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on each road a staff of neat employés, well educated and well clothed; for, after all, what is the good of disgusting one's clients by a repulsive aspect and a ruffianly air? I have seen thieves in France and England dressed with the most consummate elegance, and they did their business just as well." This seems to us to go beyond the ordinary region of French wit, and to rise to the level of the humour of Gil Blas. The chief then develops further his great idea: "I should exact from all my subordinates the greatest refinement of manners, especially from those employed in the department of arrests. For prisoners of distinction I would have comfortable and airy dwellings, with gardens attached. And do not suppose this would fall heavily on their purses. Quite the contrary. If every traveller who landed in the kingdom necessarily fell into my hands, I could afford to tax each individual at an insignificant figure. Let every native and every traveller merely give me one-quarter per cent on the sum total of his fortune, and I should gain by the arrangement." But two objections may be urged; and the reply to these objections is the cream of the whole speech. It may be said that this imposition would be very unjust, and that it would be illegal. Hadji-Stavros disposes of both these grounds of complaint. "Brigandage, under my system, would only be a tax on the circulation; it would be a just tax, for it would be proportioned; and it would be a normal tax, for it has been levied ever since the heroic ages. Nay, if necessary, we might simplify the thing by arranging a yearly subscription: for such a sum down natives should get a safe conduct, and strangers a visa on their passports. Then you say that, according to the terms of the constitution, such a tax could not be imposed without the vote of the two chambers. Ah, my dear sir, if I only had the time, I would buy the whole-Senate, and would have every deputy returned to please me. The law would pass at once; and, if desirable, it would be easy to create a minister of highways." A specimen in English of a French book is not worth much, but there are little bits in this description which are striking even when translated. The calmness and virtue, the equity and impartiality, of the hoary old sinner are delightful, with his talk about his clients, his refined employés, and his proportional taxes. Fielding has given us something of the same sort in Jonathan Wild, and his satire is bitterer and fiercer; but there is a neatness and plausibility in M. About's brigand which amuses and pleases us

more.

The most ludicrous scene in Le Roi des Montagnes is one, perhaps, in which the gendarmes of Athens are sent in pursuit of the brigands. The English lady is triumphant, and thinks

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that the hour of her release is come, and that the odious necessity of paying a ransom will be avoided. She is soon undeceived. Pericles, the captain of the soldiers, is not only on excellent terms with Hadji-Stavros, but is a shareholder in the great robber joint-stock company. The friends meet each other with the warmest greeting, and talk at once with great candour over the affair in hand. They only dispute as to which is to have the best in the great imaginary battle, of which Pericles is to send a flaming report to the government. Fericles claims that he should be stated to have the best of it, as he wishes to have a decoration given him. The brigand says that this is rather too much, as it was he who had just made Pericles a captain. "But," replies Pericles, "it is for your interest that you should be said to be defeated, for then confidence will be restored, and travellers will again begin to go over the country." "Yes," answers Hadji-Stavros; "but if I am said to be defeated, the funds will rise, and I am speculating for a fall." When this is settled, the brigand asks for ten men out of the gendarmes as recruits to his band. This is considered a great promotion for them, and Pericles interests himself for a favourite. "He has no chance of rising in the regular way," says Pericles; but if you let him distinguish himself in your troop, the government will offer to bribe him back, and so he will get his step in six months." When it is known that HadjiStavros will accept ten recruits, the anxiety to be among those selected gives rise to much unpleasant feeling. More particularly, we are told that "two or three graybeards said openly, that the promotion was made too much by pure favour, and that there was a shameful disregard of the claims of seniority." This demand of the veterans to have the length of their service in the regular force taken into consideration when recruiting is going on for the brigand troop is an admirable touch of humour. Pericles tells Hadji-Stavros that the guard in charge of treasure is to pass at a particular time through a particular defile; and the brigand hastens to intercept it, leaving the gendarmes to take care of the English ladies and their German companion. Before leaving, he charges Pericles to take every precaution against the escape of prisoners whose ransom was likely to be so considerable. "You need not fear," replies Pericles, "I am a shareholder." Hadji-Stavros had just encouraged him by announcing that the year's dividend per share would be eighty-two per cent. The expedition against the guard of the treasure turns out unfortunately, and three of the recruits are killed. When the King of the Mountains returns with this bad news, Pericles is seriously alarmed. That three of his soldiers should be found attacking a royal convoy seems,

even to him, rather strong. But the consequences he apprehends are of a peculiar kind. What he fears is, that he shall not be invited to the next court ball. "See," says HadjiStavros, in confidence to the German, "this is a Greek of today; I am a Greek of yesterday; and the newspapers say we are in a state of progress."

By the side of the description of the King of the Mountains occurs the more purely farcical description of the English ladies, Mrs. Barley and Mary Ann. They are very like the usual English people of French comedy, the Anglais pour rire, who give some delight to Frenchmen, and such unbounded amusement to Englishmen, in the minor theatres of Paris. The mamma confines her observations to repeating that she and her daughter are Englishwomen, and that they are not to be so treated; that she will write to Lord Palmerston and the Times, and have the Mediterranean fleet despatched to Athens at once, unless she has every thing her own way. She writes a letter to her brother about the money to be paid for her ransom, and ends by saying, "It is monstrous that two Englishwomen, citizens of the greatest empire of the world, should be reduced to eat their roast meat without mustard and pickles, and to drink plain water like the commonest kind of fish." This purely farcical element in M. About's books does not make them less amusing, but it brings them to a lower level. We see that, in order to produce an effect, he is satisfied to deal out a very hackneyed and exaggerated kind of wit to his minor characters. These jokes in a French novel are about as witty as if a Frenchman in an English novel were always asking for frogs. We cannot help laughing at Mrs. Barley; but the difference between the wit involved in portraying an English lady always boasting of her country, and always demanding mustard and pickles, and the wit that shines through the elaborate creation of Hadji-Stavros is immense, and makes us feel that M. About, if he often works with very fine tools, also often works with very coarse ones.

Of the other comic novels of M. About, the best and most amusing is, we think, Trente et Quarante. There is less brilliancy in the writing than in the Roi des Montagnes, and there is none of the local colouring and truthfulness of description in the midst of exaggeration; but there is almost, if not quite, as much skilfulness in handling the improbable, and in keeping the reader in an imaginary world so like the real as to produce the illusion that, after all, the story is not so unnatural. In Trente et Quarante there is a Captain Bitterlin, a remnant of the grande armée, a thoroughly pig-headed, parvenu, vain, prejudiced old soldier. Like most old soldiers in romance, the

Captain has an only daughter, lovely, romantic, and named Emma. An Italian refugee sees her and falls in love with her at first sight, and she returns his passion. But as her father considers all women deserve distrust, and require to be kept in the closest imprisonment, it is hard for the lovers to meet. The young lady's health fails, as the health of most young ladies would fail who were locked up for a fortnight at a time, with a lover outside the door and a suspicious father inside. The old officer determines to take his daughter on a little tour, and they set off for Switzerland. The lover manages to ascertain the time of starting, and takes a place in the same carriage. They journey on, and he goes with them. The Captain has no suspicion that this young Italian is his daughter's lover; but he gets dreadfully bored with the ardent affection the stranger shows for him, and the determination with which he sticks to the same route. They at last approach Baden, and the young Italian announces his intention of going there. The Captain breaks out into a violent anathema against gambling in the presence of a large party. They laugh at him, and tell him that if he went to Baden, he would gamble too. He indignantly denies this, and offers to go to Baden, to show the strength of his powers of resistance. The Italian goes first, and has two or three nights of varied fortune. He is sitting at the table playing trente et quarante, with twenty francs before him, which was all he had left, when suddenly he sees M. Bitterlin. In terror lest the father of Emma should set him down as a gambler, he gets up from his seat, and leaves his francs behind him. M. Bitterlin sees them, and thinks that, at least, he ought to return them to the young stranger, bore and gambler as he is. But just as he is about to take them up, he finds twenty more francs added to them. The Italian had left them staked on the black, and the black has won. Not understanding what has happened, M. Bitterlin leaves the forty francs where they are, and again black wins. A strange run of luck soon makes these francs mount to so large a pile that they exceed what is allowed to be staked. M. Bitterlin is requested to take from the heap six thousand francs, which is the maximum stake. He complies, and half dazzled by the marvel of such a sudden influx of wealth, and half interested in the game, he stakes on and on until he breaks the bank, and rises with a hundred and twenty thousand francs in his pocket. The lover hears what has happened, and rushes off by the next train to Paris. The old captain is in agony until he can restore this large sum to the rightful owner, and hurries after him. After a long search, he finds the Italian, who flatly refuses to take the money. A strong altercation ensues, and at last the Italian says that he

can see only one way in which the affair can be arranged, and that is, that he should marry Emma, and thus there would be no question as to the ownership of the money; but he entirely declines to accept her. The captain is furious, and asks him what he means by refusing his daughter. The Italian declines any explanation, and a duel is arranged. On the ground, one of the seconds of the Italian steps forward and says, that if no terms can be agreed on, the duel must proceed; but that the honour of Mdlle. Bitterlin is compromised, and that, as the Italian's death would not clear her, it would be much better he should behave as a man of honour and agree to marry her, instead of fighting her father. After much pretended hesitation, he agrees; and then all the seconds declare that the captain is bound by the arrangement, and that he must give his daughter to the Italian. He assents at last, under the hope that the worst punishment he can inflict on his adversary is to make him marry against his will, and because he is attracted by the pleasure of forcing a husband on his daughter against her will. Thus the young people get their own way, and trente et quarante lands them in a happy marriage.

A story of this kind bears exactly the same relation to real life as the old comedy of the days of Charles II. The incidents. are so droll, and the characters all seem so sure of themselves, and so convinced that they can do what they represent themselves as doing, that we allow them to have their fling, and keep our doubts as to their possibility and respectability to ourselves. We no more think of criticising the principles and conduct of this young Italian than of being severe on the Mirabels and Wildloves of the Restoration drama. In real life this Italian would have played a very scurvy trick on a man who meant to act honourably by him, and have started on his married life with the pleasant knowledge that he had won his wife by getting several strangers to declare her honour compromised; but the whole thing is too absurd and extravagant to let such criticism appear any thing but inapplicable prudery. The machinery by which this air of false and exceptional probability is created is exactly the same in the old comedy and in M. About's story. The secret of it all is to give very minute details of each scene that is presented, and boldly to leap over all the links that ought to connect one scene with another. While we attend to the proceedings of Captain Bitterlin at any one point of his career, he seems to be doing only what is natural, as every thing is described so easily and consecutively that there appears hardly any thing else for him to do but what he does; and we are so much amused with him, that we do not care to wait and ask ourselves how he moves from one point to another. There is

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