen 
 volumes of poetry and literature. Under the second came 
 an amorous pilgrimage made on the first Sunday of each 
 month to Sceaux or Meudon, in the company of two pink 
 bonnets which the hands of the wearers had themselves 
 fashioned. The bonnets were labours of love, but in this 
 respect they yielded the palm to two crowns wreathed of 
 apple and orange blossoms which were destined for the 
 day that was to see the quartette seek the mayor's office 
 and the church. 
 
French Novelists 399 
 
 One of the bonnets, Leon's peculiar property, was 
 
 named Laurence ; the other answered to 
 
 the name of AUne, and exercised over the 
 MURGER. , ^ „,, , , . , , 
 
 heart of Theodore a tyranny which her 
 
 subject did not find intolerable. The two girls were 
 
 cousins and differed in beauty as in character. Aline 
 
 was a brunette, wilful, flighty, and noisy. She was absolutely 
 
 ignorant as far as book-learning went, but she knew all 
 
 that instinct could teach her, and in Dame Nature's 
 
 academy she would certainly have taken the first prize. 
 
 The other, Laurence, was fair and gentle and quiet, and 
 
 spoke with a voice as plaintive as the sigh of a reed. She 
 
 had very pretty feet, which she did not mind showing, and 
 
 which displayed blue shoes if not stockings. Indeed they 
 
 accused her, in the shop where she was book-keeper, of 
 
 occasionally making out the bills in verse. It is doubtful 
 
 whether Lord Bjnron or plumcake possessed her deepest 
 
 affections. In the woods she admired the nightingale, but 
 
 in a dish and truffled, she would have admired him more 
 
 still. Such was Laurence. But the cousins, however 
 
 much they differed, agreed entirely in being twenty years 
 
 old, not merely in years, but in heart and soul and face. 
 
 Our two friends had made their acquaintance by one of 
 
 those chances which seem sometimes more than chance. 
 
 Their love had lasted three whole months without their 
 
 having taken the trouble to investigate its nature or origin ; 
 
 and they were indeed by no means inclined to such 
 
 investigation, just as a wise drinker takes care not to shake 
 
 the bottle whence he draws his wine. Aline and Laurence 
 
 worked in a shop of the neighbourhood, and lodged in a 
 
 house not very far from the two friends, the windows being 
 
 visible across the garden from the balcony before mentioned. 
 
 But the distance was too great to allow them to see into 
 
 the rooms. Accordingly Theodore had one day suggested 
 
 to Leon that they should invest in a field-glass. " Why ? " 
 
 said Leon. "Well," replied Theodore, "from our balcony 
 
 we should have every opportunity for contemplating the 
 
 stars. Our neighbours of the observatory announce a 
 
 forthcoming eclipse. That will be just our time. Besides, 
 
400 Essays on 
 
 the glass is a very nice one, and it costs only twenty 
 francs. Will you pass the estimate ? " — " My 
 dear fellow" said Leon gravely, "I fear JJfil^, 
 that your astronomical fancy is, m other 
 words, a wish to play the spy. You want to know 
 what our neighbours are doing when they are at home. 
 This is an injudicious curiosity ; and it seems to me that a 
 glass which might show us spots in our stars would be a 
 very bad investment. If the girls are going to play us 
 false, we shall not require optical apparatus to discover it. 
 I refuse the vote." Whereupon Theodore appeared to give 
 up the idea. A few days afterwards, however, as he was 
 drinking beer in a caf6 on the boulevard, he was accosted 
 by an Alsatian Jew who sold padlocks, swordsticks, maps 
 of the city, and other trifles. The fellow took out an opera- 
 glass and offered it to Theodore. "The usual price is 
 eighty francs," he said, " but you shall have it for forty." 
 To get rid of him Theodore remarked that he would give 
 half a franc for it. " It is yours," said the Alsatian, and 
 when Theodore got home he had to excuse himself to 
 Leon on the score of the bargain. But a few days after- 
 wards, Aline, who was hunting through Theodore's posses- 
 sions with much minuteness for a piece of sugar, discovered 
 the glass. Instantly the fancy struck her to look at the 
 Luxembourg clock, and leaning over the balcony she was so 
 remarkably unfortunate as to let it drop into the street. It 
 is equally remarkable that when it was picked up it was 
 broken. 
 
 Some time after this little episode, Theodore presented 
 himself at an early hour at the office of his father's agent, 
 to draw his allowance. He was not received with much 
 cordiality, and the agent explained to him that, as he had a 
 difficulty with his father on business matters, he did not 
 feel called upon to act as paymaster any longer. Theodore 
 made no protests, and went away thinking it lucky that 
 Leon was also drawing his stipend, which would give them 
 something to go on with. Unluckily, at the very same 
 moment Leon was experiencing a similar rebuff. He held 
 what might be loosely called a private secretaryship, and 
 
French Novelists 401 
 
 his employer being on a journey, Leon expected to receive 
 
 HENRY ^^^ salary from his man of business. " But, 
 
 MURGER. "^y ^^^"^ ^^'''" ^^'"^ *^ "1^" °f business, 
 
 when Leon made his application, " M. 
 
 has left me an account from which it would appear 
 that you have been paid in advance certain sums 
 which amount to a month's salary ; therefore there is 
 nothing due to you this month. Come to me next month 
 and you shall have the money." — " How lucky," said Leon 
 to himself when he got into the street, " that Theodore has 
 got his allowance!" But when the two met and learnt 
 their fellowship in misfortune, they were both for a moment 
 somewhat downcast. " Deuce take it," said Theodore. 
 " Before I can let my father know, and hear from him, at 
 least a week will have passed, and during that time we shall 
 be in the condition of Job." — "And the worst of it is," 
 said Leon, " that we shall not be able to take our holiday." 
 Our holiday was the famous four-handed excursion which 
 was wont to take place on the first Sunday of each month. 
 The vote for this extravagance was a regular one of twenty 
 francs. For in those days, with four five-franc pieces and 
 no more, two good fellows and two pretty girls could amuse 
 themselves from dawn to sunset, without for a minute 
 feeling envious of the riches of more elegant couples, who 
 were taking a country Sunday in the hopes of blowing off 
 their ennui. On the contrary, it was not unfrequently the 
 gold which showed itself jealous of the silver. 
 
 Here occurs one of the protestations in which 
 Murger often indulges against the costlier and 
 more vicious amusements of the time of his man- 
 hood as compared with those of his youth. The 
 tale goes on — 
 
 While Theodore and Leon were in despair at the idea of 
 
 the Sunday party being given up for want of money, they 
 
 were visited by a young friend of theirs, who was the 
 
 favourite dramatic author of a small neighbouring theatre 
 
 2 D 
 
402 Essays on 
 
 much patronised by students. He had no percentage of 
 
 receipts, but he was not unfrequently paid _^^_ 
 
 as much as a hundred francs for a melo- 
 
 , _ MURGER. 
 
 drama m five acts, and was not expected 
 to provide the scenery. When the piece ran fifty 
 nights the manager asked him to breakfast ; when it ran a 
 hundred he asked him to dinner; and the summit of 
 his ambition, never yet reached, was a run which might 
 involve an invitation to supper. To-day he is not called 
 Leopold, as he was then, and if he insisted that a Talma 
 should be engaged to act one of his parts, no manager 
 would dare to say him nay. " My children," said he to 
 the friends when they had told him their difficulty, "per- 
 sonally I can't help you, but indirectly perhaps I can. 
 Perpend, I am all-powerfiil with my manager, or at least I 
 can do something with him. In a fortnight his own benefit 
 comes off, and he wishes to utilise a splendid painting of 
 Windsor Castle, which a rising artist of the neighbourhood 
 has executed in return for a free admission. Unluckily 
 there is not a single piece in the rdpertoire which will do 
 for the scene. Write him a vaudeville in one act which 
 has something to do with Windsor Castle, and I promise 
 you at least forty francs for it, there." — " But," said Leon, 
 "we want the money in three days." — "Well," said 
 Leopold, "there are two of you, and you have three days 
 for writing one act. Isn't that enough ? Pray how long 
 would you take to put a girdle round the earth ? " — " But," 
 said Leon again, " to make a play one must have an idea, 
 and in a vaudeville there must be verses. I don't know 
 how to write verses, and I am sure Theodore doesn't." 
 " It is very easy," replied Leopold. " Each verse is usually 
 composed of eight lines. In the first seven you say nothing, 
 either because it is your nature to, or intentionally. In the 
 eighth you make an effort and say something foolish. 
 This is called the point ; it is noticed, you repeat it, and 
 there is your verse. Besides, there is no need for you to 
 trouble yourselves about that ; there is a copyist at the 
 theatre who will make you admirable songs, as well as 
 entries and exits for the chorus, at two francs a dozen. 
 
French Novelists 403 
 
 For three francs he will guarantee you an encore, but you 
 
 HENRY ^^^^ *° supply the rhymes. Won't it do?" 
 
 MURGEE. " ^°^ ""y P^"'" said Theodore, « I am rather 
 
 shy of seeing my name on the bills." — " Don't 
 
 be afraid," said the other; "your name is not yet 
 
 quite illustrious enough to set them on fire." 
 
 So Leon and Theodore made up their minds to take 
 their comrade's counsel, and he carried them off to dinner 
 in a little restaurant kept by an Englishman, who, when 
 his customers asked for napkins, was wont to answer that 
 they must be very slovenly people to want them. During 
 dinner Leopold unfolded to his companions the results of 
 his dramatic experience, and as Leon persisted in coming 
 back to his theory that to make a piece you must have an 
 idea, the dramatist proceeded to lay down his professional 
 principles. "My dear children," said he, "nature and 
 life surround us with ideas, and all we have got to do is to 
 keep our eyes open. For instance, you see the gentleman 
 who is carrying on negotiations with the cashier ? That 
 is an idea, and the results of it in drama are the Q^art 
 d'Heure de Rabelais and the Epicure in a Fix. Look at this 
 other person who is wandering like a ghost round a table, 
 because an intruder has taken his usual place. There is 
 another idea ; he is a monomaniac. Hence comes The 
 Monomaniac, which some one has or must have written. 
 If they have not, I will. See, again, that delicate girl who 
 keeps the books, and is making up the bills wrong, while 
 she is exchanging sweet glances with that clerk. There is 
 another idea, an old one I grant you, like most other 
 youthful ideas. 'Tis the idea of love. Well, you have 
 only to suppose a gentleman coming in here to drink his 
 punch and seeing those two babies. If he sees them in the 
 right point of view, and if his name happen to be William 
 Shakespeare, he will make you Romeo and Juliet out of 
 that. You don't hunt for ideas, you find them. Waiter, 
 bring me some tobacco ! " The tobacco came, and as 
 Leopold happened to look at the paper in which it was 
 wrapped — " I told you so," he said ; " here is your idea." 
 And he showed them a page of an English news letter. 
 
404 Essays on 
 
 which happened to contain an anecdote of theatrical capa- 
 
 bihties. "Take it! Shakespeare, whom we 
 
 have just mentioned, would have made some- ,,„_„__ 
 
 thing of It which would see the world out ; do 
 
 your best to make it into a vaudeville which may at least 
 
 see out the evening. You have got two days to do it in, 
 
 and you are not working for posterity. Good-bye ! the bill 
 
 is paid ! " 
 
 " I wish," said Theodore, " that it had occurred to him 
 to lend us a little money till our own comes in." — " He 
 has thought of it," said Leon gravely ; " but Leopold is 
 modest in his kindness, and is afraid of hurting those 
 whom he obliges. While we were putting on our coats at 
 home I saw him stoop down and slip ten francs into the 
 firewood, and he got quite red when the money jingled." 
 Two days afterwards the two friends were sitting at a 
 table in their balcony, reading over for the last time the 
 piece which they were to give to Leopold that night. As 
 they read they began to dispute as to the ending, for which 
 each had his own plan ; and in their warmth they did not 
 notice that a leaf of the manuscript had been wafted off the 
 table by the first puff of an approaching storm. As it 
 happened, the paper, after falling at first in a neighbouring 
 garden, was again caught up by the wind, which finally 
 floated it through the open window of Aline's chamber. 
 Meanwhile the dramatic partners continued their argument ; 
 and one of them, to prove his ending the best, began to 
 search in the papers for the passage of which, as he said, 
 it was logically the consequence. " What a nuisance," he 
 cried at length impatiently, " I cannot find the scene of the 
 governor." — " It is not difiicult to recognise, however," 
 said Leon, rummaging in his turn, " at least it is bad 
 enough." The unsuccessful search before long begat a 
 quarrel, each accusing the other of carelessness. "You 
 have lost the scene of the governor," said Theodore ; " if 
 it had been the ingSnue scene, which is all your own doing, 
 it would not have been lost. You are a selfish brute, you 
 only care for your own property, and yesterday you spoilt 
 my set of handkerchiefs." — "I had eleven excellent reasons 
 
French Novelists 405 
 
 for not spoiling my own," replied Leon with much coolness, 
 j,_„-^ "and besides, if I. lost your handkerchief, 
 MURGER ^^^t did you do with my umbrella ? Cain 
 that you are, what have you done with 
 my umbrella?" — "What is the good of an umbrella 
 except to lose?" replied Theodore; and the argument 
 was too strong for Leon's logical mind. Still he went 
 on. " All the same, you are horribly careless. In the 
 first place, you have a fatal habit of lighting your pipe 
 with the first paper that comes to hand. If we were so 
 foolish as to possess any bank notes, I feel sure that you 
 would convert them to the most improper purposes. I am 
 certain that you have burnt the scene of the governor, and 
 as I it is laid inside Windsor Castle, I hope for Queen 
 Victoria's sake that the building was insured." — "Non- 
 sense," said Theodore ; " this is trifling, nay, buffoonery. 
 You didn't like the governor scene, which is mine, because 
 it interferes with the effect of the ingenue scene, which is 
 yours." — " In other words," said Leon, " you suspect my 
 integrity as a partner." And they might have quarrelled 
 once more but that Leopold came in. " My children," 
 said he, " you are expected this evening in the manager's 
 study for the purpose of reading your work. He is so 
 pleased with you for giving him an opportunity of using his 
 new scene, that he intends to moisten the reading with a 
 cool tankard, but don't be surprised if the price of it is 
 stopped out of your fee. You had better read it me first," 
 added he, pointing to the papers. "Impossible," said 
 Theodore ; " Leon has lost the scene of the governor. It 
 is the very centre of the action." — "Never mind," said 
 Leopold, " read away, and when you come to the lost scene 
 tell me its contents, that I may see the total effect." — " But 
 how about the style ? " said Theodore with gravity. " Do 
 you mean to tell me that a piece written in two days has 
 got any style ? Phrases you mean, I suppose ; let them 
 alone, and let us have the masterpiece. Up goes the 
 curtain." Theodore began to read, and when he came to 
 the lost scene he gave the gist of it. At the end Leon 
 insisted that Leopold should hear his ending as well ; and 
 
4o6 Essays on 
 
 it was this that the great dramatist preferred. " My chil- 
 dren," said he, "your piece belongs to that 
 order of masterpieces which should not be henr 
 
 ^ . . , MURGER. 
 
 protracted over twenty mmutes. Among other 
 superfluities which it would be well to cut out, I 
 must particularly mention the scene which you have 
 lost. However great may have been the beauties of 
 its style, they could not possibly equal its absolute 
 uselessness. Chance in losing it for you has exe- 
 cuted a masterly improvement." — " What ! " cried Theo- 
 dore in consternation, " cut out the governor ? " — " Yes," 
 replied Leopold firmly ; " the governor must 'be cashiered. 
 Reason, common sense, and good taste demand it. Let 
 us go hence, for the manager expects us at six o'clock. 
 You will be good enough to show signs of nervousness 
 when you enter his presence." 
 
 When they left the theatre that night they were forty 
 francs the richer, for Leopold had refused, at any rate for 
 the present, to be repaid his loan. Before going home 
 they went to see Aline and Laurence, to tell them to be 
 ready the next day, which was that of the excursion. 
 Laurence was out, but Aline gave Leon the key of her 
 room that he might wait for her. When he had lighted 
 the candles he noticed on the side-table a sheet of paper, 
 the writing of which caught his eye. It was no other than 
 the famous scene, the loss of which had caused his friend 
 such poignant grief. Seeing that it was crumpled, he at 
 first supposed that Laurence had used it to wrap something 
 up. But on the back of the sheet he found the following 
 lines, which were in an unknown hand : " My dear child," 
 said this inscription, " I came to see you to-day that we 
 might have an explanation. I have told you, and I tell 
 you again, that I hate not being able to see you when I 
 wish, and this your work prevents. I hate coming to this 
 out-of-the-way place, and climbing up these endless stairs. 
 If any of my friends met me hereabouts they would think 
 I was a student. You must make up your mind to leave 
 your shop. I can't wait any longer now, and so I write 
 these lines on a piece of paper which the wind has just 
 
French Novelists 407 
 
 blown in, to tell you what I want. If you don't agree, 
 
 HENRY ^ ^^^"^ ''^^^ ^ ^**^^^ ^^ obliged to wish you 
 MURGER. go°d-bye. If you accept, you need only send 
 me back the pass-key, which I left with 
 you, this evening. I am off to Baden, where I will 
 take you if you do what I wish. Dozens of other girls 
 would be only too happy. Good-bye, pretty child; re- 
 member, if you do not answer, it will be good-bye for good. 
 
 Yours, Anatole de ." — "/don't think," said Leon to 
 
 himself, " that we want Theodore's opera-glass to make out 
 what that means." Then he took out his pencil and wrote 
 at the bottom of the letter : " Postscript. — My dear child, 
 at this season all decent people are going to watering-places. 
 My health, which has suffered seriously, obliges me to quit 
 the capital, and take the waters of Asniferes. You may 
 therefore go to Baden with M. Anatole, who wants to take 
 you. Yours, the late Leon." Just as he was going away 
 the door opened, and Laurence came in. He placed the 
 scene of the governor before her, kissed her hand, took his 
 hat, and made for the door. " Wait a minute," said she, 
 and she showed him, opening a little blotting-book, a 
 letter written in a school-girl hand. " SIR — I am glad to 
 receive your farewell, and I shall stay where I am. I am 
 not ill, and I don't want to go to Baden. I liked you for 
 a little because your name was Anatole, and then I didn't 
 like you at all, so good-bye. If I have made any faults in 
 spelling, you must excuse me. Grammar does not come 
 naturally to me. Yours, Aline." — "Well," said Leon, 
 " what does that prove ? " — " Can't you see that when she 
 got his letter she came to show it me, and forgot it here, 
 as well as the answer, which I made her copy out properly .' " 
 " It was not a bad answer though," said he ; " then I am 
 to beUeve that it was not me." ..." Oh," said Laurence, 
 " / should never like a man because his name was Anatole. 
 If it were George now I am not so sure." — "Because 
 of Lord Byron, I suppose," said Leon. "But please let 
 me know in that case." — "Oh yes," she said with much 
 frankness ; " it is too much trouble to humbug people. 
 Aline always looked as if she were on thorns. But you 
 
4o8 Essays on 
 
 won't tell Theodore?" and she put the tell-tale scene in 
 the candle. 
 
 • HENRY 
 
 A fortnifirht afterwards the friends, with , 
 
 . , , ' MURGER. 
 
 the two girls, were present at the repre- 
 sentation of their piece, which was a great success. 
 " It is all very well," said Theodore, " but I'm sorry 
 for the scene of the governor." — "You would not like 
 it if you were to see it," said Leon ; as he turned to 
 Laurence, who was bowing to a young man. " Who are 
 you bowing to, dear ? " said he. " It is some one in the 
 shop." — " Whose name is ? "... " George." 
 
 Les Amours d'un Grillon et d'une Etincelle runs 
 as follows : — 
 
 In a wheat-field in Germany there lived on terms of 
 friendship an Italian beetle and a cricket. The beetle, who 
 had lived his life, possessed the second sight which is 
 called experience, and which sees clearly and at the first 
 glance to the bottom of the subject, which shows the mud 
 under the clear water, and the reality under the illusion. 
 Besides this the Italian was a light-o'-love, and few days 
 passed without his adding some new conquest to his 
 list. . . . 
 
 The cricket was a lively contrast to his companion. 
 Like most grasshoppers and crickets, he was a poet, and he 
 lived poet-fashion, rather in an imaginary world than in the 
 real one. He had early been left an orphan, for within two 
 days his father had been trodden underfoot by a child who 
 was gathering flowers, and his mother had been carried off 
 by a swallow seeking food for her young. The remem- 
 brance of this double misfortune changed the cricket's 
 natural melancholy to deep sadness, and he spent almost 
 his whole days at the bottom of his hole. At blaze of 
 noon, when his brethren of the furrows made the air ring 
 with their clamour, he did not join them but remained 
 musing alone. At even, when the concert began again, 
 and when the frogs of the marsh hard by took their part, 
 he still held aloof and still dreamed. Only at early 
 
French Novelists 409 
 
 morning he would steal softly forth, so as not to wake his 
 
 friend, when the latter was not on one of 
 
 MURGER ^^® expeditions, and would climb to the summit 
 
 of an ear of com which he had chosen as an 
 
 observatory, and where he spent whole hours in gazing 
 
 at the sky. 
 
 The beetle (who has been brought from Italy 
 in the bouquet held at a ball by a lady on the 
 eve of an elopement) is a very lively and pleasing 
 personage, to whom I regret that space prevents 
 my doing justice. He is the incarnation of good- 
 humoured and epicurean shrewdness, and does his 
 utmost to convince the cricket of the uselessness 
 of his poetical reveries. He feels sure that the 
 cricket is in love, and determines to find out the 
 object with the magnanimous and disinterested 
 intention of sparing his friend his own victorious 
 competition. 
 
 One morning he followed the cricket as he went as usual 
 to his observatory. The beetle hid himself in a tuft of grass, 
 and watched his friend as, perched on the ear, he gazed as 
 if entranced on the sky, and followed with his eyes the 
 flight of a cloud from east to west. Suddenly the cloud 
 passed, and the morning star hidden hitherto showed her 
 glittering face. At this the cricket quivered on his perch 
 and began to sing loudly. This was his song — 
 
 " What art thou, fair star ? Perhaps a flower that has 
 bloomed in the gardens of paradise, whom the maidens 
 gather before the sun has had time to wither thee. If thy 
 perfume does not reach us, it is because it is too far from 
 heaven to earth — too far, alas ! from thee to me. 
 
 « What art thou, fair star ? The cloud of rosy plumage 
 which hid thee just now, and which seemed like a seraph 
 floating through the blue, has left thee behind in his flight. 
 Canst thou be a diamond dropped by the heavenly way 
 
4IO Essays on 
 
 from the robes of the divine wanderer ? How bright thou 
 art, and how dark am I ! How far it is from 
 
 ^, ' , HENRY 
 
 thee to me. , , ,. ^ murger. 
 
 " What art thou, fair star ? Art thou a dew- 
 drop trembling in the hlies that archangels bear ? Art thou 
 hope, shining in the morning, and seen no more at night ? 
 Art thou the smile of God blessing His creation at its 
 awakening ? Or art thou perchance the spirit of poetry 
 whose voice all the songs of the morning do but echo ? 
 Thy song is too high for us to hear it, and it is far from 
 thee to me. 
 
 " Whoever thou art, fair star, I love thee. Before 1 saw 
 thee in the heavens I had seen thee in my own soul. Thou 
 didst illumine my solitude, and when I saw thee with mine 
 eyes, I said, Is it then my dream which has flown from my 
 heart to shine aloft ? I love thee, fair star, though it be far 
 from thee to me." 
 
 The honest beetle is quite aghast at this senti- 
 mental outburst, and discourses the most admir- 
 able common sense to the enraptured lover. He 
 tries to excite his jealousy, but in vain, and is not 
 more successful in a touching history of his own 
 early passion for a white rosebud which was 
 sundered by the death of the flower, and only 
 consoled by a less ethereal and more solid affec- 
 tion for some one else. This rather shocks the 
 cricket, who looks on his friend very much as the 
 other bards looked on Tannhauser at the Wart- 
 burg. However, the beetle's good temper is im- 
 perturbable, and he predicts for his friend a second 
 edition of his own experi6nces. 
 
 Shortly afterwards the cricket became very sad. He had 
 not seen the star for a week, and the aspect bf things had 
 altogether changed. The blue sky was hidden behind dense 
 clouds like great black curtains, and the sun could scarcely 
 
French Novelists 411 
 
 show his pale face through them each morning. The box- 
 
 HENEY '"^^^ '^^'^^ sallow and withered, the wild- 
 
 MURGER. ^°^^ bushes were nothing but thorns, the 
 
 meadows shivered beneath the north winds 
 
 which had replaced the summer breeze, and the 
 
 swallows, shuddering under their plumage, made for the 
 
 East. One day the cricket found his ear of corn laid low, 
 
 and saw the last smile of the sun, which seemed to be 
 
 following the swallows. It was long since the nightingale 
 
 had ceased to sing, the butterflies had fled with the flowers, 
 
 and the leaves were dropping from the trees. 
 
 The beetle explains the meaning of all this to 
 the wondering cricket. Winter is coming, and he, 
 the beetle, must die. As for the cricket, there is 
 a chance for him ; he can get shelter in the 
 chimney of the nearest cottage and wait for the 
 spring. For himself, he has the true spirit of the 
 Lucretian conviva satur. He has lived his life, his 
 loves the flowers are dead, and he is ready to 
 follow. 
 
 The cricket wept, for he was much attached to his friend, 
 although on certain points they were not of one mind. But 
 the hope of seeing his star once more in the spring decided 
 him, and after embracing the Italian, he set out for the 
 cottage, which he reached that evening. When the poor 
 man to'^whom it belonged saw him come in, he said, " Here 
 is the luck of the house ; we must have a blaze." And he 
 threw a handfiil of wood on the hearth ; but it was green, 
 and made more smoke than fire. 
 
 When he had chosen his nest in one of the cracks of the 
 chimney, the poet of the fields made a pilgrimage round the 
 narrow space which was thenceforward to be his home. 
 The aspect of his dingy kingdom was not well suited to 
 dispel his sadness, and at first he was inclined' to regret 
 having quitted the open country with its white snow-cloak for 
 this prison with soot-smirched walls and smoky atmosphere. 
 
412 Essays on 
 
 "What will become of me?" said he, as he retired to 
 his crack, "and how can I wait for the 
 spring in this dark soUtude?" Then he ,,„„^„„ 
 did as folk often do when, havmg nothmg 
 good in sight for the present, they take refuge in the past 
 which has been a little happier, and shut their eyes on 
 exterior things, so as to use the inner eye better. He 
 thought over all his days. They had begun in mourning, 
 and reminded him of his entry into the world, an orphan, 
 and weeping already, as all do on the threshold of life. He 
 remembered his youth in the German land, where melancholy 
 seems inbred in things and persons. He saw once more 
 the gray sky, where the sun now and then ventured to shoot 
 forth a pale ray. He heard the nightly duets of the breeze 
 and the brooklet, the harmonies which had given birth to 
 the harmony in his own soul. He remembered his earliest 
 poetical efforts, improvisations ready fashioned in his 
 dreams, and which he had uttered almost without a thought. 
 He thought of his meeting with the beetle, that open-air 
 philosopher and pleasure-lover, who had at the same time 
 a love of truth. He recalled the sharp logic of his friend, 
 and how often it had fallen blunted from his own golden 
 dreams. Then suddenly, in the melancholy mirror of his 
 memories, came the reflection of the morning star, with her 
 moist and gentle radiance. Then did the poet's musings 
 become deeper still. He ensconced himself in one single 
 thought, around which his swarming hopes gathered, and so 
 was happy. He forgot the dulness of the seldom-lighted 
 hearth, the darkness of the cabin. The black depths of the 
 fireplace were no longer black for him, for the memory of 
 his love spread over them an expanse of azure in which 
 shone the morning splendours of his star. And thus, 
 perched on the dogs of the grate as once upon his corn-ear, 
 the cricket would pass whole days singing the song which 
 he had composed for his mistress. But the good peasant 
 of the cottage thought he had given shelter to but a melan- 
 choly guestj and would much rather have had the cheerful 
 chirp of the ordinary cricket than the poet's plaintive elegy. 
 On Christmas Eve he invited two neighbours to see the 
 
French Novelists 413 
 
 day in, and for this occasion he lighted his Yule log, 
 a fine billet of oak with stout dry bark, 
 MURGER which soon began to crackle and blaze 
 gloriously. Warmed by this unaccustomed 
 heat, the cricket, who was sleeping in his crack and dream- 
 ing of his mistress just as if he had been awake, drew near 
 the hearth to thank his host who was giving him such a 
 treat, but at the minute a neighbour stirred the log, which 
 immediately crackled and shot forth a spark. " Ah ! 
 heavens," said the cricket, " there is my star come back." 
 But the tiny spangle of flame had already fled, and another 
 followed, to be in like manner extinguished, then a third, 
 then a thousand others, so that the poet could hardly count 
 them. He thought himself still asleep and dreaming, but 
 a fresh spark passed so near him, dazzling his eyes and his 
 heart, that he could doubt no longer. His dream had come 
 true, and his mistress the star was really before him. Then, 
 in hopes of staying her flight, he sounded his tenderest notes, 
 and addressed an appeal to the winged creature which still 
 fled before him. Every verse as it burst firom his heart 
 seemed to shake from its wings the tears in which it had 
 been steeped ; yet the spark fled still ever brighter and 
 faster. The singer gathered up all his dreams and flung 
 them together in a strain which cold reason did not shape, 
 and the verse poured forth more freely and in more passion- 
 ate disarray. And still the spark floated on. He uttered 
 all the hopes he had formed in his solitude, but still it fled. 
 Then suddenly he was seized with one of those moments of 
 delirium which occur but once in a life. All his desires, all 
 his dreams, in their endless variations of the same theme, 
 all his thoughts, all the nameless things which live in the 
 heart, and by which it lives, and which quit it at once when 
 passion breaks it, — all this came forth at once in one great 
 flood of sobbing verse, and the poet, having once caught up 
 the whole of his love, and uttered it in a supreme prayer, 
 waited for the passage of the spark. His post was red-hot 
 by this time and his pain was sharp, but he heeded it not. 
 
 "Will she still fly?" he sighed. But the spark hahed 
 for a moment in the chimney comer. " She is waiting," he 
 
414 Essays on 
 
 cried; "she is waiting! she loves me!" Then, with a 
 happy timidity, he drew near his beloved 
 mistress. The spark shone on the dark henr 
 
 , ^ , , , ,., ,. , MURGER. 
 
 background of the hearth, like a diamond 
 in an ebony case ; and remembering the brilliant smiles 
 of the morning star, the cricket cried, " She is just as 
 I saw her first in my dreams, as I saw her in the heaven 
 where she was so far, and now she is close to me." Then 
 he began to celebrate his happiness in song. But the wind 
 prisoned in the chimney stayed the flight of the verse, and 
 scattered it. The spark was still stationary in the angle of 
 the hearth, but she seemed to pale. Her lover, as he slowly 
 drew near, sang constantly, and touched in his song on all 
 the new hopes that welled up in his soul in the long-wished- 
 for presence of his idol ; yet still she grew paler. For a 
 moment, at the passionate voice of her lover, she seemed to 
 answer with a brighter flash, and as he approached her light 
 grew clearer. No tenderer glance had ever come from the 
 golden eyes of the morning star' herself as she had listened 
 to the dawn-songs of the cricket perched on his stalk. The 
 lover still advanced and gazed on his mistress, who seemed 
 to call him with a quiver of her brightness. He made one 
 last step, and was so close to her that they touched. Then 
 it seemed to him that he had been struck Wind, — ^for the 
 spark was extinguished. He looked at the place where a 
 second before she had been so brilliant, and there was 
 nothing there but a speck of ash. " Oh, my dream I my 
 love !" said the poet-lover. Then he went back to his 
 crack and remained silent. 
 
 These two extracts show, I think, fully and 
 fairly, the moral as well as the literary peculiarities 
 of the bulk of Murger's work. Nor does that 
 work call for much further comment. He has two 
 points of view from which he considers the facts 
 of which he treats. One is a view of humorous 
 common sense, which delights in exhibiting the 
 
French Novelists 415 
 
 absurd side of things, not ill - temperedly or 
 morosely, but with geniality and an 
 miTrger. abundance of quaint side-thought and 
 illustration. The other is a purely 
 poetical, and more or less melancholy point 
 of view, from which, again without bitterness or 
 exaggeration, he bewails the mutability and the 
 unsatisfactoriness of things. It is worth noticing, 
 too, that Murger, like many other and greater 
 novelists, is very limited in his choice of subjects, 
 at least of the subjects which he could handle 
 happily. He knew the Bohemia of his novels 
 thoroughly, and he clung to this, only making rare 
 excursions out of it ; excursions which are still 
 more rarely profitable. Yet his work has no same- 
 ness, except to those who see nothing of a story 
 but its argument, and who are ready to cry, Connu ! 
 if an author, after once describing a grisette jilting 
 a student, afterwards endeavours to describe a 
 student jilted by a grisette. The type may be the 
 same but the individual is different, and the genius 
 of the writer is shown precisely in the way in 
 which the eternal old theme becomes new by his 
 treatment of it. There is another excellence about 
 his handling which deserves notice, because it also 
 is common to most novelists of the better class. 
 Each reproduction of the type adds something to 
 our conception of it. Rodolphe, and Marcel, and 
 Lazare, and Theodore, and Leopold, and a score 
 more, are all Bohemians, going through very much 
 the same adventures. But while on the one hand 
 
41 6 Essays on 
 
 they are all original, on the other their origin- 
 alities all derive directly from the 
 general type, and go to furnish forth J^^'^er 
 the idea of the ewig-bdhmische in our 
 minds. This is exactly as it should be, and 
 it contrasts very strongly with the practice of 
 certain other writers who, with an immense number 
 of nominally different characters, and a consequent 
 reputation for untiring fertility, have at bottom but 
 a meagre conception of any type, and never giye 
 it us fully and fairly drawn. The singular justice 
 which marks Murger's conception and drawing is 
 also worth noticing, and sprang, I think, from pure 
 literary talent. The prose ballad of which I have 
 endeavoured to translate part shows this literary 
 skill remarkably. Not even in German itself can 
 I remember any better picture of clair de lune 
 sentiment. 
 
 I am not disposed to agree with those who hold 
 that Murger's comparatively early death at the age 
 of forty deprived the world of much novel or 
 remarkable work. More sketches of the old 
 themes he might have given us, and they could 
 not have failed to be charming. Nor is it likely 
 that he would, like his (in some sort) analogue 
 Gavarni, have sunk into morose and visionary 
 sterility when age and changed circumstances had 
 put an end to the life that once he led. He had 
 too kindly a soul for that, though there are not 
 wanting in his later work touches of almost queru- 
 lous discontent with the changed order of the world. 
 
French Novelists 417 
 
 But I think that his mind had been too thoroughly 
 engrossed by the one idea ever to 
 
 HENRY 
 
 MURGER. entertain another profitably. The sad- 
 ness and the jollity, the vicissitudes 
 and the consolations, of one special, artificial, 
 and in a way transitory state of life, he had 
 thoroughly seized, and has completely expressed. 
 But he had not the faculty of adaptation which 
 gave Diderot and Gautier, an unlike and yet like 
 pair, long and fruitful lives of hard and varied work. 
 He would either have gone on doing worse the 
 things which he had once done admirably, or he 
 would have — as has happened more than once in 
 literature — done new things badly without much 
 censure, because he had done the old things well. 
 The death of Murger seems to me better than the 
 lives of the Campbells and the Lamartines. 
 
 One word must be said of Murger's influence 
 on his readers. It has been great, and I suppose 
 on the whole it has been bad, despite his own 
 earnest protests against the follies, the unreason, 
 and the suicidal expectations of his Bohemians. 
 As Gavarni is declared to have actually sent 
 voluntary pilgrims to Clichy, so have the ways of 
 Bohemia, with their dismal termination, been 
 peopled, we are told, by these books. This is 
 unfortunate of course, but I cannot see that Murger 
 is to blame for it. There is no attempt in his 
 books — even if we put aside the direct dissuasives 
 to which I have alluded — to conceal the truth or 
 to throw a glamour over falsehood. The reader 
 2 E 
 
41 8 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 who takes his Bohemia for a pays de cocagne or an 
 earthly paradise of any kind must in- 
 deed be strangely constituted. Jurger. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a well- 
 known passage, has formulated his idea of the 
 literary and moral aspirations of France in the 
 quotation, "Oh that Ishmael might live before 
 thee !" and there is perhaps no writer who reminds 
 one of this more than Murger. He is indeed 
 rather Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba than 
 Ishmael in the wilderness of Paran. His com- 
 plaints of the order of the universe seem simple 
 enough. There is so much bread on earth, and 
 yet it is so hard to earn ; the sun is in heaven, 
 and yet the winter winds are so unkind ; the fair 
 women of the world are so many, and yet no one 
 of them will sail with him " k la rive fidMe ou Ton 
 aime toujours." But these complaints he has put 
 into a book — for, as he himself said, he has practi- 
 cally written but one — which is in its way a book 
 iinal and perfect. Its literary charms, though 
 great, are not supreme ; its subject is limited, and 
 its moral is vulnerable. But it strikes truly and 
 skilfully a string which has vibrated at one time 
 or another in the heart and brain of every man who 
 has brain or heart, and therefore it deserves a place 
 in the literature of humanity. 
 
XII 
 
 VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 
 (1878 1) 
 
 One remarkable difference between M. Victor 
 Cherbuliez and most other French 
 ^„r^^^*?^„, novelists must have struck his readers. 
 He deals little, at least in his earlier 
 work, with types ; he is all for the individual. 
 And it is a very curious discovery for the 
 student of comparative criticism to find that 
 this peculiarity of his is at the bottom of such 
 objections to his work as have been made by 
 French critics. He has sometimes been accused 
 of invraisemblance, of affectation, of eccentricity, 
 and the like, and the accusation must seem odd 
 to those who know that it has not been brought 
 against work which to English eyes deserves the 
 charge infinitely more. But the explanation is 
 not very far to seek. The critic looks for the plot 
 or character under review in his bundle of types, 
 and cannot find it ; eccentricity is, therefore, 
 
 1 See Preface. 
 
420 Essays on 
 
 proved at once. In the opposite case the animal, 
 however strange in its proceedings, is 
 seen immediately to be of a known chemuliez. 
 species and admitted accordingly. Any 
 one who wishes to see exactly what is meant 
 may contrast Gilbert Savile in Le Comte Kostia 
 teaching Stephane botany, with the estimable 
 hero of Feydeau's La Comtesse de Chalis teaching 
 his mistress modern history. But before making 
 any more general remarks about M. Cherbuliez 
 let us see how, as a matter of fact, he does go 
 to work ; and for this purpose let us take what is 
 perhaps his most striking, if not his best, novel. 
 
 Le Roman d'une Honnite Femme, according to 
 a favourite custom of M. Cherbuliez, is couched 
 in the form of a narrative, not by the author, but 
 by the principal character. Isabelle de Loanne 
 writes the record of her experiences to a Jesuit 
 priest who has long been her confidant and ad- 
 viser, and who at the date of the opening of the 
 book has gone as a missionary to Canada. These 
 devices for securing an intimate, and at the same 
 time reasonably vraisemblable, biography are not 
 always particularly successful ; but the sternest 
 Protestant must admit that the institution of 
 directors affords unusual facilities to the novelist 
 in the endeavour. In this instance the Abbdhas 
 been something more to Isabelle than a mere 
 confessor. She has lived up to the age of four- 
 and-twenty — it is a favourite age with M. Cher- 
 buliez by the bye — a sort of Robinson Crusoe 
 
French Novelists 421 
 
 existence in one of the valleys of the Jura. Her 
 father and the Abbd have been her 
 
 VICXOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. °"^y companions, and the former, 
 though devotedly fond of her, is per- 
 haps fonder still of archaeology, and gives up 
 the greater part of his time to his library, his 
 cabinets, and his excavations of the Roman 
 remains in the neighbourhood. Thus the Abb^ 
 becomes to Isabelle what I shall let her tell in 
 her own words : — 
 
 It has been said that no one ever remained in the middle 
 of a week. The worst of this, regarded as a consolation, is 
 that no one is free from the obligation of beginning a fresh 
 week. I found this out after your departure. The first few 
 days which followed seemed to be endless. Your visits were 
 indeed never very frequent, but they recurred at regular 
 intervals. I hoped for them, I looked forward to them, 
 they were the one event of my life. And then — do not be 
 vexed — you did not, whatever you might think, come alone. 
 There was always an invisible guest in your company, 
 namely, the world, the world in cassock it is true, but still 
 the world. You knew the news and you did not mind 
 telling it. Never was piety better natured and more 
 cheerful than yours, and though your order has always 
 piqued itself on making religion agreeable, I doubt its 
 holding your match. At the risk of provoking you I shall 
 add that there never was a saint better instructed in the 
 affairs of earth than you. You love it, poor earth ! without 
 giving heaven any cause for jealousy. What did we not 
 use to talk of? Trifles never came amiss to us, for, with 
 your pardon, you have a spirit of detail about you, and in 
 this respect your reverence is a little feminine. Even the 
 subtlest of mankind are wont to generalise everything and 
 look with interest merely at the sum total; only women 
 know the value of a detail. 
 
422 Essays on 
 
 One may easily imagine the loss to a young 
 lady of such a gracious pastor as 
 this, and the small efforts which ^jj^'^^^^j^.^. 
 her excellent papa would make to 
 supply the deficiency, or, indeed, to com- 
 prehend its existence. It so happens, more- 
 over, that, just at this moment, good M. de 
 Loanne has other matters of especial moment 
 to occupy him. A Roman villa and a statuette 
 which he decides to be a Nemesis have trans- 
 ported him to the seventh heaven. He conveys 
 the Nemesis home, and spends the winter in 
 looking at it and at two Greek vases, while his 
 daughter plays Mozart to him ; occasionally also 
 in descanting on his unrivalled happiness. In 
 vain Isabelle points out to him the danger of 
 such talk in the very presence of Nemesis. He 
 will not hear of it, and declares that the goddess 
 has constituted herself a sort of guardian spirit 
 to the house. 
 
 In the spring comes an event. The Baroness 
 de Ferjeux, ch9.telaine of a neighbouring country 
 house, takes it into her head to visit it after some 
 ten years' absence. She is Parisian or nothing, 
 and, of course, resolves on disinterring the girl 
 who has been leading so unnatural a life. 
 
 " My dear, you are a wonder," she used to say to me. 
 " May I die if I could have thought of finding a girl of 
 twenty-four like you in these horrible woods. 1 have tried 
 to make you out, but it is no use. You are the oddest of 
 mixtures, you pupil of an archaeologist and a Jesuit ; you 
 are neither Parisian nor provincial. You have not got the 
 
French Novelists 324 
 
 stamp of Paris, and yet one can't find out what is wanting. 
 VICTOR ^° ^^"^ know, I have a great mind to decide 
 CHERBULiEZ ^^^ ^°^ ^'^ ^" '^^ statue — a Galatea, 
 ' perhaps — which M. de Loanne has dug up 
 in one of those hideous caverns that I was amiable enough 
 to go and see, and where I ruined a most lovely 
 muslin. The Lord have mercy on antiquaries ! but do tell 
 me if you are quite sure you are alive. Will you swear it ? 
 For my part, I think if one scraped you one would come to 
 the marble. Don't be angry ; I don't mean to call you a 
 fossiL You are an antique, a classic, and classics have no 
 particular date. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that the Baroness 
 determines to marry Isabelle — not, she takes care 
 to remark, that she has any very high idea of the 
 institution of matrimony, but simply because no 
 better has yet been devised, and especially because 
 there is no other approach to the blessed estate of 
 widowhood. Soon she becomes more definite, 
 and remembers that she has a most admirable 
 nephew, the Marquis Max de Lestang, who has 
 sown all his wild oats and got rid of all his 
 illusions, while he has preserved all his fortune 
 and all his good looks, and is therefore in a state 
 of ideal fitness for marriage. Isabelle, as is 
 natural, first laughs and then gets angry ; the 
 latter, more particularly, when the cunning 
 Baroness has succeeded in making poor M. de 
 Loanne very unhappy about his neglect of his 
 paternal duties. But neither laughter nor ill- 
 temper has any effect on the inexorable Madame 
 de Ferjeux. The ideal marquis makes his appear- 
 ance, and skilfully addressing himself to M. de 
 
424 , Essays on 
 
 Loanne's blind side by feigning archaeological 
 tastes, prevails victoriously. The court- 
 ship is admirably described, but ^^ ^^IZIujlz. 
 it is not the main subject of the 
 book we must not delay over it. Suffice 
 it that they are married, the Nemesis, which 
 her father persists in regarding as Isabelle's 
 guardian angel, forming part of the dowry, and 
 being duly consigned to the Marquis's chateau in 
 Dauphind. After a honeymoon in England the 
 pair go to Paris, and the situation becomes actual. 
 During the honeymoon Isabelle la Sdrieuse, as the 
 Abb6 has named her, has noticed that her husband, 
 while apparently enamoured enough in all con- 
 science, regards her a little too much as a fait 
 accompli. She tells him as much one day, and 
 he answers her more or less playfully ; but the 
 conviction is left with her that he is by no means 
 awake to the necessity of keeping and deserving 
 what he has won. However, this only occurs to 
 her now and then. They go to Paris, and her 
 anxious chaperon, the Baroness, is not at all 
 satisfied with Isabelle's ddbut. She gives herself 
 no trouble to win the women's graces, and still 
 less to ingratiate herself with the men, so that 
 while a certain clique of artists goes into ecstasies 
 over her, the general public feels itself snubbed, 
 and revenges itself accordingly. Stirred up by 
 Madame de Ferjeux's remonstrances, Isabelle 
 takes the trouble to shine for one night ; but the 
 game seems to her so little worth the candle, that 
 
French Novelists 425 
 
 she proposes to her husband next day that they 
 shall depart at once for the Dauphin^ 
 CHERBULiEz. ^h^teau. He assents, as he does to 
 most things, though in secret he 
 regards it as a confession of defeat, and, to 
 the intense scandal of the Baroness, they leave 
 Paris. The sketch of the sight of the Chateau 
 de Lestang is too good an example of M. Cher- 
 buliez's descriptive powers to be omitted : — 
 
 In the foreground, between two jutting hills crowned 
 with wood, lay sloping fields planted with almond-trees, 
 some of them in full flower, some stretching out their rosy 
 bunches of buds ready to blossom. Below this came a 
 wood of ilex studded with clumps of oak, which formed 
 large blotches of copper red with their withered leaves ; 
 still farther the Berre rolling its green waves through an 
 intricate course, whose banks made up a festoon of folds. 
 Beyond it the huge plain of Grignan, bounded on the west 
 by the Rhone, whose bed was indicated by silver -gray 
 haze, was dominated on the east by the hills of the Lance, 
 their slopes reddened with oak-woods, their tops whitened 
 with snow, and their hollows boldly scored with deep sweet 
 purple shadows. On this plain, furrowed with long ranges 
 of cypress, rose in a line the rock of Grignan, and to the 
 right the mound crowned with the Tower of Chamaret, an 
 ancient watch turret which, built in troubled times, had not 
 yet met with its restorer, and which seemed to count the 
 centuries as it guarded the plain. In the background 
 rolled the Lez between its steep and poplar-crowned bank, 
 a line of hills following it as it receded, and still farther yet 
 another line, which in its turn gave place to the rounded 
 hills of Valreas ; all these heights followed the semicircle 
 from east to west, rising gradually like the steps of a huge 
 amphitheatre. At last, commanding the whole, soared the 
 Ventour, with its hoary crest, " even as," says the Provengal 
 poet, "an ancient shepherd seats himself among the 
 
426 Essays on 
 
 mountain pines and the beeches, and watches his flock of 
 mountains spread at his feet." Beyond and 
 
 VTf TOT? 
 
 above all these heights floated white and red _„„„„,„ „_ 
 clouds that seemed pregnant with light, and 
 far to the south-east, in the indentation of the Rhone, tlie 
 Tower of Chamaret threw its black profile on a sky of pearl 
 shaded with orange and rose. 
 
 It is in this promising scene that the romance 
 proper begins. For some time there is no sign 
 of the rising of the lune rousse, and all goes well. 
 It so happens, however, that Max has to go on 
 business to Nimes, and during his absence a mis- 
 chievous neighbour takes occasion to inform 
 Isabelle that her husband has formerly had a 
 violent flirtation with a certain Madame Mirveil, 
 who still abides in the neighbourhood. Of this 
 she thinks at first very little. But her husband 
 comes back in a very bad temper, and the first 
 rays of the red moon begin to appear. Something 
 more than a suspicion comes to Isabelle that he 
 has renewed his correspondence with Madame 
 Mirveil, and one night, finding him out of the 
 house at a late hour, she goes to his room. There 
 she finds two letters unfinished, but open, one 
 addressed to Madame Mirveil, the other to herself 
 The first, though written in a dubiously amatory 
 style, establishes the fact of the relations between 
 the two before the Marquis's marriage ; the other 
 contains a sort of monologue, in which M. de 
 Lestang informs his wife of his views and inten- 
 tions as a husband. He had been bewitched for 
 a time, but his absence has relieved him of the 
 
French Novelists 427 
 
 spell. He has seen through her, and his great 
 soul cannot endure anything he has 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 CHERBULiEz. ^ecn through ; she is only a feeble 
 woman, after all, and he cannot endure 
 feebleness. 
 
 To do the Marquis justice, neither of these 
 pieces of coxcombry appears to have been ever 
 intended to reach its address, both being written 
 soliloquies composed according to a dangerous 
 habit of his. However, it may be imagined what 
 effect they produce on the reader. Fortunately 
 she is no femmelette, and her indignant pity for 
 her husband's folly almost equals her grief, and 
 enables her to bear it She wanders into the 
 gallery where the Nemesis stands, determined to 
 wait for her husband's return. It should be men- 
 tioned that the same indignant neighbour, who is 
 also a lover of Madame Mirveil, has threatened to 
 turn his bloodhounds loose on any nightly visitors 
 to her, and that this has apparently excited M. de 
 Lestang's childish propensity to being dared. 
 
 Worn out with fatigue I sank upon a seat in front of the 
 statue. I sat for some time without seeing her, but at last 
 I mechanically raised my eyes. As I recognised her my 
 anger, which had changed into sullen misery, blazed up 
 again. Had she not served as go-between to myself and 
 my calamity ? But in a moment my wrath fell and I was 
 softened. The goddess transported me into the scenes 
 where she and I had dwelt together. Once more I saw 
 Louveau : the smoke issuing from its roof, the court where 
 my pigeons were waiting for me, my dog crouching at the 
 threshold, the quiet valley fading away into the fog, the sad 
 but friendly faces of its gray rocks, the stars rising over the 
 
428 Essays on 
 
 pines, the hills which had long hidden me from the 
 world, the hollow lanes and solitary by- 
 ways where my idle dreams had so long cherbuliez. 
 wandered, and which had heard again and 
 again my foolish sighs for the unknown. . . . How thank- 
 less and blind I had been ! How easily I had swallowed 
 the treacherous bait ! Why had my mad wishes thus 
 summoned misfortune ? It had come, and I had rushed to 
 meet it ; it held its prey and would never quit it. The 
 thought made me shudder as I heard afar off the bay- 
 ing of watch-dogs. "Ah," cried I, clasping my hands, "if 
 they bring him home wounded and bleeding perhaps I 
 can pardon, but if he comes back successful and triumph- 
 ant " I could go no further ; my fancy had shown me 
 
 something which held me dumb. 
 
 Ali-eady the dawn was approaching and gray shadows 
 were stealing over the sky. I began to distinguish vaguely 
 the outlines of tree and hill, and the wild fury of the wind 
 had dropped. Before the house steps were crunching the 
 gravel and all my blood rushed to my heart. Soon a door 
 opened, a rustling followed and a shadow advanced up the 
 staircase. I rose and came forward. Max remaining 
 motionless on the topmost step. I stopped two paces 
 from him and looked at him steadily, as after a first start 
 of surprise he leant on the balustrade and waited for me to 
 speak. In his eyes I seemed to see insult and defiance. 
 Then I tried to speak but my tongue froze, my limbs sank 
 under me and I fell senseless on the floor. 
 
 During an illness of several days, Isabelle has 
 time to reflect on her course of action, and she 
 decides upon it. As soon as she recovers, she 
 seeks an interview with her husband, and instead 
 of making a scene, as he has anticipated and 
 perhaps wished, she very calmly tells him that she 
 is well aware of his state of mind, and proposes 
 a manage on the eighteenth -century model, the 
 
French Novelists 429 
 
 proprieties to be preserved, and each to go his 
 or her own way whenever outward 
 cHERBULiEz. decBncy does not forbid. He en- 
 deavours to carry off the matter 
 lightly, but she has much the better of him at the 
 game of sarcasm, and he is obliged to consent. 
 For some weeks they persist in a tite-d-tite of 
 armed neutrality, and she can see perfectly well 
 that the amusement of the endeavour — as to the 
 success of which he evidently has no doubt — to 
 overcome her defence, has become the chief object 
 of his coxcombship's mind. The situation is as 
 trying to her as it would be to any honest and 
 loving woman, and to gain time she departs, as 
 by agreement she is free to do, to visit her father. 
 But my lord marquis has no notion of his amuse- 
 ment being thus interrupted, and summons her 
 home under pretext of having invited a large 
 number of summer guests. She returns at once, 
 and acts the hostess to admiration, altogether 
 astonishing her unstable husband and winning 
 golden opinions from the visitors, who have no 
 suspicion of the true state of affairs, though not a 
 few of them endeavour, as in duty bound, to make 
 love to her, and are by no means pleased at the 
 snubs they receive. At length Max, seeing that 
 others value what he has slightedj makes overtures 
 of peace, which his wife, though still hopelessly in 
 love with him, treats as they deserve ; and finally, 
 pushed to extremities, he proves to her that she 
 is wrong in her suspicions of any post-nuptial 
 
430 Essays on 
 
 improprieties on his part with Madame Mirveil. 
 She points out to him that this 
 demonstration is rather late in the j,jj^^j^jj^jj,2 
 day, and in his vexation at the rebuff 
 he loses his self-command and rushes off to 
 Paris without paying her, as the compact requires, 
 the compliment of informing her of his intention. 
 She receives terrible descriptions of his doings 
 there, and in a moment of lost self-command 
 hurries off to the capital. But her good angel 
 makes her witness of an interview which sends 
 her back to Dauphind, without any one being the 
 wiser, and in Dauphind she finds an unexpected 
 consolation. She has been far too high-minded 
 to resort to the expedient which is called in vulgar 
 English a " shoe-horn," that is to say, to exciting 
 jealousy as a reviver of love. But chance throws 
 her in the way of a young man who has, to the 
 intense disgust of his friends, decided on embracing 
 the religious life, and who, like many such, is by 
 no means certain whether an earthly or an un- 
 earthly Paradise is in reality what he wants. She 
 takes him under her wing at first from pity, and 
 everybody knows what the offspring of pity is. 
 Max returns, and though he renews his instances 
 for an armistice, his manner of solicitation is a 
 great deal too cynical to have any effect. Through 
 the ill-nature of the same neighbour, he is made 
 aware of the existence of the young man, and, as 
 may be expected, his coxcombry engages and con- 
 quers his cynicism. He becomes more and more 
 
French Novelists 43 1 
 
 pressing in his interviews with his wife, insisting, 
 with an odd mixture of philosophy 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. ^"^ fooHshncss, on the disadvantages 
 of a pious lover. She still holds 
 her ground, and at last, though her inter- 
 course with the candidate for La Trappe has been 
 strictly platonic, exclaims with sublime effrontery, 
 " Et que savez vous, monsieur, si je ne me suis pas 
 donnde ? " The effect on a forcible-feeble nature 
 is not to be doubted. He rushes off, quite for- 
 getting the agreement, for his hunting-knife, and 
 in warding it off Isabelle receives a slight wound. 
 The incident nearly ruins her. Intent more upon 
 saving her very harmless lover than upon common- 
 place vengeance, she actually writes a letter pro- 
 posing flight. But her better nature returns, and 
 she withdraws it in time. Meanwhile her husband 
 has recovered from his frenzy. He determines to 
 go to America, where the Civil War is raging, and 
 to seek death there. In a letter in which cox- 
 combry is for the first time absent, he tells her of 
 his purpose, and, avowing himself completely 
 beaten and his theory of the universe upset, 
 implores her to pause at least for his death before 
 in any way committing herself. He awaits her 
 answer at a neighbouring town. The answer may 
 be easily divined. She has won the game, and 
 her just pride no more interferes with her love. 
 The religious youth receives an abrupt dismissal, 
 which is perhaps a little hard on him, Isabelle 
 throws herself into her husband's arms, and all is 
 
432 Essays on 
 
 said. Not quite all, perhaps, for M. de Loanne, 
 visiting the happy pair afterwards, 
 decides that the Nemesis is not ^ q,^I^^i^j_ 
 Nemesis at all, but a Psyche — " Psyche, 
 who would at any price know what she loved : 
 who lost all and by good luck won all back 
 again, thereby giving, it may be, a perilous pre- 
 cedent. And yet one never really possesses any- 
 thing save that which one has run the risk of 
 losing." 
 
 Little comment is necessary on this story. It 
 is perhaps not very easy for Englishmen to 
 sympathise with the Marquis Max de Lestang. 
 His absolutely ludicrous theory of the feminine 
 sex, excusable in an English undergraduate or a 
 French itudiant, but certainly not in a man of 
 thirty of either nation ; his childish attempts to 
 shake his wife's nerves by walking on rotten 
 rafters, brandishing knives, and so forth ; and his 
 almost instant collapse when the tables are turned 
 on him and his own forehead is menaced with the 
 appendages which Amiens celebrates in the famous 
 song, are despicable enough. But when it is 
 remembered that the story is told, not by the 
 author, but by the wife, the case is altered, and 
 one only feels a certain sentiment of regret that 
 the foolish fellow should have had so infinitely 
 better a wife than he deserved. As to the 
 portrait of Isabelle itself, it is admirable. But it 
 is, I think, quite easy to see that the whole 
 conception of the book is foreign to the accepted 
 
French Novelists 433 
 
 types of French fiction. Judging by those types, 
 Isabelle must indeed seem a monster. 
 
 VICXOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. ^^^ ^^^ neither the virtues nor the 
 vices of the average heroine ; indeed, 
 one cannot help secretly fancying that very few 
 Frenchmen would care to have so masterful a 
 spouse, even if they were thereby guaranteed 
 from the danger with which it pleases them, 
 in fiction, to represent themselves as constantly 
 menaced. There must also appear to them 
 to be something anarchic and of evil example 
 in the complete rout and vanquishment of such 
 a perfect romance -hero as Max de Lestang. 
 But this refusal of accepted types and rearrange- 
 ment of the ordinary laws of fictitious justice is 
 altogether characteristic of the author. 
 
 It would appear that M. Cherbuliez, probably 
 under the influence of Goethe, began his career 
 as a writer of books by publishing certain rather 
 curious compounds between fiction and criticism. 
 The earliest of these is Un Cheval de Phidias, in 
 which, under the guise of conversations between 
 the suite of an aesthetic but volatile French 
 marquise who is visiting Athens, the question of 
 the source of beauty in art, and more particularly 
 in Phidias's sculpture, is treated. Le Prince Vitale 
 handles in a somewhat similar way the knotty 
 point of Tasso's madness ; and Le Grand CEuvre, 
 a later work, and one which has more of the 
 fictitious element in it, entwines the history of an 
 ill-starred attempt on the part of " M. Adams, 
 2 F 
 
434 Essays on 
 
 Baronnet d'Angleterre," to grow a wife for himself, 
 with the discussion of various political 
 and social matters. There is ^'^^^ c^^^^^i^z, 
 that is good in all these, and in the 
 last in particular a really brilliant abstract 
 of English constitutional history occurs. But 
 on the whole the sense of incongruity prevails. 
 One feels that the butterfly coquetries of the 
 Marquise are merely a bore in the discussion of 
 the beauties of the Panathenaic charger, or else 
 that the Panathenaic charger is quite out of place 
 in a boudoir ; and that the objection of a Georgian 
 girl to marry her master is of no possible rele- 
 vance to the theories of Bonald and Joseph de 
 Maistre. By his complete abandonment of the 
 style, it is probable that the author came to feel 
 this too. His first genuine novel, Le Cointe Kostia, 
 is, perhaps, still the greatest favourite with most 
 people. It is very carefully, and, in parts, 
 brilliantly written, and shows considerable origin- 
 ality of design. The Count himself, a civilised 
 demon, as he is called, is drawn powerfully 
 enough ; but the Russian aristocracy have not 
 much reason to present a testimonial to M. 
 Cherbuliez. Miss Rovel is a picture of Britannic 
 eccentricity ; and though it has the remarkable 
 novelty — to a Briton — of most such pictures, it 
 abounds in clever writing and lively situation. 
 L Aventure de Ladislas Bolski is an interesting but 
 a decidedly painful book. M. Cherbuliez has not 
 Heine's bitter contempt for those Polen aus der 
 
French Novelists 435 
 
 Polackei, who at one time swarmed and swaggered 
 all over Europe, but his portraits 
 
 VICTOR • 
 
 cHERBULiEz. ^^ ^'^ \\sxo and his hero's father 
 are admirable sketches of the fatal 
 instability of the Polish character. Ladislas 
 Bolski, who dreams from his childhood of adven- 
 ture, his anxiety for it being only equalled by his 
 anxiety to be well costumed when performing it ; 
 who subjects himself to fantastic self-tortures in 
 order to convince his justly dubious friends of his 
 trustworthiness by living for a month on raw 
 carrots, and scalding his arm with ' boiling water ; 
 who obtains the mission which he covets, ruins his 
 chance of eifecting his purpose through mere 
 feather-headed folly, and at last disgraces himself 
 by an abject written apology to the Russian 
 authorities — an apology which is obtained from 
 him by the wiles of a Russian Dalilah — might be 
 contemplated not without a certain feeling of 
 amused contempt and pity. But the author has 
 piled up the agony too high. Bolski's mother 
 dies of grief and shame ; the friend who had 
 guaranteed his fidelity amputates his own hand as 
 a forfeited pledge ; and the unfortunate Ladislas, 
 after drowning his Dalilah, goes hopelessly mad, 
 writing his history in a short lucid interval. This 
 is an ending with a vengeance ; but it savours some- 
 what of a corrupt following of Titus Andronicus. 
 A similar instance of blood thirstiness may be 
 found in La Revanche de Joseph Noirel, where the 
 heroine having discovered a compromising secret 
 
436 ' Essays on 
 
 relating to her husband, can find no better 
 way of getting out of the difficulty 
 than by inducing a socialist work- ^^^^'^^^^^^^ 
 man of her father's, who has long 
 entertained a hopeless passion for her, to stab 
 her and himself afterwards. Surge, Carnifex ! is 
 the exclamation which most naturally rises to 
 one's lips after reading these two books, though 
 both of them, especially the latter, are full of lively 
 character-drawing and skilful description. The 
 Mirion household at Geneva is an interior not 
 to be forgotten. 
 
 Prosper Randoce I may mention as a third 
 book the total interest and literary finish of 
 which are not worthy of the powers displayed in 
 its parts. On the other hand, Paule MM is a 
 novel to be very highly spoken of. It has, in 
 contradistinction to those just mentioned, but 
 few incidents, and depends entirely for its in- 
 terest upon play of character. The unhappy 
 loves of a girl whose pride and artistic sensi- 
 bility clash with her affections, and of a man 
 whose amiable disposition is tainted by a fatal 
 instability and proneness to suspicion, form its 
 subject, and it is, in my judgment, one of the 
 best of its author's works. The two next novels, 
 in point of date, Le Fianci de Mademoiselle St. 
 Maur and Samuel Brohl et Cie., hold a middle 
 place in point of merit, the former being a little 
 below, and the latter a little above, M. Cher- 
 buliez's average — an average, it may be said. 
 
French Novelists 437 
 
 which would be pretty high for most novelists. 
 Le Fianc^ de Mademoiselle St. Maur 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBHLiEz. ^^ niore after the plan of a common- 
 place novel than any of its fellows, 
 being merely the account of a fatal passion 
 for a brother's wife, but the treatment is good 
 and original. In Samuel Brohl et Gie., a clever 
 knight of industry succeeds in investing him- 
 self with the personality of a deceased Polish 
 count, and all but carries off an heiress by 
 the trick. There is immense cleverness in this 
 book ; the way in which the adventurer not merely 
 copies but actually assimilates the personality 
 of his partner being sketched with wonderful 
 truth. The heroine, however, is not very com- 
 prehensible, and even a little repellent, and the 
 other characters are unattractive. 
 
 The style of these novels has characteristics 
 not dissimilar to those of their design. It has 
 been accused of unnecessary bizarrerie, and it is 
 possible even for a foreigner to see that there is 
 occasionally some justification for the charge. Its 
 most obvious fault is an excessive use of idiomatic 
 and proverbial expressions, with which the pages 
 positively bristle at times, and which sometimes 
 give an air almost of vulgarity to the language. 
 On the other hand, at its best it is singularly 
 good. The descriptive passage quoted already 
 from Le Roman d'une Honnite Femme is a model 
 of its kind, and it would be very easy to match it 
 with a score more of the same sort. The dialogue, 
 
438 Essays on 
 
 too, is generally excellent ; and M. Cherbuliez 
 has a very happy knack of disguis- 
 ing, and rendering inoffensive, the long chIm uliez. 
 parabases or discourses on things in 
 general, which appear to be indispensable in 
 French novels, and which are very apt to 
 weary an English reader. In brilliancy and 
 epigram there is hardly anything left to desire. 
 Indeed, a reader given to find fault at any cost 
 might consider that there was sometimes almost 
 too much of this, and might incline to connect 
 it with the undue quaintness and allusiveness of 
 style already noticed. A truer and a more charit- 
 able view would be that the unrest and occasional 
 clinquant of the style are chiefly the result of ex- 
 uberant thought, and invention which cannot be 
 satisfied without a surcharge of ornament and 
 detail. There are, in fact, few writers of fiction 
 who are less avaricious of their material and their 
 work than M. Cherbuliez, and this liberality in the 
 bills of fare makes it not very easy to criticise 
 them from any general point of view ; one novel 
 having perhaps a general character in common 
 with its fellows, but little similarity in plan, per- 
 sonages, or style of arrangement. It would seem, 
 indeed, sometimes, as if in his pursuit after in- 
 teresting and novel situations and characters, our 
 author had benefited by a somewhat wider range 
 of reading than is usual with his class, or was 
 usual not so very long ago. He is apparently a 
 good English and German scholar, and hence it 
 
French Novelists 439 
 
 is, perhaps, that he has done us the honour to 
 introduce to a French audience those 
 
 VICTOR. 
 
 CHERBULiEz. ^'"^ favourites of the English public : 
 the wicked governess, the father who 
 is mistaken for a lover, and the hero who 
 wanders about at night and sees things that 
 he is not intended to see. But whether his 
 puppets have or have not previously appeared on 
 any other stage, there is invariably a distinct and 
 evident originality in his manner of setting them 
 to work. His books hardly ever drag, and the 
 critical reader of novels knows that this is a 
 compliment which can very rarely be paid. They 
 carry one along from beginning to end ; and if 
 the end is sometimes a little disappointing, that 
 is a different and separate matter. I do not 
 know whether it was from a study of English 
 fiction or from his own mere predilection that 
 M. Cherbuliez at one time preferred what may 
 be called the indirect forms of narration to the 
 ordinary straightforward narrative of the super- 
 naturally omniscient novelist. He then liked to 
 let his heroine reveal her thoughts and experiences 
 to a director, to make his hero write to sympathis- 
 ing friends, and so forth. It is not always easy 
 to keep up the verisimilitude of these devices, but 
 M. Cherbuliez has generally been victorious over 
 the difficulty. One of his means of overcoming 
 it, however, is scarcely in accordance with strict 
 morality. His heroes and heroines are most 
 reprehensibly given to eavesdropping. They are 
 
440 Essays on 
 
 always in places where they have no busi- 
 ness to be, to the great assistance 
 of the plot possibly, but to the dis- enlouLiEz. 
 turbance of the finer feelings of the 
 reader, which are not appeased by their occasional 
 apologies. However, the plot does march, and 
 that after all is the main matter, doubtless. As a 
 second example I shall take Meta Holdenis, a 
 book of great interest, in which this eavesdropping 
 fancy plays a remarkable part. 
 
 The hero, Tony Flamerin, is a French painter, 
 a Burgundian by birth, and son of a wealthy 
 retired cooper, who is naturally enough not too 
 much delighted by his son's choice of a profession. 
 However, he makes the best of it, and for some 
 time stoically doles out to the prodigal the fortune 
 which he has inherited from his mother. At last, 
 when the greater part of this is gone, he sends for 
 his son and lays the state of the case before him. 
 An American uncle has, it seems, offered the 
 young Raphael a place in his counting-house, on 
 the very reasonable conditions that he shall learn 
 English and German, and, as a sign of reforma- 
 tion, bring a wife with him to New York. On 
 the other hand, he himself declines to countenance 
 his son's wicked consumption of his capital any 
 longer by acting as his cashier, hands him over 
 the balance, some five hundred pounds, and 
 declares, with much frankness, that if he does not 
 accept his uncle's offer Tony shall never have another 
 penny during his father's life. After a certain 
 
French Novelists 441 
 
 amount of kicking against the pricks, Tony 
 makes a sort of compromise sufficient 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. *° ""estore his father to good -humour, 
 and agrees to go and learn German 
 in Germany, being secretly comforted by the 
 thought that the study of German is not 
 incompatible with the practice of painting, and 
 that there are worse galleries in the world than 
 that of Dresden. 
 
 On his way to Geneva, the first stage of his 
 journey, he meets with an elderly German who 
 entertains him with conversation upon things in 
 general, and in particular on the improvement of 
 the lot of the suffering classes, the advantages of 
 the Kindergarten, and the absolute necessity of 
 developing early in little girls the habit of moral 
 reflection and a feeling for the ideal. Tony, 
 though conscious that this conversation is a little 
 over his head, is ratheir flattered by the assumption 
 that it interests him, and before leaving the 
 carriage promises to go and see his instructor, 
 whose name is Benedict Holdenis, and who 
 combines with the profession of social philosopher 
 the practice of the hardware trade. At Geneva 
 he meets an old friend, an American of the name 
 of Harris, and instead of making his way to 
 Dresden, devotes his evenings to piquet with 
 Harris, and his days to boating on the lake in the 
 same company. One day when they have varied 
 the amusement from boating to riding, it so 
 happens that they stop to bait at a village inn. 
 
442 Essays on 
 
 At the other end of the arbour where we sat down 
 was a table at which a whole family were 
 picnicking. Standing up and facing '^^ ^^^^^^i_ 
 was a girl of about eighteen, evidently 
 the eldest, who was engaged in carving a fowl. She 
 had fastened a handkerchief on her head to protect 
 herself from a sunbeam which shone right in her eyes 
 through the leaves. The handkerchief was good in colour 
 and attracted my attention ; the face underneath it attracted 
 it a good deal longer. Harris asked me what I meant by 
 staring so at a fright, and I answered him that he did not 
 know what he was talking about The fright was a 
 brunette of middle stature, with hair of a deep chestnut 
 colour, eyes of the clearest and softest blue, real turquoise 
 eyes, and a beauty spot on the left cheek. She could not 
 be called beautiful or even pretty, for she had too broad a 
 nose, a square chin, and a biggish mouth with rather full 
 lips. On the other hand she had the charm which cannot 
 be defined, a skin like a nectarine, cheeks like those fruits 
 which one longs to bite, a singular expression and air of 
 innocence, soft glances, an angelic smile, and a voice with 
 music in it. Finally, she carved her fowls to admiration. 
 
 It must be an exceedingly dull person who 
 does not perceive that the father of the damsel 
 who is brought forward with these Wertherian 
 surroundings is Herr Benedict Holdenis, and 
 that the damsel herself is the Meta who gives 
 name to the book. A general introduction, of 
 course, takes place, and after M. Flamerin's 
 scientific description of the handkerchief and its 
 contents, it is not surprising to find him next 
 day dining at the Holdenis's abode, idyllically 
 denominated Mon Nid, and containing a very 
 large number of nestlings. Meta, whose house- 
 name is das Mduschen, proves if possible more 
 
French Novelists 443 
 
 adorable on acquaintance. She sings ravishingly, 
 and performs all sorts of household 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. officcs, while the excellent Papa Hbl- 
 denis sanctifies the whole entertain- 
 ment (which is duly concluded by family prayers) 
 with an unceasing effusion of sentiments, in 
 which the purest morality is united to the -most 
 charming sensibility. The end of it is that this 
 admirable man suggests that he shall himself 
 officiate as Tony's German master, and the painter 
 offering, with great ingenuity, to take Mademoiselle 
 Meta's portrait, the two operations result in his 
 passing every day a good many hours at Mon Nid. 
 
 She was a most complaisant sitter, and did not seem 
 to be at all bored in my company. Her humour was 
 serious and lively by turns ; when she was grave she used 
 to ask me about the Louvre or the history of painting ; in 
 her lively moments she would amuse herself by speaking 
 German to me, and obliging me to repeat her words after 
 her. The best of this was that it gave me an excuse to 
 call her by her pet name of Matischen, which I used to 
 drag into everything I said, because, as it was a very hard 
 word to pronounce, it was obviously the best possible 
 practice for me. At the end of each sitting, as a reward, 
 she would sing me the " King of Thule." She did it with 
 exquisite taste, and when she came to the last lines — 
 
 Die Augen thaten ihm sinken 
 Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr, 
 
 her eyes used to fill with tears, and her voice, faint and 
 quivering, seemed to die away. Such were our pastimes, 
 but I personally had another. I used to look at her and ask 
 myself whether my fancy for her was artistic or amorous ; 
 I was not very long in finding out. One morning when she 
 had taken into her head the unlucky idea of plastering down 
 
444 Essays on 
 
 her hair and hiding certain stray locks which used to 
 float about her forehead, I lectured her 
 on the subject, and pointed out that frigid cherbuliez. 
 correctness is the bane of art. She laughed, 
 and with a sudden gesture shook down the whole of 
 her thick hair, which fell in a shower over her face. She 
 remained for some minutes resting her elbow on her knee, 
 with her sky-blue eyes looking steadily at me, across the 
 chestnut tresses. I told you before that one sometimes 
 reads in the eyes of these German angels something not 
 altogether angelic. I don't exactly know what these 
 particular eyes said, but one thing I did perceive clearly, 
 and that was, that it was not as an artist that I loved 
 them. 
 
 The introduction into this Paradise of a snake, 
 in the shape of an ancient but intrusive Baron 
 Griineck, at first only quickens Tony's amiable 
 feelings. Matters seem to be coming to a crisis ; 
 the excellent Holdenis, who has managed to 
 worm out from his visitor all his affairs, succeeds 
 in obtaining from him the greater part of his 
 small capital by pointing out how wicked it is to 
 carry about money in a pocket-book, when he, 
 Benedict Holdenis, would be only too happy to 
 give ten per cent for it. Tony is within an ace 
 of making a regular proposal and setting off to 
 New York with Meta, as a lively proof of his full 
 submission to his uncle's wishes, when one morning 
 he chances to behold, unperceived, his divinity 
 contemplating with apparent satisfaction four 
 words which she has seemingly just written. 
 The four words are, Madame la Baronne Griineck. 
 He retires, and before he has recovered from this 
 
French Novelists 445 
 
 shock the excellent Holdenis suddenly becomes 
 bankrupt, and the four hundred pounds 
 
 VICTOR jT , ,^, . : , 
 
 CHERBunEz. ^""^ O' course lost. The idea of 
 being jilted by the daughter and 
 cheated by the father at the same time, is 
 altogether too much for Tony's hot Bur- 
 gundian head, and after a very short explana- 
 tion with the one and none with the other, he 
 goes off to Dresden in a pleasant condition of 
 poverty and rage. The apparent end of the 
 adventure is made by a letter from Geneva in 
 which Meta encloses her jewels as part payment 
 of her father's debt. They are, of course, far 
 below the value at which the admirable Holdenis 
 had estimated them, but the proceeding still 
 strikes Tony as strange. He keeps one bracelet 
 to meet his absolute necessities, and sends the 
 rest back, a proceeding of very modified delicacy 
 which rather characterises M. Tony Flamerin. 
 Then he sets to work seriously at his art, with 
 the purpose of retrieving his losses. He has the 
 luck to succeed, and, which is still more surprising, 
 to forget Meta. 
 
 The chief instrument of his prosperity is a cer- 
 tain M. de Mauserre, French Minister at Dresden. 
 He is a diplomatist of many virtues and accom- 
 plishments, who not only lays the foundation of 
 Flamerin's artistic fortunes, but makes him his 
 most intimate friend, and consults him, among 
 other things, on a plan which, with the best inten- 
 tions, he has formed for running away with a 
 
446 Essays on 
 
 neighbour's persecnted wife. The painter's advice 
 on the point is sensible enough, but 
 has about as much success as advice cher^uliez 
 in such a case would be likely to 
 have, and M. de Mauserre executes his project 
 as far as the very ill-natured conduct of the 
 husband, who altogether declines to fall in with 
 the scheme, and apply for a divorce, will let him. 
 Half a dozen years pass in which Flamerin estab- 
 lishes his reputation as a painter, and M. de 
 Mauserre, after spending some time in Italy, 
 establishes himself at his own estate in the Franche 
 Comtd, having with some difficulty induced his 
 neighbour, M. d'Arci, husband of his daughter by 
 a dead wife, not merely to overlook his escapade, 
 but to receive the lady who, in a necessarily small 
 circle, enjoys brevet rank as Madame de Mauserre. 
 They have one small child, and for her the ex- 
 Minister is very anxious to find a suitable governess. 
 With this rather incongruous commission he charges 
 Tony, who is still his great friend and factotum, 
 notwithstanding his artistic dignities and the fact 
 that he has inherited a very pretty fortune from 
 the old cooper, his father. In dying, the old man 
 who, with plenty of respect for his son's successes, 
 has no particular opinion of his prudence, has given 
 him some paternal cautions. 
 
 He had entirely left off scolding me and had become 
 almost affectionate ; his intellect was still quite clear, and, 
 taking nly hands in his, he gave me some earnest advice, 
 the wisdom of which seemed above the lowness of his estate. 
 
French Novelists 447 
 
 He kept repeating to me that our impulses are our 
 VICTOR S'^^^t^st enemies, that the main point is 
 CHERBULIEZ. ^^ know how to govern oneself, that it is 
 ■ easy to gain but hard to keep, and that the 
 discipline of the will is the only secret of durable successes 
 and lasting happiness. One night while he was talking 
 thus a cock crew hard by: "Tony," said my father, "I 
 have always loved the cock's crow ; it proclaims the day and 
 puts to flight the phantoms of the night. The sound is like 
 a war-cry, and it always reminds me that we ought to pass 
 our lives in fighting against ourselves. Whenever you hear 
 the cock crow, remember that it was the only music your 
 father cared for." 
 
 The next night, also at cock-crow, the old man 
 expires, and thus clenches his moral. To return 
 to the thread of the story, Tony goes to Geneva 
 to execute his commission, or to speak more cor- 
 rectly, to find out why a Genevese pastor, to whom 
 M. de Mauserre had originally applied, had failed 
 to execute it. The pastor very naturally replies 
 that he hardly likes the responsibility of introducing 
 a young woman to a manage of such a kind, but 
 the eccentric American, Harris, turning up for 
 the purpose, undertakes the duty, which Tony, not 
 believing him to be serious, abandons willingly 
 enough. When he has arrived at Les Charmilles, 
 as M. de Mauserre's habitation is called, some 
 slight doubts occur to him and to his host as to 
 the prudence of the arrangement, and a very short 
 and practical epistle from Harris announcing that 
 an incumbent for the post, of whose name, ante- 
 cedents, and qualifications, he gives not the slightest 
 intimation, is actually on her way, and will arrive 
 
448 Essays on 
 
 shortly, does not relieve their anxiety. How- 
 ever, the carriage is sent, the mysterious 
 governess appears, and turns out to be chImuliez. 
 Meta Holdenis. 
 
 The young lady, who has been kept by the 
 ingenious Harris quite as much in the dark as her 
 quondam lover, settles into her place with a great 
 deal of tact. She tames her rather rebellious 
 charge at once, makes herself more or less useful 
 and agreeable to the other inmates of the chateau, 
 and half disappoints, half piques, M. Tony Flamerin 
 by showing every sign of letting bygones be by- 
 gones, and of neither wishing for nor intending 
 to give explanations of old times. Indeed she 
 appears very much more bent on reforming her 
 pupil and the household, which its mistress has 
 hitherto pretty much allowed to govern itself, than 
 on renewing old flirtations or encouraging new 
 ones. To a man of Tony's temperament this is 
 of cpurse a provocation, and he proceeds at the 
 end of a week or two to fancy himself once more 
 violently in love with the girl whom he has very 
 peaceably forgotten for half a dozen years. The 
 inevitable explanation at last takes place, appro- 
 priately or inappropriately, in a cemetery, and 
 Meta, with great candour and ingenuity, points out 
 that she had always supposed Tony's sudden flight 
 to be due to her father's ruin only, and that as for 
 the unfortunate Madame la Baronne Griineck, ij: 
 had been written as a jest by one of her younger 
 sisters. Being thus put completely in the wrong. 
 
French Novelists 449 
 
 the artist makes a formal offer, but Meta, pointing 
 out that she has some reason to 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. complaiu of his impulsiveness, insists 
 on his repeating it at the end of 
 some two months, that is, on the first of 
 September, when she will give him a decided 
 answer. He at the same time explains to her, for 
 the first time, the peculiar relation of her employers 
 to each other, and does not find it remarkable that 
 it seems to give her cause for a good deal of 
 reflection. 
 
 In a few days, however, it strikes him that Meta, 
 always anxious to serve everybody, has suddenly 
 become particularly anxious to serve M. de 
 Mauserre. She takes his daughter's place as his 
 amanuensis. She almost saves his life by nursing 
 him through a pleurisy. Meanwhile Tony, to pass 
 the time and to transact some business, has gone 
 to Paris, whence he is rather mysteriously recalled 
 by Madame d'Arci. The day after his return he 
 has full opportunity of understanding the reason, 
 for he overhears a conversation between his beloved 
 and her employer, which shows pretty clearly that 
 the ingenious Meta has made up her mind that a 
 widower with ;^8ooo a year, and only a left- 
 handed wife, is better worth playing for than a 
 bachelor artist without incumbrances. To make 
 his suspicions sure he schools a gipsy fortune-teller 
 who has been his model, and through the gipsy's 
 lips warns Meta " not to course two hares at once." 
 But he cannot make out exactly how this affects her. 
 2 G 
 
450 Essays on 
 
 On the 1st of September a picnic is organised 
 by M. de Mauserre to the neigh- 
 bouring Lake Paladru, apparently for ^HrR^uLiEz. 
 ordinary reasons, but really, as Tony's 
 eavesdropping has informed him, to have a 
 rendezvous with Meta. However, Tony succeeds 
 in taking her for a sail alone on the lake, and 
 there charges her point-blank with the determina- 
 tion to make M. de Mauserre marry her. She 
 vouchsafes no direct reply, and while he is declaim- 
 ing, one of the squalls so common in mountain 
 lakes comes on. 
 
 Meta raised her head, her half-open lips drank in the 
 wind and her bosom swelled. " I will say the ' King of 
 Thule ' once more to you," she said ; " listen." And in her 
 old voice she recited the lines which, thanks to her, I knew 
 by heart. Every moment the wind kept freshening, and a 
 sudden squall striking the sail made it by turns flap the mast 
 and strain it almost to splitting. The lake had changed 
 from green to gray, it was flecked with foam and began to 
 bristle as if in ill temper. At a sudden movement of Meta's 
 the boat lurched sharply and shipped some water. " Take 
 care," I said; "if you don't we shall infallibly capsize." 
 She had now come to the last stanza — 
 
 Er sah ihn sturzen, trinken, 
 Und sinken tief ins Meer 
 Die Augen thaten ihm sinken, 
 Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr. 
 
 She repeated these four lines twice, and then she looked at 
 me with a singular expression. She took her hat off, the 
 wind played with the hair that floated over her forehead, 
 her cheeks were in a blaze, and in the depths of the eyes 
 which she bent upon me I saw strange madness dancing. 
 " Your gipsy lied," she said ; " did she not predict that I 
 should live a hundred years ? " and in a lower voice she 
 
French Novelists 45 1 
 
 added, " We were to have settled to-day whether we should 
 pass our lives together. Since you will not 
 
 CHERBULiEz ^^^^ ^'^ '"®' ^ ^'^ ^^^ ^*^ you." With these 
 ■ words she put the helm so violently down that 
 the next moment the boat had its keel in the air and your 
 humble servant had six feet of water over his head. 
 
 Of course Tony saves both himself and his 
 eccentric companion. But the coup, whether pre- 
 meditated or not, has its due effect, and while the 
 two are being dried he discovers that he is again 
 as deep in love as he has just been in water. Un- 
 fortunately or fortunately his remarkable tendency 
 to eavesdropping gives him cognisance of an 
 interview between Meta and M. de Mauserre, in 
 which the young lady appears to have entirely 
 forgotten both the lake scene and the gipsy's 
 caution, and in which the ex-diplomatist goes so 
 far as to make her promise that she will not 
 marry Tony without consulting him. On the 
 return to Les Charmilles, this remarkable game of 
 battledore and shuttlecock becomes still more 
 exciting. Even Madame de Mauserre's indolence 
 perceives what is going on, and on the other hand 
 Meta's perverseness, or whatever it may be called, 
 embroils the whole matter to an almost incredible 
 extent, most skilfully rendered credible in the 
 novel. At one moment she represents herself to 
 Madame de Mauserre as a persecuted victim of 
 her employer ; at another she becomes the Meta 
 of the lake again, and bewitches the indignant 
 Tony back into submission ; at a third she con- 
 tinues her old r61e with M. de Mauserre, and, as a 
 
452 Essays on 
 
 final effort, even tries to make him believe in the 
 existence of undue familiarity between 
 Tony and Madame de Mauserre. This chImuliez. 
 last ingenious stroke recoils upon her, 
 his jealousy revives his old love, and the falsity of 
 the charge being easily proved, sentence of banish- 
 ment is pronounced unanimously on the intriguer. 
 
 But her last bolt is not even yet shot. Late 
 in the night before she quits the chateau, Tony 
 hears a gentle knocking at his door, and Meta 
 enters as a penitent. She develops a quite sur- 
 prising faculty of justifying herself, and hints that 
 all her encouragements of M. de Mauserre were 
 merely intended to pique the jealousy and assure 
 the love of the somewhat too light-minded Tony. 
 As he greets this explanation with a mixture of 
 wrath and contempt, she becomes warmer, she 
 declares that she adores him, that she only lives 
 for him, and at last she flings herself at his feet to 
 take or to leave. Her excitement very nearly 
 succeeds in disarming his prudence ; but at the 
 last moment a vigorous cock-crow comes to his 
 rescue, he remembers his father's caution against 
 impulsiveness, he rises to his feet, raises the 
 prostrate Meta, and with extreme politeness shows 
 her to the door. 
 
 An epilogue recounts how, in a railway carriage 
 some months afterwards, he overhears a Protestant 
 deaconess, whose hair is chestnut and her eyes 
 sky-blue, cautioning two younger companions 
 against the immorality of the French nation, and 
 
French Novelists 453 
 
 instancing as a proof thereof the attempts which 
 had been made upon herself by a 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. g"'^^* French diplomatist and a cele- 
 brated French painter, attempts from 
 which she had been with the greatest difficulty- 
 preserved, by the joint action of their mutual 
 jealousy and the grace of Heaven. 
 
 I am by no means satisfied that I have suc- 
 ceeded in this necessarily brief abstract in giving 
 a satisfactory idea of a very remarkable novel. 
 M. Cherbuliez's books, indeed, are so full of matter 
 that abridgment of them is by no means easy, and 
 the abundant incident and complicated character 
 in which he delights are hard to compress. Thus, 
 in this book, I have had practically to leave out 
 of sight the excellently drawn sketch of the 
 grumbling and almost brutal but sound-hearted 
 Comte d'Arci, and to keep in the background 
 that of Madame de Mauserre herself, whose Creole 
 indolence and lazy disposition to think the best of 
 everything and everybody help the plot not a 
 little. But the main excellence of the composition, 
 I hope, has not been wholly lost. It lies in 
 the contrast between Meta and Tony, and in the 
 curious nature of the girl. Both are thoroughly 
 impulsive. But the Frenchman's impulsiveness is 
 merely spasmodic, and at the command of his 
 senses chiefly. Meta, in every sense, hunts two 
 hares at once; her brain, her conscience, her 
 heart, her imagination, are all constantly occupied 
 in following half-a-dozen different tracks, and her 
 
454 Essays on 
 
 freaks result from the temporary supremacy of 
 one or the other. From the first de- 
 scription of her, in which M. Cher- ^jj™^^^^ 
 buliez, while denying her positive 
 beauty, has, with extreme skill, given her exactly 
 those "lineaments of gratified desire" which 
 Blake justly declared to be most irresistible, 
 to the last scene where she humbles herself in 
 vain, she is admirable, and one almost forgets her 
 moral obliquities in pity for her evil fate in falling 
 in with a lover not content to take the chance of 
 being deceived at the price of possessing such a 
 deceiver. 
 
 This kind of mixed interest — partly personal 
 attraction to the characters, partly admiration of 
 the way in which they are portrayed — is the 
 great charm of our author's best books ; and it 
 is certainly very far from a common one. The 
 first score or hundred novels that a boy or girl 
 reads are able to affect him or her in the way of 
 personal attraction with no difficulty. But in 
 minds of any critical turn, however small, the 
 personal interest soon wears away, and can only 
 be excited again by work of somewhat exceptional 
 truth and art. The spontaneous " I wish she had 
 not yielded," of Walter in The Princess is the best 
 possible tribute of admiration to a novel, and 
 there are few of M. Cherbuliez's books in which 
 some such exclamation does not occur to the 
 i-eader at the end of his reading. In most of 
 them, too, the tide of interest which carries us 
 
French Novelists 455 
 
 along is steady and well sustained. Hence he 
 is one of the most readable of 
 cHERBULiEz. ^^ovelists ; and it is, perhaps, not the 
 least merit of a novelist that he 
 should be able to be read. Again, he has a merit 
 still less common than this. One not only reads 
 him, but remembers him, and this is what can be 
 said of too few of his brethren. His situations 
 may be strained, bizarre, or anything else, but 
 they dwell in the memory, and the niche which 
 they occupy is one which one does not regard 
 with indifference. Gilbert Savile on his nightly 
 journey across the roofs of Castle Geierfels ; that 
 most learned youth, Raymond Ferray, diving 
 desperately after the lost body of Miss Margaret 
 Rovel while the said body is perched triumphantly 
 in the tree branches over his head ; Isabelle la 
 Sdrieuse senseless at the foot of the statue of 
 Nemesis-Psyche with the gray dawn and her 
 husband contemplating her ; above all, Meta 
 Holdenis, her voice rising as the mountain winds 
 rise over Lake Paladru and the last lines of the 
 " Konig in Thule " inspiring her to give them so 
 startling an interpretation, are not pictures to be 
 forgotten. Even in his less successful novels 
 there is no lack of those masterly sketches which 
 impress themselves on us without necessary refer- 
 ence to their setting. Maurice d'Arolles as he 
 sees the second dark red rose on the bosom of 
 his brother's wife ; Conrad Tronsko's irony as he 
 receives the traitor to Poland, and himself pays 
 
456 £ssays on 
 
 the penalty of his protdgd's infamy ; Prosper 
 Randoce describing his literary career 
 to the astonishing provincial who ^^^ c^i^l°l^Ts,z, 
 actually bought, read, and admired 
 Les Incendies de I'Ame ; Samuel Brohl con- 
 fabulating with his ghostly partner in the 
 wood by Cormeilles — these are not vulgar 
 creations. No doubt it is not sufficient to 
 strike out a few happy ideas like this, and it is 
 necessary, in order to gain the reputation of a 
 master, to attend more carefully to the composi- 
 tion of the whole picture than M. Cherbuliez has 
 sometimes done. 
 
 Non omnes omnia, however ; a maxim which the 
 critic of so complicated and irregular a composi- 
 tion as the modern novel is especially bound to 
 remember. Nor is it true that the inability to 
 end what he has begun always distinguishes M. 
 Cherbuliez. Neither of the books of which I have 
 attempted to give an abstract in this article is 
 open to this charge, and both, if we except a cer- 
 tain longueur apparent in parts of the Roman d'une 
 Honnite Femme, are novels as free from defects as 
 they are full of merits. The same may be said, in 
 a less degree, of Paule MM. Moreover, there is 
 one point about him which is worthy of special 
 notice. Hardly any novelist has repeated himself 
 less, or has, in a comparatively short space of time, 
 produced so mainy independent and original 
 characters and situations. In novel-writing the 
 faculty of invention is of the very first importance. 
 
French Novelists 457 
 
 and to one who possesses it in so considerable a 
 degree very much worse faults of style 
 
 VICTOR 
 
 cHERBULiEz. "'^ coHiposition might be forgiven, than 
 any which can be justly charged on the 
 author of Meta Holdenis. 
 
 Since the time at which the foregoing essay was 
 written M. Cherbuliez has made considerable ad- 
 vances in literary status and dignity, having been 
 elected of the Acaddmie Frangaise in recognition 
 partlyof his novels, partly also of his political journal- 
 ism (in the Revue des Deux Mondes chiefly), under 
 the nom de guerre of G. Valbert. He has also been 
 very industrious as a novel-writer. L'id^e de Jean 
 Teterol appeared shortly after the publication of 
 my essay, and has been followed at intervals of 
 about two years by others, such as Noirs et Rouges 
 (clericals and republicans). La Ferme du Choquard, 
 Olivier Maugant, La Vocation dti Comte Ghislain, 
 La Bite, and most recently of all Une Gageure. 
 This last is perhaps the most interesting of the 
 latter series, the conjugal problem which it presents 
 being of a class not dissimilar to that of the 
 Roman d^une Honnite Femme, and the book wind- 
 ing up with a very strong scene of the kind com- 
 mented upon above as M. Cherbuliez's forte. It 
 also includes, oddly enough, another instance of that 
 eavesdropping which has been noted as a favourite 
 device of his. Indeed, the persistency of recurrent 
 motives and tricks 'is illustrated in too many of 
 his later volumes. I do not know, however, that on 
 
458 Essays on French Novelists 
 
 the whole they can be said to have increased M. 
 Cherbulie^'s rank as a novelist, nor 
 am I surprised at this. Despite his ^.jj^rb^liez. 
 frequent power over incident, charac- 
 ter, and situation, even his earlier work too 
 often makes me think of a criticism I have heard 
 passed upon more living English novelists than 
 one — that they are very clever men who have 
 bought their quires of paper and said, " Go to, let us 
 sit down and write a novel," rather than born 
 novelists who had their novel ready to write. 
 And in such cases, though there is often no very 
 glaring inequality or descent in a much later work, 
 it is seldom that the later runnings are equal in 
 sprightliness to the earlier. The work gets more 
 and more mechanically produced, less and less spon- 
 taneously evolved. In M. Cherbuliez's particular 
 case, moreover, there has sometimes been a special 
 appearance, notably in the cases of Olivier Maugant 
 and La Ferme du Choquard, of a deliberate endea- 
 vour to write on subjects which the Naturalists have 
 already made popular, without treating them in 
 the naturalist manner ; and this appearance, though 
 it may be delusive, does not diminish the seeming 
 lack of spontaneity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACHARD, Amed^e, 24 
 
 Beaumont, Madame de, 142 
 Bernard, Charles de, 164-196; 
 an amuseur, 164-166 ; his life, 
 166, 167 ; classification of his 
 work, 167-169; Un Homme 
 Sirieux, 169-178; Ze Gendre, 
 179-187; the other works, 
 188- 191 ; characteristics, 191- 
 196 
 Blache, M. Noel, 20 
 Boisgobey, M. Fortune du, 22 
 Bourget, M. Paul, 13, i6-i8 
 
 Cherbuliez, Victor, 419-458; 
 Le Roman d'une Honntte 
 Femme, 426-433; some other 
 works, 433-440; Meta Hol- 
 denis, 440-454; general re- 
 marks, 455 - 457 ; postscript 
 (1890), 4S7, 458 
 Cochin, M. Plenry, 22 
 Constant, Benjamin, 150-160 
 
 Daudet, M. Alphonse, 7, 10 
 
 Droz, M. Gustave, 3 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 197 - 224 ; 
 English views of him, 197 
 note, 199 ; his collaboration, 
 199-203; his method, 203- 
 208 ; remarks on divers 
 novels, 209-224 
 
 Duras, Madame de, 160 
 
 Duruy, M. Georges, 23 
 
 Feuillet, Octave, viii, 3, 295- 
 333 ; central fault of his 
 books, 295-299; some others, 
 299-301; Julia de Trkceur, 
 301-312; Le Homan d'unjeune 
 Homme Pauvre, 312 - 320 ; 
 other books, 320-324 ; general 
 remarks, 324-330; postscript 
 (1890), 330-333 
 
 Feval, Paul, 24 
 
 Flaubert, Gustave, vii, viii, 334- 
 380; the "nervous impres- 
 sion," 334, 335 ; sketch of 
 his work, 336, 337 ; Madame 
 Bovary, 338-349; SalammbS, 
 349-354; V Education Senti- 
 mentale, 354-360; La Tenta- 
 tion de Saint Antoine, 360- 
 365 ; Trois Contes, 365 - 370 ; 
 characteristics, 370-377 ; post- 
 script (1890), 377-380 
 
 Fontaines, Madame de, I2i 
 
 France, M. Anatole, 2i 
 
 Gautier, Thfophile, 225-262; 
 his love of the beautiful, 225- 
 430 ; sketch of his books, 231- 
 234 ; Mademoiselle de Maupin, 
 234> 235 ; Le Capitaine Fra- 
 casse, 235 - 242 ; La Morte 
 Amoureuse, 242-259 ; charac- 
 teristics, 259-262 
 
 Genlis, Madame de, 141 
 
 Giffard, M. Pierre, 22 
 
 Glouvet, M. Jules de, 20 
 
6o 
 
 Index 
 
 reville, Madame Henry, 13 
 Gyp," II, 19 
 
 :amilton, Anthony, 31-65 ; 
 his literary position, ancestry, 
 and hfe, 31-35 ; the Miinoires 
 de Gtammont, 35 - 41 ; the 
 smaller tales, 42-46 ; the larger, 
 46-53 ; the verse, 54-56 ; the 
 minor works, 57 - 59 ; charac- 
 teristics, 59-65 
 !enley, Mr. W. E., 197 note 
 !uysmans, M. J. K., 25 
 
 iMES, Mr. Henry, 16, 18 
 
 A Fayette, Madame de, 
 117-123 
 
 ing, Mr. Andrew, 197 note, 
 243 note 
 
 esage, Alain Ren^, 66- in; 
 voluminousness of his work, 
 66, 67; his life, 68-76; his 
 minor romances, 76, 77 ; his 
 comic operettas, 77-80; Crispin 
 Rival de son Mattre, 81 ; Tur- 
 caret, 81 - 84 ; Z« Diable 
 Boiteux, 85-89 ; Gil Bias, 89- 
 100 ; his general position, 
 
 lOO-III 
 
 Loti, Pierre" (M. Viard), 20, 
 21 
 
 lAHALIN, M. Paul, 22 
 
 iaistre, Xavier de, 143-150 
 
 'arivaux, 126-135 
 
 Maupassant, M. Guy de, 13-16, 
 
 25 
 
 endes, M. CatuUe, 23 
 orley, Mr. John, vi 
 urger, Henry, 381-418 ; " Bo- 
 hemia," 381-386; Murger's 
 life, 386 ; character, 390 ; his 
 works, 390-396; the Seine 
 du Gouvemeur, 397-408 ; Les 
 
 Amours d'un Grillon et d'ane 
 Etincelle, 408-416 ; character- 
 istics, 416-418 
 
 Ohnet, M. Georges, 10-12 
 " O'Monroy, le Vicomte Richard," 
 3 
 
 Pollock, Mr. Walter, 197 note 
 
 Rabusson, M. Henry, 23 
 Ricard, M. Jean, 21 
 Riccoboni, Madame, 136-141 
 Rod, M. Edouard, ix 
 
 Sandeau, Jules, vi, viii, 263- 
 294; Enghsh ideas of French 
 novels, 263-268; Sandeau 's 
 immunity from the blame, 268- 
 270; his characteristics, 270- 
 273 ; Mademoiselle deKirouare, 
 273-282 ; Catherine, 282-291 ; 
 his other stories, 291-294 
 
 Sensibility, A Study of, 112-163 ; 
 what "sensibility" was, 112- 
 117; Madame de la Fayette, 
 1 1 7- 1 23; Madame de Fon-' 
 taines, 121 ; Madame deTencin, 
 124, 125 ; Marivaux, 126-135 > 
 Madame Riccoboni, 136-141 ; 
 Madame de Genlis, 141 ; 
 Madame de Beaumont, 142 ; 
 Xavier de Maistre, 143-150; 
 Benjamin Constant, 150-160; 
 Madame de Duras, 160 ; the 
 sum of sensibility, 160-163 
 
 Silvestre, M. Armand, 18, 19 
 
 Stevenson, Mr. R. L., 197 Twte 
 
 Tencin, Madame de, 124, 125 
 Theuriet, M. Andr^ 12, 13 
 Tinseau, M. L^on de, 22, 23 
 
 Verlaine, M. Paul, ix (j, 
 
 Zola, M. Emile, 4-7