A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2

by George Saintsbury

  CHAPTER II

  PAUL DE KOCK, OTHER MINORS OF 1800-1830, AND NODIER

  [Sidenote: The fate of popular minor novelists.]

  The mediocre poet has had a hard fate pronounced against him of old; butthe minor novelist, perhaps because he is much more likely to get somegood things in his own time, has usually a harder lot still, and in morethan one way, after physical or popular death. In fact it may be saidthat, the more popular he is in the one day, the more utterly forgottenhe is likely to be in the other. Besides the obvious facts that hispopularity must always have been gained by the adoption of some more orless ephemeral fashion, and that plenty of his own kind are always readyto take his place--doing, like the heir in the old story, all they canto substitute _Requiescat in Pace_ for _Resurgam_ on hishatchment--there is a more mechanical reason for his occultation. Themore widely he or she has been read the more certain either has been ofbeing "read to pieces."

  [Sidenote: Examples of them.]

  These fates, and especially the last, have weighed upon the minor Frenchnovelists of the early nineteenth century perhaps even more heavily thanupon our own: for the circulating library was an earlier and a morewidely spread institution in France than in England, and the lower andlowest middle classes were a good deal more given to reading, andespecially to "light" reading, there than here. Nor can it be said thatany of the writers to be now mentioned, with one possible and onecertain exception, is of importance to literature as literature.But all have their importance to literary--and especiallydepartmental-literary--history, in ways which it is hoped presently toshow: and there is still amusement in some. The chief, though not theonly, names that require notice here are those of Mesdames de Montolieuand (again) de Genlis, of Ducray-Duminil, born almost as early asPigault-Lebrun, even earlier a novelist, and yoked with him by VictorHugo in respect of his novel _Lolotte et Fanfan_ in the sneer noted inthe last volume;[37] the _other_ Ducange, again as much "other" as theother Moliere;[38] the Vicomte d'Arlincourt; and--a comparative (if,according to some, blackish) swan among these not quite positivegeese--Paul de Kock. The eldest put in his work before the Revolutionand the youngest before Waterloo, but the most prolific time of all wasthat of the first two or three decades of the century with which we aredealing.

  With these, but not of them--a producer at last of real "letters" andmore than any one else except Chateaubriand (more "intensively" perhapseven than he was) a pioneer of Romanticism--comes Charles Nodier.

  [Sidenote: Paul de Kock.]

  Major Pendennis, in a passage which will probably, at least in England,preserve the name of the author mentioned long after his own works areeven more forgotten with us than they are at present, allowed, whendisparaging novels generally, and wondering how his nephew could havegot so much money for one, that Paul de Kock "certainly made him laugh."In his own country he had an enormous vogue, till the far greaterliterary powers and the wider range of the school of 1830 put the timesout of joint for him, and even much later. He actually survived theTerrible Year: but something like a lustrum earlier, when running over anot small collection of cheap novels in a French country inn, I do notremember coming across anything of his. And he had long been classed as"not a serious person" (which, indeed, he certainly was not) by Frenchcriticism, not merely of the most academic sort, but of all decidedlyliterary kinds. People allowed him _entrain_, a word even more difficultthan _verve_ to English exactly, though "go" does in a rough sort of wayfor both. They were of course not very much shocked at his indecorums,which sometimes gave occasion for not bad jokes.[39] But if anyforeigner made any great case of him they would probably have looked, ifthey did not speak their thoughts, very much as some of us have looked,if we have not spoken, when foreigners take certain popular scribes andplaywrights of our own time and country seriously.[40]

  Let us see what his work is really like to the eyes of impartial andcomparative, if not cosmopolitan, criticism.

  [Sidenote: _L'Enfant de ma Femme._]

  Paul de Kock, whose father, a banker, was a victim, but must have been alate one, of the Terror, was born in 1794, and took very early toletters. If the date of his first book, _L'Enfant de ma Femme_, iscorrectly given as 1812, he must apparently have written it before hewas eighteen. There is certainly nothing either in the quantity or thequality of the performance which makes this incredible, for it does notfill quite two hundred pages of the ordinary 18mo size and not veryclosely packed type of the usual cheap French novel, and though it isnot unreadable, any tolerably clever boy might easily write it betweenthe time when he gets his scholarship in spring and the time when hegoes up in October. The author had evidently read his Pigault andadopted that writer's revised picaresque scheme. His most prominentcharacter (the hero, Henri de Framberg, is very "small doings"), thehussar-soldier-servant, and most oddly selected "governor" of this heroas a boy, Mullern, is obviously studied off those semi-savage "oldmoustaches" of whom we spoke in the last volume, though he is muchsoftened, if not in morals, in manners. In fact this softening processis quite obvious throughout. There is plenty of "impropriety" but nomere nastiness, and the impropriety itself is, so to speak, ratherindicated than described. As nearly the last sentence announces, "Hymenhides the faults of love" wherever it is possible, though it wouldrequire a most complicated system of polygamy and cross-unions to enablethat amiable divinity to cover them all. There is a villain, but he is avillain of straw, and outside of him there is no ill-nature. There seemsto be going to be a touch of "out-of-boundness" when Henri, just aboutto marry his beloved Pauline, is informed that she is his sister, andwhen the pair, separating in horror, meet again and, let us say, forgetto separate. But the information turns out to be false, and Hymen dulyuses the not uncomfortable extinguisher which, as noted above, issupplied to him as well as the more usual torch.

  To call the book good would be ridiculous, but a very large experienceof first novels of dates before, the same as, and after its own maywarrant allotment to it of possibilities of future good gifts. Thehistory, such as it is, runs currently; there are no hitches and stopsand stagnations, the plentiful improbabilities are managed in suchfashion that one does not trouble about them, and there is anatmosphere, sometimes of horseplay but almost always of good humour.

  [Sidenote: _Petits Tableaux de Moeurs._]

  The matter which, by accident or design, goes with this in mid-centuryreprints of Paul, is of much later date, but it shows that, for sometime, its author had been exercising himself in a way valuable to thenovelist at any time but by no means as yet frequently practised._Petits Tableaux de Moeurs_ consists of about sixty short sketches ofa very few pages each (usually two or three) and of almost exactly thesame kind as those with which Leigh Hunt, a little earlier in England,transformed the old _Spectator_ essay into the kind of thing taken upsoon afterwards by "Boz" and never disused since. They are sketches oftypes of men, of Parisian cafes, gardens, and restaurants; freshhandlings of old subjects, such as the person who insists on taking youhome to a very bad "pot-luck" dinner, and the like. Once more, there isno great brilliance in these. But they are lightly and pleasantly done;it must be obvious to every one that they are simply invaluable trainingfor a novelist who is to leave the beaten track of picaresque adventureand tackle real ordinary life. To which it may be added, as at leastpossible, that Thackeray himself may have had the creation of Woolseyand Eglantine in _The Ravenswing_ partly suggested by a conversationbetween a tailor and a hairdresser in Paul's "Le Banc de Pierre desTuileries." As this is very short it may be worth giving:

  To finish our observations, my friend and I went and sat behind two young men dressed in the extreme of the fashion, who, with their feet placed on chairs as far as possible from those in which they were sitting, gracefully rocked themselves, and evidently hoped to attract general attention.

  In a minute we heard the following conversation:

  "Do you think my coat a success?" "Superb! delicious! an admirable cut!" "And the pantalo
ons?" "Ravishing! Your get up is really stunning." "The governor told me to spend three hours in the Grand Alley, and put myself well forward. He wants people to take up this new shape and make it fashionable. He has already one order of some consequence." "And, as for me, do you think my hair well done?" "Why, you look like a very Adonis. By the way, _my_ hair is falling off. Do give me something to stop that." "You must give it nourishment. You see hairs are plants or flowers. If you don't water a flower, you can see it withering." "Very true. Then must I use pommade?" "Yes, but in moderation; just as a tree too much watered stops growing. Hair is exactly like vegetables." "And both want cutting?" "Why, yes; it's like a plantation; if you don't prune and thin the branches it kills the young shoots. Cutting helps the rise of the sap." "Do you hold with false fronts?" "I believe you! Why, I make them; it's just like putting a new roof on a house." "And that does no harm to one's head?" "Impossible! neither glue nor white of egg, which needs must hinder growth, are used. People who wear them mix their own hair with the front. They are two flocks, which unite to feed together, as M. Marty says so well in the _Solitaire_."[41] "Two torrents which join in the valley: that is the image of life!"

  We had heard enough, and so we left the tailor's young man and the romantic hairdresser to themselves.

  [Sidenote: _Gustave._]

  In _Gustave ou Le Mauvais Sujet_, a book still early but some yearslater than _L'Enfant_, Paul de Kock got nearer to his proper or impropersubject--bachelor life in Paris, in the sense of his contemporary PierceEgan's _Life in London_.[42] The hero may be called a French Tom Jonesin something (but not so much as in the original phrase) of the sense inwhich Klopstock was allowed to be a German Milton. He has his Allworthyin a benevolent uncle-colonel, peppery but placable; he is far moreplentifully supplied than even Tom was with persons of the other sex whoplay the parts of Black George's daughter and Mrs. Waters, if notexactly of Lady Bellaston. A Sophia could hardly enter into the Kockianplan, but her place in that scheme (with something, one regrets to add,of Lady Bellaston's) is put in commission, and held by a leash ofamiable persons--the erring Madame de Berly, who sacrifices honour andbeauty and very nearly life for the rascal Gustave; Eugenie Fonbelle, arich, accomplished, and almost wholly desirable widow, whom he isactually about to marry when, luckily for her, she discovers his_fredaines_, and "calls off"; and, lastly, a peasant girl, Suzon, whomhe seduces, whom he keeps for six weeks in his uncle's house, after afashion possibly just not impossible in a large Parisian establishment;who is detected at last by the uncle; who runs away when she hears thatGustave is going to marry Eugenie, and who is at the end produced, withan infant ready-made, for Paul's favourite "curtain" of Hymen, covering(like the curtain) all faults. The book has more "scabrous" detail than_L'Enfant de ma Femme_, and (worse still) it relapses intoSmollettian-Pigaultian dirt; but it displays a positive and even largeincrease of that singular readableness which has been noticed. One wouldhardly, except in cases of actual novel-famine, or after an immenseinterval, almost or quite involving oblivion, read a book of Paul'stwice, but there is seldom any difficulty in reading him once. Only,beware his moral moods! When he is immoral it is in the bargain; if youdo not want him you leave him, or do not go to him at all. But when, forinstance, the unfortunate Madame de Berly has been frightfully burnt anddisfigured for life by an act of her own, intended to save--andsuccessful in saving--her _vaurien_ of a lover, Paul moralises thus atthe end of a chapter--

  Julie perdit en effet tous ses attraits: elle fut punie par ou elle avait peche. Juste retour des choses ici-bas.

  there being absolutely no such _retour_ for Gustave--one feels ratherinclined, as his countrymen would say, to "conspue" Paul.[43] It isfair, however, to say that these accesses of morality or moralising arenot very frequent.

  [Sidenote: The caricatured _Anglais_.]

  But there is one thing of some interest about _Gustave_ which has notyet been noticed. Paul de Kock was certainly not the author,[44] but hemust have been one of the first, and he as certainly was one of the mosteffective and continuous, promoters of that curious caricature ofEnglishmen which everybody knows from French draughtsmen, and some fromFrench writers, of the first half of the nineteenth century. It is onlyfair to say that we had long preceded it by caricaturing Frenchmen. Butthey had been slow in retaliating, at least in anything like the samefashion. For a long time (as is again doubtless known to many people)French literature had mostly ignored foreigners. During the lateseventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries few, except thearistocracy, of either country knew much of the other, and there wascomparatively little (of course there was always some) differencebetween the manners and customs of the upper classes of both. Prevostand Crebillon, if not Marivaux,[45] knew something about England. Thenarose in France a caricature, no doubt, but almost a reverential one,due to the _philosophes_, in the drawing whereof the Englishman isindeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophicaland by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of nationalstruggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time afterthe beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic _Anglais_ was slowto make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the lastvolume, indulges in him little if at all. But things soon changed.

  In the book of which we have been speaking, Gustave and a scapegracefriend of his determine to give a dinner to two young persons of theother sex, but find themselves penniless, and a fresh edition of one ofthe famous old _Repues Franches_ (which date in French literature backto Villon and no doubt earlier) follows. With this, as such, we need nottrouble ourselves. But Olivier, the friend, takes upon him the duty ofproviding the wine, and does so by persuading a luckless vintner that heis a "Milord."

  In order to dress the part, he puts on a cravat well folded, a very longcoat, and a very short waistcoat. He combs down his hair till it isquite straight, rouges the tip of his nose, takes a whip, puts ongaiters and a little pointed hat, and studies himself in the glass inorder to give himself a stupid and insolent air, the result of themake-up being entirely successful. It may be difficult for the mostunbiassed Englishman of to-day to recognise himself in this portrait orto find it half-way somewhere about 1860, or even, going back to actual"_temp._ of tale," to discover anything much like it in physiognomiesso different as those of Castlereagh and Wellington, of Southey andLockhart, nay, even of Tom and Jerry.[46] But that it is the Englishmanof Daumier and Gavarni, _artistement complet_ already, nobody can deny.

  Later in the novel (before he comes to his very problematical "settlingdown" with Suzon and the ready-made child) Gustave is allowed a rathersuperfluous scattering of probably not final wild oats in Italy andGermany, in Poland and in England. But the English meesses are too_sentimentales_ (note the change from _sensibles_); he does not like thecourses of horses, the combats of cocks, the bets and the punches andthe plum-puddings. He is angry because people look at him when he pourshis tea into the saucer. But what annoys him most of all is the customof the ladies leaving the table after dinner, and that of preferringcemeteries for the purpose of taking the air and refreshing oneselfafter business. It may perhaps diminish surprise, but should increaseinterest, when one remembers that, after Frenchmen had got tired ofLocke, and before they took to Shakespeare, their idea of our literaturewas largely derived from "Les Nuits de Young" and Hervey's _Meditationsamong the Tombs_.

  Another bit of copy-book (to revert to the Pauline moralities) is at theend of the same very unedifying novel, when the benevolent andlong-suffering colonel, joining the hands of Gustave and Suzon, remarksto the latter that she has proved to him that "virtues, gentleness,wits, and beauty can serve as substitutes for birth and fortune." Itwould be unkind to ask which of the "virtues" presided over Suzon'soriginal acquaintance with her future husband, or whether the same oranother undertook the charge of that wonderful six weeks' abscondence ofhers with him in this very uncle's house.
/>   [Sidenote: _Edmond et sa Cousine._]

  But no doubt this capacity for "dropping into" morality stood Paul ingood stead when he undertook (as it was almost incumbent on such auniversal provider of popular fiction to do) what the French, amongother nicknames for them, call _berquinades_--stories for children andthe young person, more or less in the style of the _Ami des Enfants_. Hediversified his _gauloiseries_ with these not very seldom. An example isbound up with _Gustave_ itself in some editions, and they make a verychoice assortment of brimstone and treacle. The hero and heroine of_Edmond et sa Cousine_ are two young people who have been betrothed fromtheir youth up, and neither of whom objects to the situation, whileConstance, the "She-cosen" (as Pepys puts it) is deeply in love withEdmond. He also is really fond of her, but he is a bumptious andsuperficial snob, who, not content with the comfortable[47] income whichhe has, and which will be doubled at his marriage, wants to make fameand fortune in some way. He never will give sufficient scope andapplication to his moderate talents, and accordingly fails very plumplyin music, playwriting, and painting. Then he takes to stock-exchangegambling, and of course, after the usual "devil's _arles_" of success,completely ruins himself, owes double what he has, and is about to blowout his somewhat unimportant brains. But Constance, in the truest spiritof melodrama, and having long sought him in vain under the guidance of a_quarta persona_, of whom more presently, realises almost the whole ofher fortune, except a small pittance, dashes it down before him in thenick of time, and saves him for the moment.

  Perhaps the straitest sect of the Berquinaders would have finished thestory here, made the two marry on Constance's pittance, reconciledEdmond to honest work, and so on. Paul, however, had a soul both aboveand below this. Edmond, with the easy and cheap sham honour of his kind,will not "subject her to privations," still hopes for something to turnup, and in society meets with a certain family of the name ofBringuesingue--a father who is a retired mustard-maker with some moneyand no brains, a mother who is a nonentity, and a daughter Clodora,[48]a not bad-looking and not unamiable girl, unfortunately dowered with thesilliness of her father and the nullity of her mother combined andintensified. There is some pretty bad stock farce about M. Bringuesingueand his valet, whom he pays to scratch his nose when his master iscommitting solecisms; and about Edmond's adroitness in saving thesituations. The result is that the Bringuesingues throw their notunwilling daughter at Edmond's head. To do him the only justice he everdeserves, he does not like to give up Constance; but she, moremelodramatic than ever, contrives to imbue him with the idea that she isfalse to him, and he marries Clodora. Again the thing might have beenstopped; but Paul once more goes on, and what, I fear, must be calledhis hopeless bad taste (there is no actual bad _blood_ in him), and theprecious stage notion that "Tom the young dog" may do anything and beforgiven, make him bring about a happy ending in a very shabby fashion.Edmond is bored by his stupid though quite harmless and affectionatewife, neglects her, and treats his parents-in-law with more contemptstill. Poor Clodora dies, but persuades her parents to hand over herfortune to Edmond, and with it he marries Constance. "Hide, blushinghonour! hide that wedding-day." But, you see, the Paul-de-Kockian herowas not like Lord Welter. There was hardly anything that _this_ "fellowcouldn't do."

  Paul, however, has kept his word with his subscribers by shutting outall sculduddery, even of the mildest kind, and has, if not reconciled,partly conciliated critics by throwing in some tolerable minorpersonages. Pelagie, Constance's lively friend, has a character which hecould somehow manage without Richardsonian vulgarity. Her amiablefather, an orchestra musician, who manages to find _des jolies choses_even in a damned piece, is not bad; and, above all, Pelagie's lover,and, till Edmond's misconduct, his friend, M. Ginguet--a modestGovernment clerk, who adores his mistress, is constantly snubbed by her,but has his flames crowned at last,--is, though not a particularly novelcharacter, a very well-played part.

  [Sidenote: _Andre le Savoyard._]

  One of the author's longer books, _Andre le Savoyard_, is a curiousblend of the _berquinade_ with what some English critics have been kindenough to call the "candour" of the more usual French novel. Thecandour, however, is in very small proportion to the berquinity. This, Isuppose, helped it to pass the English censorship of the mid-nineteenthcentury; for I remember a translation (it was the first book of theauthor's I ever read) far away in the 'fifties, among a collection ofbooks where nothing flagrantly scabrous would have been admitted. Itbegins, and for the most part continues, in an almost completelyMarmontelish or Edgeworthian fashion. A selfish glutton and_petit-maitre_ of a French count, M. de Francornard, loses his way (witha postilion, a valet, and his little daughter, whom he has carried offfrom her mother) in the hills of Savoy, and is rescued and guested by agood peasant, whom he rewards with a _petit ecu_ (three _livres_, notfive or six). The peasant dies, and his two eldest boys set out forParis as chimney-sweeps. The elder (eleven-year-old) Andre himself isbefriended by a good Auvergnat water-carrier and his little daughterManette; after which he falls in with the Francornards--now, after afashion, a united family. He is taken into their household and made asort of protege by the countess, the child Adolphine being also veryfond of him; while, though in another way, their _soubrette_ Lucile, apretty damsel of eighteen, is fonder still. Years pass, and thefortunate Andre distributes his affections between the three girls.Manette, though she ends as his wife, is more of a sister at first;Adolphine is an adored and unhoped-for idol; while Lucile (it is hardlynecessary to say that it is in the scenes with her that "candour" comesin) is at first a protectress, then a schoolmistress of the school ofCupid, in process of time a mistress in the other sense, and always avery good-natured and unselfish helper. In fact, Manette is sopreternaturally good (she can't even be jealous in a sufficiently humanway), Adolphine so prettily and at last tragically null, that one reallyfeels inclined to observe to Andre, if he were worth it, the reconditequotation

  Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori,

  though perhaps seven years _is_ a long interval in the first third oflife.

  [Sidenote: _Jean._]

  A still better instance of the modified _berquinade_--indeed, except forthe absence of riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock'sbooks--is _Jean_, also an example of his middle and ripest period. Iftranslated into English it might have for second title "or, The Historyof a Good Lout." The career of Jean Durand (one of the Frenchequivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the momentof, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuousyoung Frenchman's hopes, which consists in his marrying a pretty,amiable, sensible, and well-to-do young widow.[49] Jean is the son of aherbalist father who is an eccentric but not a fool, and a mother whois very much of a fool but not in the least eccentric. The child, who isborn in the actual presence (result of the usual farcical opening) of acorporal and four fusiliers, is put out to nurse at Saint-Germain in theway they did then, brought home and put out to school, but, inconsequence of his mother's absurd spoiling, allowed to learn absolutelynothing, and (though he is not exactly a bad fellow) to get into verybad company. With two of the choicest specimens of this he runs away(having, again by his mother's folly, been trusted with a round sum ingold) at the age of sixteen, and executes a sort of picaresque journeyin the environs of Paris, till he is brought to his senses through anactual robbery committed by the worst of his companions. He returns hometo find his father dead: and having had a substantial income left himalready by an aunt, with the practical control of his mother'sresources, he goes on living entirely _a sa guise_. This involves nopositive debauchery or ruination, but includes smoking (then, it must beremembered, almost as great a crime in French as in English middle-classcircles), playing at billiards (ditto), and a free use of strong drinkand strong language. He spends and gives money freely, but does not getinto debt; flirts with grisettes, but falls into no discreditableentanglement, etc., etc.

  His most characteristic peculiarity, however, is his absolute refusal tolearn the
rudiments of manners. He keeps his hat on in all companies;neglects all neatness in dress, etc.; goes (when he _does_ go) amongladies with garments reeking of tobacco and a mouth full of strangeoaths, and generally remains ignorant of, or recalcitrant to, every formof conventional politeness in speech and behaviour.

  The only person of any sense with whom he has hitherto come in contact,an old hairdresser named Bellequeue (it must be remembered that thisprofession or vocation is not as traditionally ridiculous in Frenchliterature as in ours), persuades his mother that the one chance ofreforming Jean and making him like other people is to marry him off.They select an eligible _parti_, one Mademoiselle Adelaide Chopard, ayoung lady of great bodily height, some facial charms, not exactly afool, but not of the most amiable disposition, and possessed of noactual accomplishment (though she thinks herself almost a "blue") exceptthat of preserving different fruits in brandy, her father being aretired liqueur manufacturer. Jean, who has never been in the least "inlove," has no particular objection to Adelaide, and none at all to thepreserved cherries, apricots, etc., and the scenes of his introductionand, after a fashion, proposal to the damsel, with her first resentmentat his unceremonious behaviour and later positive attraction by it, arefar from bad. Luckily or unluckily--for the marriage might have turnedout at least as well as most marriages of the kind--before it is broughtabout, this French Cymon at last meets his real Iphigenia. Walkingrather late at night, he hears a cry, and a footpad (one of his own oldcomrades, as it happens) rushes past him with a shawl which he hassnatched from two ladies. Jean counter-snatches the shawl from him andsuccours the ladies, one of whom strikes his attention. They ask him toput them into a cab, and go off--grateful, but giving no address.However, he picks up a reticule, which the thief in his fright hasdropped, discovers in it the address he wants, and actually ventures tocall on Madame Caroline Derville, who possesses, in addition to viduity,all the other attractions catalogued above.

  Another scene of farce, which is not so far short of comedy, followsbetween the lout and the lady, the fun being, among other things, causedby Jean's unconventional strolling about the room, looking atengravings, etc., and showing, by his remarks on things--"The Death ofTasso," "The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis," and the like--that he isutterly uneducated.

  There is about half the book to come, but no more abstract can benecessary. The way in which Jean is delivered from his Adelaide andrewarded with his Caroline, if not quite probable (for Adelaide is madeto blacken her own character to her rival), is not without ingenuity.And the narrative (which has Paul de Kock's curious "holding" qualityfor the hour or two one is likely to bestow on it) is diversified by theusual duel, by Jean's noble and rather rash conduct, in putting down hispistols to bestow sacks of five-franc pieces on his two old friends (whotry to burgle and--one of them at least--would rather like to murderhim), etc., etc.[50] But the real value--for it has some--of the booklies in the vivid sketches of ordinary life which it gives. The curiousCockneydom, diversified by glimpses of a suburban Arcadia, in which theFrench _bourgeois_ of the first half of the nineteenth century seems tohave passed his time; the humours of a _coucou_ journey from Paris toSaint-Germain; all sorts of details of the Durand and Chopardhouseholds--supply these. And not the least of them is given by thebachelor menage of Bellequeue with his eighteen-year-old _bonne_ Rose,the story whereof need not sadden or shock even Mrs. Grundy, unless shescents unrecounted, indeed not even hinted at, improprieties.Bellequeue, as noted above, is by no means a fool, and achieves as nearan approach to a successful "character" as Paul de Kock has ever drawn;while Rose plays the same part of piebald angel as Lucile in _Andre_,with a little more cleverness in her espieglerie and at least novouched-for unlawfulnesses.

  [Sidenote: _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant._]

  But perhaps if any one wants a single book to judge Paul de Kock by(with one possible exception, to follow this), he cannot do better thantake _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant_, a novel again of his middle period,and one which, if it shows some of his less desirable points, shows themcharacteristically and with comparatively little offence, while itexhibits what the shopkeepers would, I believe, call "a range of hisbest lines." The autobiographic hero, Paul Deligny, is one of hisnearest approaches to a gentleman, yet no one can call him insipid orpriggish; the heroine, Augustine Luceval, by marriage Jenneville, is inthe same way one of his nearest approaches to a lady, and, though notsuch a madcap as the similarly situated Frederique of _Une Gaillarde_(_v. inf._), by no means mawkish. It is needless to say that these are"l'Amant" and "la Femme," or that they are happily united at the end: itmay be more necessary to add that there is no scandal, but at the sametime no prunes and prism, earlier. "Le Mari," M. Jenneville, is verymuch less of a success, being an exceedingly foolish as well asreprobate person, who not only deserts a beautiful, charming, andaffectionate wife, but treats his lower-class loves shabbily, and allowshimself to be swindled and fooled to the _n_th by an adventuress offashion and a plausible speculator. On the other hand, one of thisbook's rather numerous grisettes, Ninie, is of the more if not mostgracious of that questionable but not unappetising sisterhood. Dubois,the funny man, and Jolivet, the parsimonious reveller, who generallymanages to make his friends pay the bill, are not bad common form offarce. One of the best of Paul's own special scenes, the pancake party,with a bevy of grisettes, is perhaps the liveliest of all such things,and, but for one piece of quite unnecessary Smollettism or Pigaulterie,need only scandalise the "unco guid." The whole has, in unusual measure,that curious _readableness_ which has been allowed to most of ourauthor's books. Almost inevitably there is a melodramatic end; but this,to speak rather Hibernically, is made up for by a minute and curiousaccount, at the beginning, of the actual presentation of a melodrama,with humours of pit, box, and gallery. If the reader does not like thebook he will hardly like anything else of its author's; if he does, hewill find plenty of the same sort of stuff, less concentrated perhaps,elsewhere. But if he be a student, as well as a consumer, of the novel,he can hardly fail to see that, at its time and in its kind, it is notso trivial a thing as its subjects and their treatment might, in theabstract, be pronounced to be by the grave and precise.

  [Sidenote: _Mon Voisin Raymond._]

  Yet somebody may say, "This is all very well, but what was it that madeMajor Pendennis laugh?" Probably a good many things in a good manybooks; but I do not know any one more likely to have received that crownthan the exception above mentioned, _Mon Voisin Raymond_, which alsobears (to me) the recommendation of a very competent friend of mine. Myexperience is that you certainly do begin laughing at the verybeginning, and that the laughter is kept up, if not without cessation,with very few intervals, through a remarkable series of comic scenes.The book, in fact, is Paul de Kock's _Gilbert Gurney_, and I cannot sinkthe critic in the patriot to such an extent as to enable me to putTheodore, even in what is, I suppose, his best long story, above, oreven on a level with, Paul here.

  The central point, as one sees almost at once, is that this Raymond (Ithink we are never told his other name), a not entirely ill-meaningperson, but a _facheux_ of almost ultra-Molieresque strength, isperpetually spoiling his unlucky neighbour's, the autobiographic EugeneDorsan's, sport, and, though sometimes paid out in kind, bringingcalamities upon him, while at last he actually capots his friend andenemy by making him one of the _derniers_ already mentioned! This isvery bold of Paul, and I do not know any exact parallel to it. On theother hand, Eugene is consoled, not only by Raymond's death in the Alps(Paul de Kock is curiously fond of Switzerland as a place of punishmentfor his bad characters), but by the final possession of a certainNicette, the very pearl of the grisette kind. We meet her in the firstscene of the story, where Dorsan, having given the girl a guiltlesssojourn of rescue in his own rooms, is detected and exposed to themalice of a cast mistress by Raymond. I am afraid that Paul ratherforgot that final sentence of his own first book; for though Pelagie,Dorsan's erring and unpleasant wife, dies in the last chapter, I do notobserve that an actu
al Hymen with Nicette "covers the fault" which,after long innocence, she has at last committed or permitted. Butperhaps it would have been indecent to contract a second marriage sosoon, and it is only postponed to the unwritten first chapter of themissing fifth volume.[51]

  The interval between overture and finale is, as has been said or hinted,uncommonly lively, and for once, not only in the final retribution, Paulhas distributed the _peine du talion_ pretty equally between hispersonages. Dorsan has already lost another grisette mistress, Caroline(for whose sake he has neglected Nicette), and a _femme du monde_, withwhom he has for a short time intrigued; while in both cases Raymond,though not exactly the cause of the deprivation, has, in his meddlingway, been mixed up with it. In yet other scenes we have a travellingmagic-lantern exhibition in the Champs Elysees; a night in the TivoliGardens; an expedition to a party at a country house, which, of course,Raymond's folly upsets, literally as well as metaphorically; a long(rather too long) account of a musical evening at a verylower-middle-class house; a roaringly farcical interchange of dinners_en cabinet particulier_ at a restaurant, in which Raymond is thevictim. But, on the whole, he scores, and is a sort of double cause ofthe hero's last and greatest misfortune. For it is a lie of his aboutNicette which determines Dorsan to make a long-postponed visit to hissister in the country, and submit at last to her efforts to get himmarried to the exaggeratedly _ingenue_ Pelagie, and saddled with herdetestable aunt, Madame de Pontchartrain. The end of the book is notquite equal to some other parts of it. But there is abundance ofexcellent farce, and Nicette might reconcile the veriest sentimentalist.

  [Sidenote: _Le Barbier de Paris._]

  At one time in England--I cannot speak for the times of his greatestpopularity in France--Paul de Kock's name, except for a vague knowledgeof his grisette and _mauvais sujet_ studies, was very mainly connectedwith _Le Barbier de Paris_. It was an instance of the constant mistakeswhich almost all countries make about foreign authors. I imagine, from afresh and recent reading of it, that he probably did take more troublewith it than with most of his books. But, unfortunately, instances oflost labour are not confined to literature. The subject and the authorare very ill matched. It is a romance of 1632, and so in a way competingwith the most successful efforts of the great Romantics. But for such atask Paul had no gifts, except his invariable one of concocting areadable story. As for style, imagination, atmosphere, and such highgraces, it would be not so much cruel as absurd to "enter" the book with_Notre-Dame de Paris_ or the _Contes Drolatiques_, _Le CapitaineFracasse_ or the _Chronique de Charles IX_. But even the lower ways hecould not tread here. He did not know anything about the time, and hiswicked Marquis de Villebelle is not early Louis Treize at all, butrather late Louis Quinze. He had not the gift (which Scott first showedand Dumas possessed in no small measure) of writing his conversations,if not in actual temporal colour of language, at any rate in a kind of_lingua franca_ suitable to, or at the worst not flagrantly discordantwith, _any_ particular time and _any_ particular state of manners. Hecould throw in types of the kind so much admired by no less a personthan Sir Philip Sidney--a garrulous old servant, an innocent young girl,a gasconading coward, a revengeful daughter of Italy, a this and thatand the other. But he could neither make individual character nor vividhistorical scene. And so the thing breaks down.

  The barber-hero-villain himself is the most "unconvincing" of barbers(who have profited fiction not so ill in other cases), of heroes (whoare too often unconvincing), and even of villains (who have rather ahabit of being so).[52] Why a man who is represented as being intensely,diabolically, wicked, but almost diabolically shrewd, should employ, andgo on employing, as his instrument a blundering poltroon like the GasconChaudoreille, is a question which recurs almost throughout the book,and, being unanswered, is almost sufficient to damn it. And at the endthe other question, why M. le Marquis de Villebelle--represented as,though also a villain, a person of superior intelligence--when he hasdiscovered that the girl whom he has abducted and sought to ruin isreally his daughter; when he has run upstairs to tell her, has knockedat her locked door, and has heard a heavy body splashing into the lakeunder her window,--why, instead of making his way at once to the water,he should run about the house for keys, break into the room, and atlast, going to the window, draw from the fact that "an object showsitself at intervals on the surface, and appears to be still in a stateof agitation," the no doubt quite logical inference that Blanche isdrowning--when, and only then, he precipitates himself after her,--thisquestion would achieve, if it were necessary, the damnation.

  [Sidenote: The Pauline grisette.]

  The fact is, that Paul had no turn for melodrama, history, or tragicmatter of any kind. He wrote nearly a hundred novels, and I neitherpretend to have read the whole of them, nor, if I had done so, should Ifeel justified in inflicting abstracts on my readers. As always happensin such cases, the feast he offers us is "pot-luck," but, as too seldomhappens, the luck of the pot is quite often good. With the grisette, towhom he did much to give a niche (one can hardly call it a shrine) inliterature, whom he celebrated so lovingly, and whose gradualdisappearance he has so touchingly bewailed, or with any feminine personof partly grisettish kind, such as the curious and already brieflymentioned heroine of _Une Gaillarde_,[53] he is almost invariably happy.The above-mentioned Lucile is not technically a grisette (who should bea girl living on her own resources or in a shop, not in service) nor isRose in _Jean_, but both have the requirements of the type--_minoischiffonne_ (including what is absolutely indispensable, a _nezretrousse_), inexhaustible gaiety, extreme though by no meanspromiscuous complaisance, thorough good-nature--all the gifts, in short,of Beranger's _bonne fille_, who laughs at everything, but is perfectlycapable of good sense and good service at need, and who not seldommarries and makes as good a wife as, "in a higher _spear_," the English"garrison hack" has had the credit of being. Quite a late, but a verysuccessful example, with the complaisance limited to strictly legitimateextent, and the good-nature tempered by a shrewd determination to avengetwo sisters of hers who had been weaker than herself, is the Georgetteof _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_, who outwits in the cleverest way threewould-be gallants, two of them her sisters' actual seducers, andextracts thumping solatia from these for their victims.[54]

  [Sidenote: Others.]

  On the other hand, the older and, I think, more famous book whichsuggested the title of this--_L'Homme aux Trois Culottes_, symbolisingand in a way giving a history of the times of the Revolution, theEmpire, and the Restoration, and finishing with "July"--seems to meagain a failure. As I have said, Paul could not manage history, least ofall spread-out history like this; and the characters, or ratherpersonages, though of the lower and lower-middle rank, which he _could_manage best, are to me totally uninteresting. Others may have been, ormay be, more fortunate with them.

  So, too, _Le Petit Fils de Cartouche_ (which I read before comingacross its first part, _Les Enfants du Boulevard_) did not inspire mewith any desire to look up this earlier novel; and _La Pucelle deBelleville_, another of Paul's attempts to depict the unconventional butvirtuous young person, has very slight interest as a story, and isdisfigured by some real examples of the "coarse vulgarity" which hasbeen somewhat excessively charged against its author generally. _FrereJacques_ is a little better, but not much.[55]

  Something has been said of "periods"; but, after all, when Paul has once"got into his stride" there is little difference on the average. I haveread, for instance, in succession, _M. Dupont_, which, even in theBelgian piracy, is of 1838, and _Les Demoiselles de Magazin_, which mustbe some quarter of a century later--so late, indeed, that Madame Pattiis mentioned in it. The title-hero of the first--a most respectableman--has an _ingenue_, who loves somebody else, forced upon him,experiences more recalcitrance than is usually allowed in such cases,and at last, with Paul's usual unpoetical injustice, is butchered tomake way for the Adolphe of the piece, who does not so very distinctlydeserve his Eugenie. It contains also one Zelie, who is perhaps theauthor's
most impudent, but by no means most unamusing or mostdisagreeable, grisette. _Les Demoiselles de Magazin_ gives us a wholeposy of these curious flower-weeds of the garden of girls--pretty,middling, and ugly, astonishingly virtuous, not virtuous at all, and_couci-couci_ (one of them, by the way, is nicknamed "Bouci-Boula,"because she is plump and plain), but all good-natured, and on occasionalmost noble-sentimented; a guileless provincial; his friend, who has amania for testing his wife's fidelity, and who accomplishes one ofPaul's favourite fairy-tale or rather pantomime endings by coming downwith fifteen thousand francs for an old mistress (she has lost herbeauty by the bite of a parrot, and is the mother of theextraordinarily virtuous Marie); a scapegrace "young first" orhalf-first; a superior ditto, who is an artist, who rejects the advancesof Marie's mother, and finally marries Marie herself, etc. etc. Youmight change over some of the personages and scenes of the two books;but they are scarcely unequal in such merit as they possess, and bothlazily readable in the fashion so often noted.

  If any one asks where this readableness comes from, I do not think theanswer is very difficult to give, and it will of itself supply a fullerexplanation (the words apology or excuse are not really necessary) forthe space here allotted to its possessor. It comes, no doubt, in thefirst place, from sheer and unanalysable narrative faculty, the secretof the business, the mystery in one sense of the mystery in the other.But it also comes, as it seems to me, from the fact that Paul de Kock isthe very first of French novelists who, though he has no closely wovenplot, no striking character, no vivid conversation or arresting phrases,is thoroughly _real_, and in the good, not the bad, sense _quotidian_.The statement may surprise some people and shock others, but I believeit can be as fully sustained as that other statement about the mostdifferent subject possible, the _Astree_, which was quoted from Madamede Sevigne in the last volume. Paul knew the world he dealt with as wellalmost as Dickens[56] knew his very different but somewhat correspondingone; and, unlike Dickens, the Frenchman had the good sense to meddlevery little[57] with worlds that he did not know. Of course it would besimply _bete_ to take it for granted that the majority of Parisian shop-and work- and servant-girls have or had either the beauty or theamiability or the less praiseworthy qualities of his grisettes. Butsomehow or other one feels that the general _ethos_ of the class hasbeen caught.[58] His _bourgeois_ interiors and outings have the samereal and not merely stagy quality; though his melodramatic or pantomimicendings may smack of "the boards" a little. The world to which he holdsup the mirror may be a rather vulgar sort of Vanity Fair, but there areunfortunately few places more real than Vanity Fair, and few things lessunreal than vulgarity.

  The last sentence may lead to a remark of a graver kind than has beenoften indulged in here. Thackeray defined his own plan in _Vanity Fair_itself as at least partly an attempt to show people "living without Godin the world." There certainly is not much godliness in the book, but hecould not keep it out altogether; he would have been false to nature(which he never was) if he had. In Paul de Kock's extensive work, on theother hand, the exclusion is complete. It is not that there is anyexpressed Voltairianism as there is in Pigault. But though the peopleare married in church as well as at the _mairie_, and I remember onecasual remark about a mother and her daughter going to mass, the wholespiritual region--religious, theological, ecclesiastical, and whatnot--is left blank. I do not remember so much as a _cure_ figuringpersonally, though there may be one. And it is worth noting that Paulwas born in 1794, and therefore passed his earliest childhood in thetime when the Republic had actually gagged, if not stifled, religion inFrance--when children grew up, in some cases at any rate, without everhearing the name of God, except perhaps in phrases like _pardieu_ or_parbleu_. It is not my business or my intention to make reflections ordraw inferences; I merely indicate the fact.

  Another fact--perhaps so obvious already that it hardly needsstating--is that Paul de Kock is not exactly the person to "take acourse of," unless under such conditions as those under which Mr.Carlyle took a course of a far superior writer, Marryat, and was (oneregrets to remember) very ungrateful for the good it did him. He is(what some of his too critical countrymen have so falsely called Dumas)a mere _amuseur_, and his amusement is somewhat lacking in variety.Nevertheless, few critical readers[59] of the present history will, Ithink, consider the space given to him here as wasted. He was a reallypowerful schoolmaster to bring the popular novel into still furtherpopularity; and he made a distinct advance upon such persons asPigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil--upon the former in comparativedecency, if not of subject, of expression; upon the latter in gettingclose to actual life; and upon both in what may be called the_furniture_ of his novels--the scene-painting, property-arranging, andgeneral staging. This has been most unfairly assigned to Balzac asoriginator, not merely in France, but generally, whereas, not to mentionour own men, Paul began to write nearly a decade before the beginning ofthose curious efforts, half-prenatal, of Balzac's, which we shall dealwith later, and nearly two decades before _Les Chouans_. And, horrifyingas the statement may be to some, I venture to say that his mere _mise enscene_ is sometimes, if not always, better than Balzac's own, though hemay be to that younger contemporary of his as a China orange to LombardStreet in respect of plot, character, thought, conversation, and all thehigher elements, as they are commonly taken to be, of the novel.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: The minors before 1830.]

  It has been said that the filling-up of this chapter, as to the rank andfile of the novelists of 1800-1830, has been a matter of some difficultyin the peculiar circumstances of the case. I have, however, been enabledto read, for the first time or afresh, examples not merely of thosewriters who have preserved any notoriety, but of some who have not, andto assure myself on fair grounds that I need not wait for furtherexploration. The authors now to be dealt with have already been named.But I may add another novelist on the very eve of 1830, Auguste Ricard,whose name I never saw in any history of literature, but whose work fellalmost by accident into my hands, and seems worth taking as "pot-luck."

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Mme. de Montolieu--_Caroline de Lichtfield_.]

  Isabelle de Montolieu--a Swiss by birth but a French-woman byextraction, and Madame de Crousaz by her first marriage--was a friend ofGibbon's friend Georges Deyverdun, and indeed of Gibbon himself, who,she says, actually offered to father her novel. Odd as this seems, therereally is in _Caroline de Lichtfield_[60] not merely something whichdistinguishes it from the ordinary "sensibility" tale of its time (itwas first printed at Lausanne in 1786), but a kind of crispness ofthought now and then which sometimes does suggest Gibbon, in somethingthe same way as that in which Fanny Burney suggests Johnson. This isindeed mixed with a certain amount of mere "sensibility" jargon,[61] aswhen a lover, making a surprisingly honest confession to his beloved,observes that he is going "to destroy those sentiments which had madehim forget how unworthy he was of them," or when the lady (who has beenquite guiltless, and has at last fallen in love with her own husband)tells this latter of her weakness in these very engaging words: "Yes! Idid love Lindorf; _at least I think I recognise some relation betweenthe sentiments I had for him and those that I feel at present_!"

  [Sidenote: Its advance on "Sensibility."]

  A kind of affection was avowed in the last volume for the "Phoebus" ofthe "heroics," and something similar may be confessed for this "JupiterPluvius," this mixture of tears and stateliness, in the Sentimentalists.But Madame de Montolieu has emerged from the most _larmoyante_ kind of"sensible" comedy. If her book had been cut a little shorter, and if(which can be easily done by the reader) the eccentric survival of a_histoire_, appended instead of episodically inserted, were lopped off,_Caroline de Lichtfield_ would not be a bad story. The heroine, havinglost her mother, has been brought up to the age of fifteen by an amiablecanoness, who (to speak rather Hibernically) ought to have been hermother but wasn't, because the actual mother was so much ric
her. Shebears no malice, however, even to the father who, well preserved inlooks, manners, and selfishness, is Great Chamberlain to Frederick theGreat.

  That very unsacred majesty has another favourite, a certain Count vonWalstein, who is ambassador of Prussia at St. Petersburg. It pleasesFrederick, and of course his chamberlain, that Caroline, young as sheis, shall marry Walstein. As the girl is told that her intended is notmore than thirty, and knows his position (she has, naturally, beenbrought up without the slightest idea of choosing for herself), she isnot displeased. She will be a countess and an ambassadress; she willhave infinite jewels; her husband will probably be handsome andagreeable; he will certainly dance with her, and may very possibly notobject to joining in innocent sports like butterfly-catching. So shesets off to Berlin quite cheerfully, and the meeting takes place. Alas!the count is a "civil count" (as Beatrice says) enough, but he is thereverse of handsome and charming. He has only one eye; he has a hugescar on his cheek; a wig (men, remember, were beginning to "wear theirown hair"), a bent figure, and a leaden complexion. Caroline, promptlyand not unnaturally, "screams and disappears like lightning." Nor canany way be found out of this extremely awkward situation. The count (whois a thoroughly good fellow) would give Caroline up, though he hastaken a great fancy to her, and even the selfish Lichtfield tries (or_says_ he tries) to alter his master's determination. But Frederick ofcourse persists, and with a peculiarly Frederician enjoyment inconferring an ostensible honour which is in reality a punishment, seesthe marriage ceremony carried out under his own eye. Caroline, however,exemplifies in combination certain old adages to the effect that thereis "No will, no wit like a woman's." She submits quite decently inpublic, but immediately after the ceremony writes a letter[62] to herhusband (whose character she has partly, though imperfectly, gauged)requesting permission to retire to the canoness till she is a littleolder, under a covert but quite clearly intelligible threat of suicidein case of refusal. There are of course difficulties, but the count,like a man and a gentleman, consents at once; the father, _bon gre malgre_, has to do so, and the King, a tyrant who has had his way, gives asulky and qualified acquiescence. What follows need only be very rapidlysketched. After a little time Caroline sees, at her old-new home, anengaging young man, a Herr von Lindorf; and matters, though she is quitevirtuous, are going far when she receives an enormous epistle[62] fromher lover, confessing that he himself is the author of her husband'sdisfigurement (under circumstances discreditable to himself andcreditable to Walstein), enclosing, too, a very handsome portrait of thecount _as he was_, and but for this disfigurement might be still. Whathappens then nobody ought to need, or if he does he does not deserve, tobe told. There is no greatness about this book, but to any one who hasan eye for consequences it will probably seem to have some future in it.It shows the breaking of the Sensibility mould and the running of thematerials into a new pattern as early as 1786. In 1886 M. Feuillet or M.Theuriet would of course have clothed the story-skeleton differently,but one can quite imagine either making use of a skeleton by no meansmuch altered. M. Rod would have given it an unhappy ending, but one cansee it in his form likewise.[63]

  [Sidenote: Madame de Genlis _iterum_.]

  Of Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de Genlis, it were tempting to say agood deal personally if we did biographies here when they can easily befound elsewhere. How she became a canoness at six years old, and shortlyafterwards had for her ordinary dress (with something supplementary, onehopes) the costume of a Cupid, including quiver and wings; how shecombined the offices of governess to the Orleans children and mistressto their father; how she also combined the voluptuousness and thephilanthropy of her century by taking baths of milk and afterwardsgiving that milk to the poor;[64] how, rather late in life, she attainedthe very Crown-Imperial of governess-ship in being chosen by Napoleon toteach him and his Court how to behave; and how she wrote infinitebooks--many of them taking the form of fiction--on education, history,religion, everything, can only be summarised. The last item of thesummary alone concerns us, and that must be dealt with summarily too._Mlle. de Clermont_--a sort of historico-"sensible" story in style, andevidently imitated from _La Princesse de Cleves_--is about the bestthing she did as literature; but we dealt with that in the lastvolume[65] among its congeners. In my youth all girls and some boys knew_Adele et Theodore_ and _Les Veillees du Chateau_. From a later book,_Les Battuecas_, George Sand is said to have said that she learntSocialism: and the fact is that Stephanie Felicite had seen so much,felt so much, read so much, and done so much that, having also a quickfeminine wit, she could put into her immense body of work all sorts ofcrude second-hand notions. The two last things that I read of hers tocomplete my idea of her were _Le Comte_ _de Corke_ and _Les Chevaliersdu Cygne_, books at least possessing an element of surprise in theirtitles. The first is a collection of short tales, the title-pieceinspired and prefaced by an account of the Boyle family, and all ratherlike a duller and more spun-out Miss Edgeworth, the common relation toMarmontel accounting for this. The concluding stories of each volume,"Les Amants sans Amour" and "Sanclair," are about the best. _LesChevaliers du Cygne_ is a book likely to stir up the Old Adam in somepersons. It was, for some mysterious reason, intended as a sort ofappendix--for "grown-ups"--to the _Veillees du Chateau_, and is supposedto have incorporated parabolically many of the lessons of the FrenchRevolution (it appeared in 1795). But though its three volumes andeleven hundred pages deal with Charlemagne, and the Empress Irene, andthe Caliph "Aaron" (Haroun), and Oliver (Roland is dead at Roncevaux),and Ogier, and other great and beloved names; though the authoress, whowas an untiring picker-up of scraps of information, has actuallyconsulted (at least she quotes) Sainte-Palaye; there is no faintestflavour of anything really Carlovingian or Byzantine or Oriental aboutthe book, and the whole treatment is in the _pre_-historical-novelstyle. Indeed the writer of the _Veillees_ was altogether of the_veille_--the day just expired--or of the transitional andhalf-understood present--never of the past seen in some perspective, ofthe real new day, or, still less, of the morrow.

  [Sidenote: The minor popular novel--Ducray-Duminil--_Le PetitCarilloneur_.]

  The batch of books into which we are now going to dip does not representthe height of society and the interests of education like Madame deGenlis; nor high society again and at least strivings after the new day,like the noble author of the _Solitaire_ who will follow them. They are,in fact, the minors of the class in which Pigault-Lebrun earlier andPaul de Kock later represent such "majority" as it possesses. But theyought not to be neglected here: and I am bound to say that the veryconsiderable trouble they cost me has not been wholly vain.[66] Themost noted of the whole group, and one of the earliest, Ducray-Duminil's_Lolotte et Fanfan_, escaped[67] a long search; but the possession andcareful study of the four volumes of his _Petit Carillonneur_ (1819)has, I think, enabled me to form a pretty clear notion of what notmerely _Lolotte_ (the second title of which is _Histoire de Deux Enfantsabandonnes dans une ile deserte_), but _Victor ou L'Enfant de la Foret_,_Caelina ou L'Enfant du Mystere_, _Jules ou le Toit paternel_, or anyother of the author's score or so of novels would be like.

  The book, I confess, was rather hard to read at first, forDucray-Duminil is a sort of Pigault-Lebrun _des enfants_; he writesrather kitchen French; the historic present (as in all these books)loses its one excuse by the wearisome abundance of it, and the firsthundred pages (in which little Dominique, having been unceremoniouslytumbled out of a cabriolet[68] by wicked men, and left to the chances ofdivine and human assistance, is made to earn his living byframed-bell-ringing in the streets of Paris) became something of a_corvee_. But the author is really a sort of deacon, though in no highdivision of his craft. He expands and duplicates his situations with noinconsiderable cunning, and the way in which new friends, new enemies,and new should-be-indifferent persons are perpetually trying to find outwhether the boy is really the Dominique d'Alinvil of Marseilles, whosefather and mother have been foully made away with, or not, shows commandof its own particular kind of
ingenuity. Intrigues of all sorts--violentand other (for his wicked relative, the Comtesse d'Alinvil, is alwaystrying to play Potiphar's wife to him, and there is a certainMademoiselle Gothon who would not figure as she does here in a book byMr. Thomas Day)--beset him constantly; he is induced not merely totrust his enemies, but to distrust his friends; there is a good deal ofunderground work and of the explained supernatural; a benevolentmusician; an excellent cure; a rather "coming" but agreeable Adrienne deSurval, who, close to the end of the book, hides her trouble in thebosom of her aunt while Dominique presses her hand to his heart (theaunt seems here superfluous), etc., etc. Altogether the book is, to thehistorian, a not unsatisfactory one, and joins its evidence to that ofPigault as showing that new sources of interest and new ways of dealingwith them are being asked for and found. In filling up the map ofgeneral novel-development and admitting English examples, we may assignto its author a place between Mrs. Radcliffe and the _Family Herald_:confining ourselves to French only, he has again, like Pigault,something of the credit of making a new start. He may appeal to thetaste of the vulgar (which is not quite the same sort of thing as "avulgar taste"), but he sees that the novel is capable of providinggeneral pastime, and he does his best to make it do so.

  [Sidenote: V. Ducange.]

  [Sidenote: _L'Artiste et le Soldat._]

  "The other Ducange," whose patronymic appears to have been Brahain, andwho perhaps took the name of the great scholar[69] for the sake ofcontrast, was even more famous for his melodramas[70] than for hisfiction, one piece especially, "Trente Ans, ou La Vie d'un Joueur,"having been among the triumphs of the Porte-Saint-Martin and ofFrederick Lemaitre. As a novelist he did not write for children likeDucray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful prefacescoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety broughtagainst him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of hiswhich I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary toextend my acquaintance in search of it. He seems to have been aquarrelsome sort of person, for he got into trouble not only with themoralists, not only with the Restoration government, but with theAcademy, which he attacked; and he is rather fond of "scratchy"references such as "On peut meriter encore quelque interet sans etre unAmadis, un Vic-van-Vor [poor Fergus!], un Han, ou un Vampire." But hisintrinsic merit as a novelist did not at first seem to me great. A bookworse _charpente_ than that just quoted from, _L'Artiste et le Soldat_,I have seldom read. The first of its five volumes is entirely occupiedwith the story (not badly, though much too voluminously told) of acaptain who has lost his leg at Waterloo, and though tended by a prettyand charming daughter, is in great straits till helped by a mysteriousBlack Nun, who loves _les militaires_, and has been entrusted with moneyto help them by the Empress Josephine. The second, "without with yourleave or by your leave" of any kind,[71] jumps back to give us, under adifferent name for a long time, the early history of this captain, whichoccupies two whole volumes and part of a third (the fourth of the book).Then another abrupt shift introduces us to the "artist," the youngerbrother, who bears a _third_ name, itself explained by another jump backof great length. Then a lover turns up for Suzanne, the captain'sdaughter, and we end the fifth volume with a wedding procession in tendistinct carriages.

  [Sidenote: _Ludovica._]

  _Ludovica ou Le Testament de Waterloo_, a much later book, was, theauthor tells us, finished in June 1830 under the fiendish tyranny of"all-powerful bigots, implacable Jesuits, and restored marquises"; butthe glorious days of July came; a new dynasty, "jeune, forte, sincere"(Louis Philippe "young and sincere"!), was on the throne; the ship ofstate entered the vast sea of liberty; France revived; all Europe seemedto start from its shroud--and _Ludovica_ got published. But the author'sjoy was a little dashed by the sense that, unlike its half-score offorerunners, the book had not to battle with the bigots and the Jesuitsand the "restored marquises"--the last a phrase which has considerablecharms of suggestion.

  All this, of course, has its absurd side; but it shows, by way ofredemption, that Ducange, in one of the many agreeable phrases of hiscountry, "did not go to it with a dead hand." He seems, indeed, to havebeen a thoroughly "live" person, if not a very wise one: and _Ludovica_begins with a rousing situation--a crowd and block in the streets ofParis, brought about by nobody quite knows what, but ending in apistol-shot, a dead body, the flight of the assassin, the dispersal ofthe crowd by the _gendarmes_, and finally the discovery by a youngpainter, who has just returned from seeing his mother at Versailles, ofa very youthful, very pretty, and very terrified girl, speaking anunknown tongue, and not understanding French, who has fled for refugeinto a dark alley ending in a flight of cellar-steps. It is to the pointthat among the confused cries attending the disturbance have been someabout a girl being carried off.

  It must be admitted that this is not unpromising, and I really think_Ludovica_ (with a caution as to the excessive prolixity of its kind andtime) might be recommended to lovers of the detective novel, of which itis a rather early sample. I have confessed, in a later chapter, thatthis particular "wanity" is not my favourite; but I found myself gettingthrough M. Victor Ducange's six volumes--burdened rather than ballastedas they are by political outbursts, rather "thorn-crackling" attempts athumour, and the like--with considerably less effort than has sometimesattended similar excursions. If they had been three instead of six Ihardly think I should have felt the collar at all. The superiority to_L'Artiste et le Soldat_ is remarkable. When honest Jules Janinattributed to Ducange "une erudition peu commune," he must either havebeen confusing Victor with Charles, or, which is more probable,exhibiting his own lack of the quality he refers to. Ducange does quotetags of Latin: but erudition which makes Proserpine the daughter of_Cybele_, though certainly _peu commune_ in one sense, is not so in theother. The purposes and the jokes, as has been said, may bore; andthough the style is better than Ducray's, it would not of itself"over-stimulate." But the man is really almost prodigal of incident, anddoes not manage it badly.

  Here, you have Ludovica's father and mother (the former of whom has beencrimped to perform a marriage under the impression that he is a priest,whereas he is really a colonel of dragoons) escaping through a hole atthe back of a picture from a skylighted billiard-room. There, anenterprising young man, "sitting out" at a ball, to attend which he hasdisguised himself, kisses his partner,[72] and by that pleasingoperation dislodges half his borrowed moustache. It falls, alas! on herhand, she takes it for a spider, screams, and so attracts an unwelcomepublic. Later in the same evening he finds himself shut up in the younglady's bedroom, and hears her and her mother talking secrets which verynearly concern him. The carrying off of Ludovica from Poland to Paris isvery smartly managed (I am not sure that the great Alexander or one ofhis "young men" did not borrow some details from it for the arrest ofD'Artagnan and Porthos after their return from England), and the way inwhich she and a double of hers, Trinette van Poupenheim, are mixed up isreally clever. So is the general cross-purposing. Cabmen turn up justwhen they should; and though letters dropped out of pockets are ascommon as blackberries, I know few better excuses for such carelessnessthan the fact that you have pulled the letter out with a silk wrapper,which you proceed to fold tenderly round the beautiful neck of a damselin a cab somewhere about midnight. A holograph will made on the eve ofWaterloo and preserved for fifteen years by the faithful depositary; agood doctor, of course; many bad Jesuits, of course; another, and thistime virtuous, though very impudent, carrying-off of the _other_ youngwoman from the clutches of the hated _congreganistes_;[73] a boghei;[74]a jokei; a third _enlevement_ of the real Ludovica, who escapes by acellar-trap; and many other agreeable things, end in the complete defeatof the wicked and the marriage of the good to the tune of _four_couples, the thing being thus done to the last in Ducange's usualhandsome manner.[75] I do not know whether _Ludovica_ wasmelodramatised. _Le Jesuite_ of the same year by Ducange and the greatPixerecourt looks rather like it; and so does _Il y a Seize Ans_ of ayear later, which he seems to have written alo
ne. But if it was not itought to have been. The half-moustache-spider-kissing-screaming scene,and the brilliant youth retreating through the laughing crowd with theother half of his decoration, might have reconciled even me to thetheatre.

  [Sidenote: Auguste Ricard--_L'Ouvreuse de Loges_.]

  A short account of the last novel (except _Le Solitaire_) mentionedabove must stand for sample, not merely of the dozen other works of itsauthor, Auguste Ricard, but for many more advertised on the fly-leavesof this time, and long since made "alms for oblivion." Their titles, _LePortier_, _La Grisette_, _Le Marchand de Coco_, by Ricard himself, onone side, _L'Homme des Ruines_, _Bleack-_ (sic) _Beard_, _La ChambreRouge_ (by a certain Dinocourt) on the other, almost tell their wholestory--the story of a range (to use English terms once more) between thecheap followers of Anne Radcliffe and G. W. M. Reynolds. _L'Ouvreuse deLoges_, through which I have conscientiously worked, inclines to thelatter kind, being anti-monarchic, anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic(though it admits that these aristocrats are terrible fellows forbehaving in a way which the _roturier_ cannot imitate, however hard hetries), and anti-things-in-general. Its title-heroine is a bad oldwoman, who "keeps the door" in the Elizabethan sense as well astheatrically. Its real hero is a _ci-devant_ duke; malversator under theRepublic; supposed but not real victim of the Septembriseurs; atheist;winner and loser of several fortunes; and at last _particulier_ of Parisunder a feigned name, with an apartment full of _bric-a-brac_, a drawerfull of little packets of money, after the expenditure of the last ofwhich he proposes to blow his brains out; tall man of stature and of hishands, etc., etc. The book is in a way one of purpose, inculcating thedanger of wooing opera-girls, and instancing it with three very weakyoung men, another duke, a rich young _parvenu_, and a musician. Ofthese the first and the last are, with their wives, rather arbitrarilysaved from the clutches into which they have fallen, by the mysterious"M. Luc," while the other comes to a very bad end. The novel, which isin five volumes, is, like most of those mentioned in this section, notof the kind that one would read by preference. But it is a very fairspecimen of the "below stairs" romance which sometimes prepares the wayfor others, fit to take their places above stairs. And so it has itsplace here.[76]

  [Sidenote: The importance of these minors not inconsiderable.]

  It has been pointed out more than once that though neglect of such booksas these may be perfectly natural and probable in the average reader,such neglect--and still more any contempt of them--is, though it may notbe unnatural, utterly unscholarly and uncritical from the point of viewof history. Their authors themselves learnt something from their ownmistaken experiments, and their successors learnt a good deal more.They found that "sculduddery" was not a necessary attraction. Ducraydoes not avail himself of it, and Ducange seems to have left it off.They did not give up, but they came less and less to depend upon,extravagant incident, violent peripeteias, cheap supernaturalities, etc.But the most important thing about them perhaps is the evidence theygive of learning what has been called their "business." Already, to agreat extent if not wholly, that earliest obsession and preoccupation ofthe novelist--the idle anxiety to answer the question, "How do you knowall these things?"--has begun to disappear. This is rather less the casewith another foolish fancy--the belief that it is necessary to accountnot merely for what we call the consequents, but for the antecedents ofall the characters (at least those of any importance) that youintroduce. There can be no doubt that this was one of the objects, as itwas part of the original cause, of the mistaken _Histoire_ system, whichmade you, when or soon after you introduced a personage, "tell us allabout it," as the children say, in a separate inset tale. You did notnow do this, but you made, as in the capital instance of Victor Ducange,huge diversions, retrospects, episodes, in the body of the story itself.This method, being much less skippable than the inset by those who didnot want it, was not likely to continue, and so applied the cure to itsown ill. And yet further, as novels multiplied, the supposed necessityof very great length tended to disappear. The seven or eight volumes ofthe eighteenth century, which had replaced the twelves and twenties ofthe seventeenth, shrank to six (_Ludovica_), five (_L'Artiste et LeSoldat_ and _l'Ouvreuse de Loges_), four (_Le Petit Carillonneur_), andthen three or two, though later the historical kind swelled again, andthe almost invariable single volume did not establish itself till themiddle of the century. As a consequence again of this, the enormousdelay over single situations tended, though very slowly, to disappear.It is one of the merits of Pigault-Lebrun that he is not a great sinnerin verbosity and prolixity: his contemporary minors of this volume arefar more peccant in this kind.

  [Sidenote: The Vicomte d'Arlincourt--_Le Solitaire_.]

  _Le Solitaire_ is a book which I have been "going to read" for somefifty years, but by some accident did not till the present occasion. Iknew it generally as one of the vedettes of Romanticism, and asextremely popular in its own day: also as having been, with its author'sother work in poem and play and prose fiction, the subject of someridicule. But till I read it, and some things about it, I never knew howwell it deserved that ridicule and yet how very popular it was, and howreally important is its position in the history of the Romanticmovement, and so of the French novel and French literature generally. Itwas published at the end of January 1821, and at the end of November aseventh edition appeared, with an elaborate _Io Triumphe!_ from thepublisher. Not only had there been those seven editions (which, it mustbe remembered in fairness, represent at least seventy at the other endof the century[77]), but it had been translated into four foreignlanguages; _fourteen_ dramas had been based on it, some half of whichhad been at least conditionally accepted for performance; painters ofdistinction were at work on subjects from it; it had reached the stagesof Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a verybeautiful composition"), while French approval had been practicallyunanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and--crowning, butperhaps rather ominous honour--somebody had actually published aburlesque imitation.

  I have seldom read greater rubbish than _Le Solitaire_. It is ahistorical-romantic story (the idolatrous preface refers both to Scottand to Byron), and bears also strong, if sometimes distinctlyunfortunate, resemblances to Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, andChateaubriand. The scene is that of Charles the Bold's defeat at Morat:and the "Solitary" is Charles himself--the identification of his bodyafter the decisive overthrow at Nancy _was_ a little doubtful--who hashidden there partly to expiate, by good deeds, his crime of massacringthe monks of the adjoining Abbey of Underlach, and partly to availhimself of a local tradition as to a _Fantome Sanglant_, who haunts theneighbourhood, and can be conveniently played by the aid of a crimsonmantle. The slaughter of the monks, however, is not the only event orcircumstance which links Underlach to the crimes of Charles, for it isnow inhabited by a Baron d'Herstall (whose daughter, seduced by theDuke, has died early) and his niece, Elodie de Saint-Maur, whose father,a former favourite of the Burgundian, that prince has killed in one ofhis fits of rage. Throw in a local priest, Anselm, and you have what maybe called the chief characters; but a good Count Ecbert de Norindall, awicked Prince of Palzo, and divers others figure. Everybody, includingthe mysterious Bleeding-Phantom-Solitary-Duke himself, falls in lovewith Elodie,[78] and she is literally "carried off" (that is to say,shouldered) several times, once by the alarming person in the crimsonshroud, but always rescued, till it is time for her to die and befollowed by him. There are endless "alarums and excursions"; some of the_not_ explained supernatural; woods, caves, ruins, undergroundpassages--entirely at discretion. Catherine Morland would have beenperfectly happy with it.

  It is not, however, because it contains these things that it has beencalled "rubbish." A book might contain them all--Mrs. Radcliffe's owndo, with the aggravation of the explained wonders--and not be that. Itis because of the extraordinary silliness of the style and sentiments. Ishould imagine that M. d'Arlincourt was trying to write like his brotherviscount, the author of _Les Martyrs_, and a pretty mess he has made
ofit. "Le char de la nuit roulait silencieux sur les plaines du ciel" (p.3). "L'entree du jour venait de s'elancer radieuse du palais del'Aurore." "L'amante de l'Erebe et la mere des Songes[79] avait achevela moitie de sa course tenebreuse," etc., etc. The historic present isconstantly battling with the more ordinary tenses--the very samesentence sometimes contains both. And this half-blown bladder of a styleconveys sentiments as feebly pompous as itself. The actual story, thoughno great thing, is, if you could strip it of its froth and fustian, notso very bad: as told it is deplorable.

  At the same time its mere existence--much more the fury of acceptancewhich for the moment greeted it--shows what that moment wanted. Itwanted Romance, and in default of better it took _Le Solitaire_.

  * * * * *

  An occasional contrast of an almost violent kind may be permitted in awork requiring something more than merely catalogue-composition. It canhardly be found more appropriately than by concluding this chapter,which began with the account of Paul de Kock, by one of Charles Nodier.

  [Sidenote: Nodier.]

  To the student and lover of literature there is scarcely a moreinteresting figure in French literary history, though there are manygreater. Except a few scraps (which, by one of the odd ways of thebook-world, actually do not appear in some editions of his _OeuvresChoisies_), he did nothing which had the quality of positive greatnessin it. But he was a considerable influence: and even more of a "sign."Younger than Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, but far older than anyof the men of 1830 proper, he may be said in a way to have, in hissingle person, played in France that part of schoolmaster toRomanticism, which had been distributed over two generations and manypersonalities in England; and which Germany, after a fashion, didwithout, at the cost of a few undisciplined and quickly overbloomedmaster-years. Although he was born in 1780, nine years before theRevolution itself, he underwent German and English influences early,"took" Wertherism, Terrorism,[80] and other maladies of that _fin desiecle_ with the utmost facility, and produced divers ultra-Romanticthings long before 1830 itself. But he had any number of literary andother avocations or distractions. He was a kind of entomologist andbotanist, a kind of philologist (one is a little astonished to find thatrather curious and very charlatanish person and parson Sir HerbertCroft, whose secretary Nodier was for a time, dignified in French booksby the name of "_philologue_ Anglais"), a good deal more than a kind ofbibliographer (he spent the last twenty years of his life as Librarianof the Arsenal), and an enthusiastic and stimulating, though not exactlytrustworthy, critic. But he concerns us here, of course, for his prosefiction, which, if not very bulky, is numerous in its individualexamples, and is animated in the best of them by a spirit almost new inFrench and, though often not sufficiently caught and concentrated,present to almost the highest degrees in at least three examples--thelast part of _La Fee aux Miettes_, _La Legende de Soeur Beatrix_, and,above all, _Ines de las Sierras_.

  For those who delight in literary filiations and genealogies, the kindof story in which Nodier excelled (and in which, though some of his ownwere written after 1830, he may truly be considered as "schoolmaster" toMerimee and Gautier and Gerard de Nerval and all their fellows), may be,without violence or exaggeration, said to be a new form of the Frenchfairy-tale, divested of common form, and readjusted with the help of theGerman _Maerchen_ and fantasy-pieces. _Le Diable Amoureux_ had, no doubt,set the fashion of this kind earlier; but that story, charming as it is,is still scarcely "Romantic." Nodier is so wholly; and it is fair toremember that Hoffmann himself was rather a contemporary of his, andsubject to the same influences, than a predecessor.[81]

  [Sidenote: His short stories.]

  The best collection of Nodier's short tales contains nine pieces:_Trilby_, _Le Songe d'Or_, _Baptiste Montauban_, _La Fee aux Miettes_,_La Combe de l'Homme mort_, _Ines de las Sierras_, _Smarra_, _LaNeuvaine de la Chandeleur_, and _La Legende de Soeur Beatrix_. Ofthese I believe _Trilby_, _La Fee aux Miettes_, and _Smarra_ have beenthe greatest favourites, and were pretty certainly the most influentialin France. My own special delights are _Le Songe d'Or_, _Ines de lasSierras_, and _Soeur Beatrix_, with part of the _Fee_. But none iswithout its attractions, and the Preface to the _Fee aux Miettes_, whichis almost a separate piece, has something of the quintessential in thatcurious quality which Nodier possesses almost alone in French or withGerard de Nerval and Louis Bertrand only. English readers may "perceivea good deal of [Charles] Lamb in it," with touches of Sterne and DeQuincey and Poe.

  [Sidenote: _Trilby._]

  It is much to be feared that more people in England nowadays associatethe name of "Trilby" with the late Mr. Du Maurier than with Nodier, andthat more still associate it with the notion of a hat than with eitherof the men of genius who used it in literature.

  So mighty Byron, dead and turned to clay, Gave name to collars for full many a day; And Ramillies, grave of Gallic boasts so big, Found most perpetuation in a wig.[82]

  The original story united divers attractions for its first readers in1822, combining the older fashion of Ossian with the newer one of Scott,infusing the supernatural, which was one great bait of the comingRomanticism, and steeping the whole cake in the tears of the newerrather than the older "Sensibility." "Trilby, le Lutin d'Argail"[83](Nodier himself explains that he alters the spelling here with purephonetic intent, so as to keep the pronunciation for French eyes _and_ears[84]), is a spirit who haunts the cabin of the fisherman Dougal tomake a sort of sylph-like love to his wife Jeannie. He means and does noharm, but he is naturally a nuisance to the husband, on whom he playstricks to keep him away from home, and at length rather frightens thewife. They procure, from a neighbouring monastery, a famous exorcistmonk, who, though he cannot directly punish Trilby, lays on him sentenceof exclusion from the home of the pair, unless one of them invites him,under penalty of imprisonment for a thousand years. How the story turnsto Jeannie's death and Trilby's duress can be easily imagined, and maybe read with pleasure. I confess that to me it seems pretty, but just alittle mawkish.[85] Perhaps I am a brute.

  [Sidenote: _Le Songe d'Or._]

  _Le Songe d'Or_, on the other hand, though in a way tragic, and capableof being allegorised almost _ad infinitum_ in its sense of some of theriddles of the painful earth, is not in the least sentimental, and istold, till just upon the end, with a certain tender irony. The authorcalled it "Fable Levantine," and the venerable Lo[c]kman is introducedin it. But I have read it several times without caring (perhaps this wasreprehensible) to ascertain whether it is in the recognised Lokman bunchor not. All I know is that here Nodier and not Lokman has told it, andthat the result is delightful. First a beautiful "kardouon," theprettiest of lizards, all azure and ruby and gold, finds in the desert aheap of gold-pieces. He breaks his teeth on them, but is sure that suchnice-looking things must be good to eat--probably slices of a root whichsome careless person has left too long in the sun--and that, if properlytreated, they will make a famous winter provision. So he conveys themwith much care and exertion, one by one, to a soft bed of fresh moss,just the thing to catch the dew, under the shadow of a fine old tree.And, being naturally tired, he goes to sleep beside them. And this isthe history of the kardouon.

  Now there was in that neighbourhood a poor woodcutter namedXailoun--deformed, and not much more than half-witted, but amiable--whohad taken a great fancy to the kardouon as being a beautiful beast, andlikely to make a charming friend. But the kardouon, after the manner ofshy lizards, had by no means reciprocated this affection, and tookshelter behind stones and tree-stumps when advances were made to him. Sothat the children, and even his own family, including his mother, usedto jeer at Xailoun and tell him to go to his friend. On this particularoccasion, the day after the kardouon's _trouvaille_, Xailoun actuallyfound the usually wide-awake animal sleeping. And as the place, with themoss and the great tree-shadow and a running stream close by, was veryattractive, Xailoun lay down by the lizard to wait till he should wake.But as he himself might go to sleep, and t
he animal, accustomed to thesun, might get a chill in the shade, Xailoun put his own coat over him.And he too slept, after thinking how nice the kardouon's friendshipwould be when they _both_ woke. And this is the history of Xailoun.

  Next day again there came a fakir named Abhoc, who was on a pretendedpilgrimage, but really on the look-out for what he might get. He saw awindfall at once, was sure that neither of its sleeping guardians couldkeep it from him, and very piously thanked the Almighty for rewardinghis past devotion and self-sacrifice by opening a merry and splendidlife to him. But as, with such custodians, the treasure could be"lifted" without the slightest difficulty, he too lay down by it, andwent to sleep, dreaming of Schiraz wine in golden cups and a harempeopled with mortal houris. And this is the history of the fakir Abhoc.

  A day and a night passed, and the morrow came. Again there passed a wisedoctor of laws, Abhac by name, who was editing a text to which a hundredand thirty-two different interpretations had been given by Eastern Cokesand Littletons. He had just hit upon the hundred and thirty-third--ofcourse the true one--when the sight described already struck him and putthe discovery quite out of his head, to be lost for ever. As became ajurist, he was rather a more practical person than the woodcutter or thefakir, if not than the lizard. His human predecessors were, evidently,thieves, and must be brought to justice, but it would be well to secure"pieces of conviction." So he began to wrap up the coins in his turbanand carry them away. But there were so many, and it was so heavy, thathe grew very weary. So he too laid him down and slept. And this is thehistory of the doctor Abhac.

  But on the fifth day there appeared a much more formidable person thanthe others, and also a much more criminous. This was the "King of theDesert"--bandit and blackmailer of caravans. Being apparently a banditof letters, he reflected that, though lizards, being, after all,miniature dragons, were immemorial guardians of treasure, they could nothave any right in it, but were most inconveniently likely to wake if anynoise were made. The others were three to one--too heavy odds bydaylight. But if he sat down by them till night came he could stab themone by one while they were asleep, and perhaps breakfast on thekardouon--said to be quite good meat. And he went to sleep himself. Andthis is the history of the King of the Desert.

  But next day again the venerable Lokman passed by, and _he_ saw that thetree was a upas tree and the sleepers were dead. And he understood itall, and he passed his hand through his beard and fell on his face, andgave glory to God. And then he buried the three covetous ones inseparate graves under the upas itself. But he put Xailoun in a saferplace, that his friends might come and do right to him; and he buriedthe kardouon apart on a little slope facing the sun, such as lizardslove, and near Xailoun. And, lastly, having stroked his beard again, heburied the treasure too. But he was very old: and he was very weary whenhe had finished this, and God took him.

  And on the seventh day there came an angel and promised XailounParadise, and made a mark on his tomb with a feather from his own wing.And he kissed the forehead of Lokman and made him rise from the dead,and took him to the seventh heaven itself. And this is the history ofthe angel. It all happened ages ago, and though the name of Lokman haslived always through them, so has the shadow of the upas tree.

  And this is the history of the world.

  Only a child's goody-goody tale? Possibly. But for my part I know nobetter philosophy and, at least as Nodier told it, not much betterliterature.

  [Sidenote: Minors.]

  _Baptiste Montauban_ and _La Combe de l'Homme mort_ are, though scarcelyshorter than _Le Songe d'Or_, slighter. The first is a pathetic but notquite consummate story of "love and madness" in a much better sense thanthat in which Nodier's eccentric employer, Sir Herbert Croft, used thewords as his title for the history of Parson Hackman and Miss Ray.[86]The second ("combe," the omission of which from the official Frenchdictionaries Nodier characteristically denounces, is our own "combe"--adeep valley; from, I suppose, the Celtic Cwm; and pronounced byDevonshire folk in a manner which no other Englishman, born east of theline between the mouths of the Parret and the Axe, can master) is agood but not supreme _diablerie_ of a not uncommon kind. _La Neuvaine dela Chandeleur_ is longer, and from some points of view the most patheticof all. A young man, hearing some girls talk of a much-elaboratedceremony like those of Hallowe'en in Scotland and of St. Agnes' Eve inKeats, by which (in this case) _both_ sexes can see their fated lovers,tries it, and discerns, in dream or vision, his ideal as well as hisfate. She turns out to be an actual girl whom he has never seen, butwhom both his father and her father--old friends--earnestly desire thathe should marry. He travels to her home, is enthusiastically greeted,and finds her even more bewitching than her wraith or whatever it is tobe called. But she is evidently in bad health, and dies the same nightof aneurism. Not guested in the house, but trysted in the morning, hegoes there, and seeing preparations in the street for a funeral, asks ofsome one, being only half alarmed, "_Qui est mort?_" The answer is,"Mademoiselle Cecile Savernier."

  Had these words terminated the story it would have been nearly perfect.Two more pages of the luckless lover's progress to resignation fromdespair and projected suicide seem to me to blunt the poignancy.

  [Sidenote: _La Fee aux Miettes._]

  In fact, acknowledging most humbly that I could not write even the worstand shortest of Nodier's stories, I am bound to say that I think he wasnot to be trusted with a long one. _La Fee aux Miettes_ is at once anawful and a delightful example. The story of the mad shipwright Michel,who fell in love with the old dwarf beggar--so unlike her of BednalGreen or King Cophetua's love--at the church door of Avranches; whofollowed her to Greenock and got inextricably mixed between her and theQueen of Sheba; who for some time passed his nights in making love toBelkis and his days in attending to the wisdom of the Fairy of theCrumbs (she always brought him his breakfast after the Sabaean Nights);who at last identified the two in one final rapture, after seeking for aSinging Mandrake; and who spent the rest (if not, indeed, the whole) ofhis days in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum;--is at times so ineffablycharming that one is almost afraid oneself to repeat the refrain--

  C'est moi, c'est moi, c'est moi! Je suis la Mandragore! La fille des beaux jours qui s'eveille a l'aurore-- Et qui chante pour toi!

  though, after all, every one whose life has been worth living haslistened for the song all that life--and has heard it sometimes.

  To find any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous.But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue ofthe narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as atomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kindalien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier hasseasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? Whatwould a Frenchman say if an English story-teller christened some girl ofGaul "Sottise Librefille"? "Sir Jap Muzzleburn," the Bailiff of the Isleof Man, and his black poodle-equerry, Master Blatt, amuse me but little;and Master Finewood, the shipbuilder,--whose rejected six sons-in-law,lairds of high estate, run away with his thirty thousand guineas, andare checkmated by six sturdy shipwrights,--less. I have no doubt it ismy fault, my very great fault, but I wish they would _go_, and leave mewith Michel and La Fee, or rather allow me to _be_ Michel _with_ La Fee.

  [Sidenote: _Smarra_ and _Soeur Beatrix_.]

  _Smarra_--which made a great impression on its contemporaries and had astrong influence on the Romantic movement generally--is a fantasia ofnightmare based on the beginning of _The Golden Ass_, with, again, asort of prologue and epilogue of modern love. It is undoubtedly a finepiece of work of its kind and beautifully written. But in itself itseems to me a little too much of a _tour de force_, and its kind alittle rococo. Again, _mea maxima culpa_ perhaps. On the other hand,_Soeur Beatrix_ is a most charmingly told version of a verywide-spread story--that of Our Lady taking the place of an erring sisterduring her sojourn in the world, and restoring her to it without anyscandal when she returns repentant and mis
erable after years of absence.It could not be better done.

  [Sidenote: _Ines de las Sierras._]

  But the jewel of the book, and of Nodier's work, to me, is _Ines de lasSierras_--at least its first and larger part; for Nodier, in one ofthose exasperatingly uncritical whims of his which have been noticed,and which probably prevented him from ever writing a really good novelof length, has attached an otiose explanation _a la_ Mrs. Radcliffe,which, if it may please the weakest kind of weak brethren, may almostdisgust another, and as to which I myself exercise the critic's_cadi_-rights by simply ignoring and banishing what I think superfluous.As for what remains, once more, it could not be done better.

  Three French officers, at the moment of disturbance of the Frenchgarrisons in the north of Spain, owing to Napoleon's Russian disasters(perhaps also to more local events, which it was not necessary forNodier to mention), are sent on remount duty from Gerona to Barcelona,where there is a great horse-fair on. They are delayed by bad weatherand other accidents, and are obliged to stop half-way after nightfall.But the halting-place is choke-full of other travellers on their way tothe same fair, and neither at inn nor in private house is there any roomwhatever, though there is no lack of "provant." Everybody tells themthat they can only put up at "the castle of Ghismondo." Taking this fora Spanish folkword, they get rather angry. But, finding that there _is_a place of the name close by in the hills--ruinous, haunted, butactual--they take plenty of food, wine, and torches, etc., and persuade,with no little difficulty, their _arriero_ and even their companion andthe real hirer of the vehicle (a theatrical manager, who has allowedthem to accompany him, when they could get no other) to dare the nightadventure. On the way the _arriero_ tells them the legend, how,centuries before, Ghismondo de las Sierras, ruined by debauchery,established himself in this his last possession, with one squire, onepage (both of the worst characters), his beautiful niece Ines, whom hehas seduced, and a few desperate followers, who help him to live bybrigandage. Every night the three chiefs drank themselves senseless, andwere regularly dragged to bed by their men. But one Christmas Eve atmidnight, Ines, struck with remorse, entered the hall of orgies, andimplored them to repent, actually kneeling before Ghismondo, and placingher hand on his heart. To which the ruffian replied by stabbing her, andleaving her for the men-at-arms to find, a corpse, among the drunken butlive bodies. For a whole twelvemonth the three see, in dreams, theirvictim come and lay a burning hand on their hearts; and at its end, onthe same day and at the same hour, the dream comes true--the phantomappears, speaks _once_, "Here am I!" sits with them, eats and drinks,even sings and dances, but finally lays the flaming hand of the dream oneach heart; and they die in torture--the men-at-arms entering as usual,only to find _four_ corpses. (Now it is actually Christmas Eve--theSpanish _Noche Buena_--at "_temp._ of tale.")

  So far the story, though admirably told, in a fashion which mere summarycannot convey, is, it may be said, not more than "as per usual." Not sowhat follows.

  The four travellers--the unnamed captain who tells the story; his twolieutenants, Boutraix, a bluff Voltairian, with an immense capacity forfood and drink, and Sergy, a young and romantic Celadon, _plus_ theactor-manager Bascara, who is orthodox--with the _arriero_, arrive atlast at the castle, which is Udolphish enough, and with some difficultyreach, over broken staircases and through ruined corridors, the greatbanqueting-hall.[87]

  Here--for it is less ruinous that the rest of the building and actuallycontains furniture and mouldering pictures--they make themselvestolerably comfortable with their torches, a huge fire made up frombroken stairs and panels, abundance of provisions, and two dozen ofwine, less a supply for the _arriero_, who prudently remains in thestables, alleging that the demons that haunt those places are fairlyfamiliar to him and not very mischievous. As the baggage has got verywet during the day, the dresses and properties of Bascara's company aretaken out and put to air. Well filled with food and drink, thefree-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves fromthese with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page ofthe legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game,and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnightcomes, and they cry, "Where is Ines de las Sierras?" lifting theirglasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of thegreat hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure ina white shroud, which seats itself in the vacant place assigned bytradition to Ines herself. She is extraordinarily beautiful, and is,under the white covering, dressed in a fashion resembling the moulderingportrait which they have seen in the gallery. She speaks too, halfrallying them, as if surprised at _their_ surprise; she calls herselfInes de las Sierras; she throws on the table a bracelet with the familyarms, which they have also seen dimly emblazoned or sculptured about thecastle; she eats; and, as a final piece of conviction, she tears herdress open and shows the scar on her breast. Then she drinks response tothe toast they had in mockery proposed; she accepts graciously theadvances of the amorous Sergy; she sings divinely, and she dances moredivinely still. The whole scene is described supremely well, but thedescription of the dance is one of the very earliest and very finestpieces of Romantic French prose. One may try, however rashly, totranslate it:

  (_She has found a set of castanets in her girdle._)

  She rose and made a beginning by grave and measured steps, displaying, with a mixture of grace and majesty, the perfection of her figure and the nobility of her attitudes. As she shifted her position and put herself in new aspects, our admiration turned to amazement, as though another and another beautiful woman had come within our view, so constantly did she surpass herself in the inexhaustible variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors; then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the far-off darkness of the huge hall, and the clash of the castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, and diminished ever till, as we ceased to see, so we ceased to hear her. But again it came back from the distance, increasing always by degrees, till it burst out full as she reappeared in a flood of light at the spot where we least expected her. And then she came so near that she touched us with her dress, clashing the castanets with a maddening volubility, till they weakened once more and twittered like cicalas, while now and then across their monotonous racket she uttered shrill yet tender cries which pierced to our own souls. Afterwards she retired once more, but plunged herself only half in the darkness, appearing and disappearing by turns, now flying from our gaze and now desiring to be seen,[88] while later still you neither saw nor heard her save for a far-off plaintive note like the sigh of a dying girl. And we remained aghast, throbbing with admiration and fear, longing for the moment when her veil, fluttering with the dance-movement, should be lighted up by the torches, when her voice should warn us of her return, with a joyful cry, to which we answered involuntarily, because it made us vibrate with a crowd of secret harmonies. Then she came back; she spun round like a flower stripped from its stalk by the wind; she sprang from the ground as if it rested only with her to quit earth for ever; she dropped again as if it was only her will which kept her from touching it at all; she did not bound from the floor--you would have thought that she shot from it--that some mysterious law of her destiny forbade her to touch it, save in order to fly from it. And her head, bent with an expression of caressing impatience, and her arms, gracefully opened, as though in appealing prayer, seemed to implore us to save her.

  The captain himself is on the point of yielding to the temptation, butis anticipated by Sergy, whose embrace she returns, but sinks into achair, and then, seeming to forget the presence of the othersaltogether, invites him to follow her through
tortuous and ruinedpassages (which she describes) to a sepulchre, which she inhabits, withowls for her only live companions. Then she rises, picks up hershroud-like mantle, and vanishes in the darkness with a weird laugh andthe famous words, "_Qui m'aime me suive_."

  The other three have the utmost difficulty in preventing Sergy (by mainforce at first) from obeying. And the captain tries rationalism,suggesting first that the pretended Ines is a bait for some gang ofassassins or at least brigands, then that the whole thing is a trick ofBascara's to "produce" a new cantatrice. But Boutraix, who has beenentirely converted from his Voltairianism by the shock, sets aside thefirst idea like a soldier, and Bascara rebuts the second like a sensibleman. Brigands certainly would give no such warning of their presence,and a wise manager does not expose his prima donna's throat tocohabitation in ruins with skeletons and owls. They finally agree onsilence, and shortly afterwards the three officers leave Spain. Sergy iskilled at Lutzen, murmuring the name of Ines. Boutraix, who has neverrelapsed, takes the cowl, and the captain retires after the war to hisown small estate, where he means to stay. He ends by saying _Voilatout_.

  Alas! it is not all, and it is not the end. Some rather idle talk withthe auditors follows, and then there is the above-mentioned Radcliffianexplanation, telling how Ines was a real Las Sierras of a Mexicanbranch, who had actually made her debut as an actress, had been, as wasat first thought, murdered by a worthless lover, but recovered. Herwits, however, were gone, and having escaped from the kind restraintunder which she was put, she had wandered to the castle of herancestors, afterwards completely recovering her senses and returning tothe profession in the company of Bascara himself.

  Now I think that, if I took the trouble to do so, I could point outimprobabilities in this second story sufficient to damn it on its ownshowing.[89] But, as has been said already, I prefer to leave it alone.I never admired George Vavasour in Trollope's _Can You Forgive Her?_ ButI own that I agree with him heartily in his opinion that "making aconjurer explain his tricks" is despicably poor fun.

  Still, the story, which ends at "Voila tout" and which for me does soend "for good and all," is simply magnificent. I have put it elsewherewith _Wandering Willie's Tale_, which it more specially resembles in theway in which the ordinary turns into the extraordinary. It falls shortof Scott in vividness, character, manners, and impressiveness, butsurpasses him in beauty[90] of style and imagery. In particular, Nodierhas here, in a manner which I hardly remember elsewhere, achieved theblending of two kinds of "terror"--the ordinary kind which, as it istrivially called, "frightens" one, and the other[91] terror whichaccompanies the intenser pleasures of sight and sound and feeling, andheightens them by force of contrast. The scene of Ines' actualappearance would have been the easiest thing in the world to spoil, andtherefore was the most difficult thing in the world to do right. But itis absolutely right. In particular, the way in which her conduct in atonce admitting Sergy's attentions, and finally inviting him to "follow,"is guarded from the very slightest suggestion of the professional"comingness" of a common courtesan, and made the spontaneous action of athing divine or diabolic, is really wonderful.

  At the same time, the adverse criticism made here, with that on _La Feeaux Miettes_ and a few other foregoing remarks, will probably preparethe reader for the repeated and final judgment that Nodier was veryunlikely to produce a good long story. And, though I have not read_quite_ all that he wrote, I certainly think that he never did.

  [Sidenote: Nodier's special quality.]

  In adding new and important masterpieces to the glittering chain ofshort cameo-like narratives which form the peculiar glory of Frenchliterature, he did greatly. And his performance and example were greaterstill in respect of the _quality_ which he infused into those bestpieces of his work which have been examined here. It is hardly too muchto say that this quality had been almost dormant--a sleeping beautyamong the lively bevies of that literature's graces--ever since theMiddle Ages, with some touches of waking--hardly more than motions in adream--at the Renaissance. The comic Phantasy had been wakeful andactive enough; the graver and more serious tragic Imagination had been,though with some limitations, busy at times. But this third sister--OurLady of Dreams, one might call her in imitation of a famous fancy--hadnot shown herself much in French merriment or in French sadness: thelight of common day there had been too much for her. Yet in CharlesNodier she found the magician who could wake her from sleep: and shetold him what she had thought while sleeping.[92]

  FOOTNOTES:

  [37] Vol. I. pp. 458, 472, _notes_.

  [38] Vol. I. p. 161.

  [39] When he published _Le Cocu_, it was set about that a pudibund ladyhad asked her book-seller for "Le Dernier de M. Paul de Kock." And thiscircumlocution became for a time popular, as a new name for the poorcreature on the ornaments of whose head our Elizabethans joked sountiringly.

  [40] A short essay, or at least a "middle" article, might be written onthis way of regarding a prophet in his own country, coupling Berangerwith Paul de Kock. Of course the former is by much a _major_ prophet inverse than Paul is in prose. But the attitude of the superior Frenchperson to both is, in different degrees, the same. (Thackeray in thearticle referred to below, p. 62 _note_, while declaring Paul to be_the_ French writer whose works are best known in England, says that hiseducated countrymen think him _pitoyable_.--_Works_, Oxford edition,vol. ii p. 533.)

  [41] A gibe at the Vicomte d'Arlincourt's very popular novel, to benoticed below. I have not, I confess, identified the passage: but it maybe in one of the plays.

  [42] It would _not_ be fair to compare the two as makers of literature.In that respect Theodore Hook is Paul's Plutarchian parallel, though hehas more literature and less life.

  [43] Charity, outrunning knowledge, may plead "Irony perhaps?"Unfortunately there is no chance of it.

  [44] I really do not know who was (see a little below). Parny in hisabsurd _Goddam!_ (1804) has something of it.

  [45] And _he_ knew something of it through Addison.

  [46] The straight hair is particularly curious, for, as everybody whoknows portraits of the early nineteenth century at all is aware,Englishmen of the time preferred brushed back and rather "tousled"locks. In Maclise's famous "Fraserians" there is hardly astraight-combed head among all the twenty or thirty. At the same time itis fair to say that our own book-illustrators and caricaturists, forsome strange reason, did a good deal to authorise the libels. Cruikshankwas no doubt a wonderful draughtsman, but I never saw (and I thank Godfor it) anything like many, if not most, of his faces. "Phiz" andCattermole in (for example) their illustrations to _The Old CuriosityShop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ sometimes out-Cruikshank Cruikshank in thisrespect.

  [47] Paul's ideas of money are still very modest. An income of 6000francs (L240) represents ease if not affluence; with double the amountyou can "aspire to a duchess," and even the dispendious Irish-FrenchViscount Edward de Sommerston in _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_ (_v. inf._)starts on his career with scarcely more than three thousand a year.

  [48] Paul's scholarship was very rudimentary, as is shown in not a fewscraps of ungrammatical Latin: he never, I think, ventures on Greek. Butwhether he was the first to _estropier_ the not ugly form "_Cleodora_,"I know not. Perhaps he muddled it with "Clotilde."

  [49] This cult of the widow might form the subject of a notuninteresting excursus if we were not confining ourselves to theliterary sides of our matter. It has been noticed before (Vol. I. p.368), and forms one of the most curious differences between the twocountries. For, putting Mr. Weller out of the question, I have known farfrom sentimental critics who thought Trollope's best book by no meansimproved by the previous experience of Eleanor Bold. Cherolatry inFrance, however, is not really old: it hardly appears before theeighteenth century. It may be partly due to a more or less consciousidea that perhaps the lady may have got over the obligatory adultery atthe expense of her "dear first" and may not think it necessary torepeat. A sort of "measles over."

  [50] He also improves h
is neglected education in a manner notunsuggestive of Prince Giglio. In fact, I fancy there is a good deal ofhalf-latent parody of Paul in Thackeray.

  [51] There might have been fifteen or fifty, for the book is more asequence of scenes than a schematic composition: for which reason theabove account of it may seem somewhat _decousu_.

  [52] I think I have commented elsewhere on the difficulty of villains.It was agreeable to find confirmation, when this book was already in theprinter's hands, given at an exemption tribunal by a theatrical manager.For six weeks, he said, he had advertised and done everything possibleto supply the place of a good villain, with no success. And your badstage villain _may_ be comic: while your bad novel villain is only abore.

  [53] Frederique, Madame Dauberny (who has, without legal sanction,relieved herself of a loathsome creature whom she has married, and livesa free though not at all immoral life), was not very easy to do, and isvery well done.

  [54] This, which is short and thoroughly lively, is, I imagine, thelatest of Paul's good books. It is indeed so late that instead of the_jupons_, striped and black and white, of which Georgette has madeirreproachable but profitable use, she appears at the _denouement_ in acrinoline!

  [55] The most interesting thing in it is a longish account by Jacques ofhis association with a travelling quack and fortune-teller, which atonce reminds one of _Japhet in Search of a Father_. The resemblances andthe differences are almost equally characteristic.

  [56] Of course I am not comparing him with Paul on any other point.

  [57] Except in regard to the historical and other matters noticed above,hardly at all.

  [58] For a picture of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatestmaster of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found incompany!) who ever lived, see that _Britannia_ article of Thackeray'sbefore referred to--an article, for a long time, unreprinted, andtherefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown.This and its companion articles from the _Britannia_ and the _Corsair_,all of 1840-41, but summarising ten or twelve years' knowledge of Paris,form, with the same author's _Paris Sketch Book_ (but as representing amore mature state of his genius), the best commentary on Paul de Kock.They may be found together in the third volume of the Oxford Thackerayedited by the present writer.

  [59] Unless they start from the position that an English writer on theFrench novel is bound to follow--or at least to pay express attentionto--French criticism of it. This position I respectfully but unalterablydecline to accept. A critical tub that has no bottom of its own is thevery worst Danaid's vessel in all the household gear of literature.

  [60] The scene and society are German, but the author knows the name tohave been originally English.

  [61] Such, perhaps, as Gibbon himself may have used while he "sighed asa lover" and before he "obeyed as a son." It should perhaps be said thatMme. de Montolieu produced many other books, mostly translations--amongthe latter a French version of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.

  [62] In dealing with "Sensibility" earlier, it was pointed out howextensively things were dealt with by _letter_. In such cases as thesethe fashion came in rather usefully.

  [63] The treatment of the authors here mentioned, _infra_, will, I hope,show that the introduction of their names is not merely "promiscuous."

  [64] I am quite prepared to be told that this was somebody else ornobody at all. "Moi, je dis Madame de Genlis."

  [65] P. 436.

  [66] The kind endeavours of the Librarian of the London Library toobtain some in Paris itself were fruitless, but the old saying aboutneglecting things at your own door came true. My friend Mr. Kiplingurged me to try Mr. George Gregory of Bath, and Mr. Gregory procured mealmost all the books I am noticing in this division.

  [67] The British Museum (see Preface) being inaccessible to me.

  [68] Readers will doubtless remember that the too wild career of thiskind of vehicle, charioteered by wicked aristocrats, has been among thethousand-and-three causes assigned for the French Revolution.

  [69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actualsurname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory.

  [70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minornovels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone theprocess, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised.

  [71] That is to say, in the text: the second title of the whole book,"_ou Les Enfants de Maitre Jacques_," does in some sort give a warning,though it is with Maitre Jacques rather than with his children that thefresh start is made.

  [72] He has, though unknown and supposed to be an intruder, carried heroff from an English adorer--a sort of Lovelace-Byron, whose name is LordGousberycharipay (an advance on Paul de Kock and even Parny in thenomenclature of the English peerage), and who inserts h's before Frenchwords!

  [73] If novels do not exaggerate the unpopularity of these persons(strictly the lay members of the S.J., but often used for the whole bodyof religious orders and their lay partisans), the success of "July"needs little further explanation.

  [74] That is to say, not a bogey, but a buggy.

  [75] Here is another instance. Ludovica's father and a badRusso-Prussian colonel have to be finished off at Waterloo. One mightsuppose that Waterloo itself would suffice. But no: they must engage insingle combat, and even then not kill each other, the Russian's headbeing carried off by some kind of a cannon-ball and the Frenchman'sbreast pierced by half a dozen Prussian lances. This is really "goodmeasure."

  [76] Ousting others which deserved the place better? It may be so, butone may perhaps "find the whole" without particularising everything. Ofshort books especially, from Fievee's _Dot de Suzette_ (1798), whichcharmed society in its day, to Eugenie Foa's _Petit Robinson de Paris_(1840), which amused _me_ when I was about ten years old, there were noend if one talked.

  [77] _V. inf._ on M. Ohnet's books.

  [78] Many people have probably noticed the frequency of this name--not avery pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or otherattraction--in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. Itwas certainly due to _Le Solitaire_.

  [79] If any proper moral reader is disturbed at this conjunction of_amante_ and _mere_, he will be glad to know that M. d'Arlincourtelsewhere regularises the situation and calls Night "_l'epouse_d'Erebe."

  [80] In the Radcliffian-literary not the Robespierrean-political sense.For the Wertherism, _v. sup._ on Chateaubriand, p. 24 note.

  [81] He was four years older than Nodier, but did not begin to writefiction nearly so early. The _Phantasiestuecke_ are of 1814, while Nodierhad been writing stories, under German influence, as early as 1803. Itis, however, also fair to say that all those now to be noticed are laterthan 1814, and even than Hoffmann's later collections, the _Elixiere desTeufels_ and _Nachtstuecke_.

  [82] The prudent as well as judicious poet who wrote these linesprovided a variant to suit those who, basing their position on"Ramillies _cock_," maintain that it was a hat, not a wig, that wasnamed after Villeroy's defeat. For "grave--big" read "where Gallic hopesfell flat," and for "wig" "hat" _simpliciter_, and the thing is done.But Thackeray has "Ramillies _wig_" and Scott implies it.

  [83] Nodier, who had been in Scotland and, as has been said, was aphilologist of the better class, is scrupulously exact in spellingproper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau"(I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) hemakes no blunder, and he actually knows all about "Argyle's BowlingGreen."

  [84] If phonetics had never done anything worse than this they would notbe as loathsome to literature as they sometimes are.

  [85] On the other hand, compared with its slightly elder contemporary,_Le Solitaire_ (_v. sup._), it is a masterpiece.

  [86] Two little passages towards the end are very precious. A certainbridegroom (I abridge a little) is "perfectly healthy, perfectlyself-possessed, a great talker, a successful man of business, with someknowledge of physics, chemistry, jurisprudence, politics, statistics,and
phrenology; enjoying all the requirements of a deputy; and for therest, a liberal, an anti-romantic, a philanthropist, a very goodfellow--and absolutely intolerable." This person later changes thehumble home of tragedy into a "school of mutual instruction, where thechildren learn to hate and envy each other and to read and write, whichwas all they needed to become detestable creatures." These words "pleasethe soul well."

  [87] The description is worth comparing with that of Gautier's _Chateaude la Misere_--the difference between all but complete ruin and mere,though extreme, disrepair being admirably, and by the later master inall probability designedly, worked out.

  [88] _Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri._

  [89] Note, too, a hint at a never filled in romance of the captain'sown.

  [90] I must ask for special emphasis on "beauty." Nothing can be _finer_or _fitter_ than the style of Steenie's ghostly experiences. And thefamous Claverhouse passage _is_ beautiful.

  [91] As Rossetti saw it in "Sibylla Palmifera":

  "Under the arch of Life, where Love and Death, _Terror_ and Mystery guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned."

  [92] Perhaps there are few writers mentioned in this book to whoselovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in thecase of Nodier. "Where," I hear reproaching voices crying, "is _JeanSbogar_? Where is _Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires_ in novel-plural or _LeVampire_ in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred otherbooks, pieces, pages, paragraphs, passages from five to fifty wordslong?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "Butyou found more room for Paul de Kock?" Yes: and I have tried to showwhy.