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nothing instructive or elevating in such reading, but we are kept in a state of great merriment throughout the volume; and as novels are written to amuse, they must be held to succeed when they amuse, provided that the character of the amusement is not positively wrong. It deserves to be noticed in M. About's favour that here the comparison of his story with the old dramatists is to his advantage; for the reckless intrigues of the Restoration heroes are much more condemnable than the artifice of a lover to decoy a selfish and prejudiced father into giving his daughter to a man whom she loves. There is also much less connection between the imaginary scene and the conduct in real life of those who study it. A spectator of Farquhar may be induced to imitate Mirabel in a very matter-of-fact way, but no reader of M. About's book would think of getting an intended father-in-law to break the bank at Baden.

Germaine is, we think, the least pleasing of all M. About's stories. It has the great fault of containing elements too tragic for the style in which it is written, and it probes the plague-spots of society too deeply. The story turns on the disappointment undergone by a certain Madame Chermidy in her efforts to legitimate her son, who is the offspring of an intrigue with a Neapolitan count. She hits on the amazing artifice of getting her lover to marry a girl in the last stage of consumption, and of having it declared in the act of marriage that the boy is the child of this young lady. Germaine, who is the victim, consents on condition of a large sum being paid to her parents to relieve them from the miserable poverty into which the folly of the Duke, her father, brought them. The count marries Germaine and takes her to Corfu, where the warm climate does her so much good, that Madame Chermidy fears that her plot will be turned against her, and that she will have only succeeded in giving herself a rival in the count's affections. To make matters safe, she sends a forçat to hasten Germaine's end by poison. But he gives Germaine minute doses of arsenic, and this is the very best remedy she could have; so that the more she is poisoned the better she is. Irritated by this new failure, Madame Chermidy comes herself to Corfu; and there, quarrelling with her forçat, she is assassinated by him. This is much too painful a subject for a light story, and comic writing is out of place when it is employed to lighten the horrors of poisoning, poniarding, and adultery. The difficulty of getting a plot which shall be interesting and exciting, and yet not too serious and horrible for a pleasant, gossiping treatment, is very considerable when the story is to be carried to any length. When the story is short, it is sufficient to take one little foible or one curious coincidence as the theme. The volume called Mariages de Paris, in which M. About has col

lected a series of feuilletons originally published in the Moniteur, is accordingly much better reading than Germaine. One of these stories, La Mère de la Marquise, may serve as an example. A bourgeoise is intensely anxious to get a footing in the Faubourg St. Germain, and looks out for a noble husband for her daughter as the readiest means of effecting her purpose. A live marquis comes in her way, and she books him. She takes him down to her country place, and the marriage is celebrated; but on the wedding-night she learns that he hates Paris, and intends to live in the country. Determined not to be frustrated, she decoys the bride into a carriage, and elopes with her to Paris. The story then turns on the arts and the resolution with which she keeps the wife from the husband, and of the determination of the marquis not to yield. He wins in the long-run; for one day the mamma makes too long a call, and when she gets back she finds that her son-in-law has run off with her daughter. This is a very slight framework for a story; but the tale has the great merit of resting on a foible and not a crime, and so, as it is well told, it is a very agreeable provision for an idle half-hour.

Comic novelists, we may remark in passing, naturally select exaggerated and special types among their countrymen as the best material for fun, and thus often give the impression that the faults and failings which they and their countrymen most laugh at in others prevail widely among themselves. If there are two failings which are more widely attributed to the English than all others, they are want of courtesy and tuft-hunting. We Englishmen are always ready to confess our faults from a sublime feeling that no confession of faults can reduce us to the level of the rest of the world; and we may therefore say openly that we think the accusation is true, and that John Bull on his travels does sometimes treat the natives like the vermin he considers them, and that he dearly loves a lord. But in no English novel, nor in any representation of English people, have we ever met with the description of a traveller so brutal, so insolent, and so domineering, as Captain Bitterlin, or any lover of rank so frantically anxious to be noticed by aristocrats as the mother of the marchioness. Either they do these things more thoroughly in France, or M. About must have been drawing on his imagination, to the great disadvantage and discredit of his countrymen and country women. We suspect that he is only painting what he has often seen in real life, and that Captain Bitterlin and the mother of the marchioness have very many counterparts within a mile of the Louvre. It does not therefore follow that we ought to consider the French discourteous and slavishly fond of rank; it only follows that the types set up by comic novelists should not be too widely generalised, and that we should be

prepared to regard them as exceptions until we know them to be susceptible of a larger application.

M. About, however, has written in a very different style. Tolla is as quiet and unaffected as it is sad. It was one of the carliest of M. About's writings, and is certainly one of his best. The story is based on a small volume which circulated chiefly, we believe, if not entirely, in private hands in Italy. The materials thus provided him forced him to be grave; and he had the taste not to spoil good tragedy with bad comedy. The ease and brevity with which the story is told contribute greatly to the effect it produces. But its chief charm is, that it gives us two pictures, both new, and both, so far as they go, complete. It represents the course of a love where the lover is very unworthy of his mistress, and it represents the daily life of the aristocracy of Rome. Unworthy lovers have, it is true, been painted before; but the particular shade of unworthy lover that appears in Tolla is new, and Roman life was wholly unbroken ground in fiction.

Tolla is the daughter of a poor count, and Lello is the cadet of a rich princely house. They love, and nothing stands in their way except the ambition of Lello's relations and his own weakness. He is really in love, and has a general wish to act honourably by Tolla; but he has all the small caution, the narrow egotism, and the calculating timidity of a thorough fool. Tolla, on the other hand, loves heartily, freely, and thoroughly, will hear no word of blame against Lello, and insists on thinking him perfection. It is this contrast between the nobleness of the girl and the meanness of the man, coupled with the sad fate which sacrifices the noble and preserves the mean, that gives its chief interest to the story; and even if M. About did not invent the contrasted characters, the details of the delineation are all his, and it is by a number of little touches that the general impression is conveyed. At first Lello will not acknowledge his love. He thinks it a masterpiece of cleverness not to commit himself or her. He sees the obstacles he shall have to encounter, and for her sake as well as his own he resolves to love her at a distance. "He considered he had won the greatest victory over himself when he had addressed Tolla in the most passionate language without ever telling her that he loved her. He made it a sort of religious duty with himself to withhold this avowal, although he lavished the equivalent on her every moment. When he got back home, he said to himself, 'I have saved two souls.' Really he had only saved himself the trouble of uttering three words." Even those three words are uttered at last, but only after the greatest irresolution on the part of Lello. He consents to give a formal promise to marry her, provided the engagement is kept secret from his family. Tolla persuades her parents to

consent to this, and they are engaged. The approach of the cholera renders it necessary that the count's family should leave Rome, and Lello thus spends only one evening with his fiancée. The happiness of Tolla culminates in this evening, a balmy, lovely evening in an Italian summer. As we read the story, we scarcely stop to notice the art with which this evening-scene is let into the framework of the story. For a few hours Tolla is happy, and Lello is not very unworthy of her. The count and countess are at hand rejoicing in the happiness of their daughter, while she and her lover wander among the shrubs, inhaling the sweet scents and the cool air, and talking over the plans of their future life. Even, however, in this hour of romance the difference between the romantic and the unromantic heart is permitted to appear; and we are reminded that Lello and Tolla are essentially unlike, when we find Tolla drawing a picture of herself and her husband living in a country home and showering blessings on the peasants around them, and Lello interrupting her to boast that they will eclipse all their friends and acquaintance at balls and suppers.

The lovers separate, and writing is substituted for talking. Tolla covers sheet after sheet with the outpourings of her love; but Lello is unaccustomed to composition, and finds letterwriting a great bore. He has, however, one subject of real interest the state of his own health and the ravages of the cholera supply a theme on which he can write with some ease to the lady of his love. It is characteristic both of the man and of the country to which he belongs, that he sends Tolla the most minute directions as to what she is to do in case she is troubled with any choleraic symptoms. A hurried meeting at length brings the lovers face to face, and then for the first time Tolla thinks him less than perfect. In fact, he is so guarded and so stupid, that he cannot manage to talk to her about any thing but the silliest town gossip; on which she very naturally remarks, that if that was all he had to say, it was hardly worth while to risk so much to see her. "When will you dare to love me openly ?" she exclaims. "You do not love me;" and she turns suddenly, and rides away. But absence restores the charm to her; and she has no sooner parted than she thinks she has been unjust to Lello, and writes him a pretty letter, full of warm-hearted tenderness, and humbly begging his pardon. "Thou hast thy manner of loving, and I have mine," she writes. "Let us not ask which is the best; only let us love." Lello replies that he loves her devotedly, but that he loves her as he ought to love her, and keeps his love at the bottom of his heart invisible from the world. He had a thousand things to say to her; but there were witnesses at the interview, and he was tongue

tied. Particularly there was a passage in one of her former letters which she had underlined, and he could not quite make out why she had done so. This he would certainly have asked her to explain, only that, just as he was about to begin, he felt somebody was looking at him. After a few more assurances of affection, he ends his letter by telling her that his stomach is a little out of order, and that he could wish he was fatter; but that otherwise he is very well. At first, the character of Lello seems unnatural and contemptible; but gradually, as M. About works up a series of little touches, to make us understand the puerility, the emptiness, and the confiding folly which is produced in the higher classes by such a government as that of Rome, we come to think that Lello was probably like a good many of his neighbours.

It is not perhaps so unfair as it might seem to make Tolla so superior to Lello, although both are exposed to the same influence of ecclesiastical society. Even though the atmosphere may be unwholesome, the domestic piety enforced by the childish surveillance of the priest sits naturally on a woman; whereas a man, treated as a baby, and not allowed to think or act, gets debased and imbecile in the midst of the most religious world. The difference between the betrothed is carried out even in their religion. Tolla is anxious that Lello should be more piously disposed, and she engages him to pray. Lello, with the sickly sentimentalism that is the certain accompaniment of emasculated virtue, immediately goes beyond her, and demands that they shall have the same confessor. "We shall then have all in common,even our sins," he says. But evil rumours are spread that he is secretly married to Tolla, and he becomes very much alarmed. He falls more than ever under the guidance of his family, and at length consents to accompany his brother on a visit to England. When Tolla's family hear this, they are justly indignant. Lello is summoned to a solemn family session, where the pictures of all the Feraldi are uncovered; and the count, after a speech of grave reproach, gives back Lello his troth. Lello indignantly refuses; he cannot for a moment think of losing Tolla. We are constantly reminded that Lello really loves Tolla with all the strength of his feeble mind, and in the depths of his shallow heart. M. About has not set himself to draw the common and easy portrait of a flirting deceiver, but the much more subtle traits of a character naturally affectionate and honest, but debilitated by the oppressive pettiness of the system under which he is living. He hears the count to the end of a second speech, in which he is told that he must either give up Tolla at once, or make a promise so deliberate, so solemn, and so sacred, that there can be no receding from it. The mode in which the

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