Ministre,'* if not a direct imitation of the leading incident of Numa Roumestan,' is perilously near it, and loses any interest it might possibly have had by the close comparison it challenges. It is like an uncomprehending and stupid translation into the dialect of a lower order of intelligences, missing the point, and misstating the meaning, of the original. Numa's offence is subordinate to his character-a disgusting but quite natural illustration of it, showing the incapacity of the man to understand any higher motive than his pleasure of the moment, or to require anything but the lowest qualifications in the object of his animal pursuit. The whole is completely in accordance with the man-he who ends all by feeling in the attendrissement of the baptismal fête that he is the best of husbands, "without remorse and without rancour," though always with a little astonishment that his wife should have minded, or that any fuss should have been made about his little caprice. This, which is the point of the whole, is entirely missed by M. Claretie, who imitates the incident without the least perception of its meaning, and does his best to place before his reader, not a boiling-hot impulsive Southern, but a gentle, reflective, even serious personage, respectable in all his intentions, with a wife whom he loves, a disposition towards domesticity, and a character without reproach. This modest, cultivated, thoughtful man, risen to the height of his ambition, a newly appointed minister, with all the occupations of office to keep him out of mischief, is suddenly struck in a Parisian salon by the attractions of the most impudent of sirens, goes out of his way to distinguish her, engages her in very washy, would

be sprightly conversation, and sacrifices to her everything he has household peace, his wife's happiness, his own public credit, and the whole of his fortune. If it is possible that an unmarried young woman who has gone through years of a scandalous history should be invited to the receptions of a lady of unblemished reputation to meet such personages as M. le Ministre and his wife, then we are ignorant, indeed, of the possibilities of French society; and the astonishment of the Parisian ladies at the welcome accorded on this side of the Channel in so many innocent houses to the great actress about whom lately London had one of its periodical fits of insanity, was entirely out of place. It is such books as this that not only shock and disgust the English reader, but give him the entirely false idea of French society which so many people entertain: they are, in this way, an international wrong- one of the worst that can be inflicted both upon the country misrepresented, and that which is taken in by the false report of the literary Вohemian. When 'Arry writes about the things that go on at Lady Bonton's parties, which he does occasionally, we all know what a striking resemblance his sketch has to the original. We should not waste so many words upon an odious book, but that the title is one which may attract the unwary, as promising something very different from its real contents.

Madame Henry Greville and M. Hector Malot are writers both of whom have conciliated to themselves the good opinion of the English reader, always glad to be able to venture upon a French novel without the fear of plunging into a pit of nastiness. To the

former we owe many pleasant books. In a recent publication, 'Madame de Dreux,' she approached a high level in her picture of the disenchanted wife, slowly finding out in her brilliant husband the most commonplace and limited of men; but departed unfortunately from her own ideal by making this fine conception fall in love herself with another man, most innocently indeed, but still with a revulsion of passionate feeling, as if her unhappiness was a sufficient ground for self-abandonment. It is curious how the imagination of writers of fiction in recent days has taken to this type of character. The wife of Numa Roumestan, as has been shown, is also a wife disenchanted. Mr. Henry James, our très fin American contemporary, always disposed to follow the French view, has lately given us, in the curiously named Portrait of a Lady,' a remarkable example of the

same

character. There are curious and subtle distinctions between these ladies as drawn by a man, and her who comes from the hand of the woman. Madame de Dreux is not inexorable like Rosalie. After the first dolorous revelation, she treats her husband's infidelities with a contemptuous calm: "Celle-là ou une autre !" she says, with scarce an indignant beat of her breast. The burden she has to bear is from the nullity and commonplace of the man whom she props up on every side, inventing arguments and collecting facts for the speeches which, all trouble being saved him in the preparation of them, he has a certain natural faculty for making that acquires for him great reputation. Numa, always successful, would have had a certain charm for this woman, which he never has for Rosalie. These unfortun

ate wives have all lost, along with their faith in their husbands, their affection for them. And so a still greater instance-did Romola in George Eliot's great story. They love no longer. The being with whom they must pass their lives is visible to them behind the scenes, no grand homme, no romantic hero, as he once was, or as perhaps he still is to the world, but shrivelled up or broken down, a nobody, a creature without truth or honour. And the proud young women, revolted and humiliated, throw off their love as a snake does its skin. There is a higher ideal, and a complication more delicate, that of the disenchanted wife who still loves though she believes no longer. Such a thing is very possible in real life. It has not been yet. worked into a novel; but it is quite as capable of dramatic use as the other development, which has attracted so many writers.

'Perdue' *is not so strong as 'Madame de Dreux,' though its opening is extremely pathetic and suggestive. In the first chapter we are introduced to the presence of a little family of emigrants, husband and wife, with a little girl of three. The man protests that he must start for Havre, whence their ship is to sail almost immediately for America that night; while the woman declares that it is impossible for her to go further without a night's rest,-that she is weary beyond measure, and incapable of further exertion. Is it, the reader wonders, that she has some treach ery in her mind, and that it is she who is to be perdue? The husband at last starts without her, engaging to meet her and her child at the railway station at Havre next day. Returning from the station to which they have accompanied him, the

Paris: Plon et Compagnie.

"My poor Martin,' she thought: 'however, it is not long till to-morrow. I would go this evening still if I knew where to find you. I should have liked to give you a kiss. I feel as if I had not said good-bye to you as I ought. Who was it that said when I was little that we should always part with our friends as if we might never meet again? I cannot remember, but it is very true. I wish it was to-morrow. Marcelle'

"Marcelle played about the square with her new friends. . . . At last, out of breath, they stopped in the middle of the path to talk. The keeper of the square approached, flourishing his cane. What are you doing here, little vagabonds? it is time you were in bed. Run off, or I will lock you up in the square.' 'Oh, monsieur le gardien, it is not the hour!' they cried in chorus. 'Be off with you to bed, said the good man. Louise took the hand of Marcelle to lead her back to her mother. The keeper followed them going his round. 'Madame,' said Louise politely, here is your little girl whom I have brought back to you.' Marie made no movement. Her head was bent on her breast, she

seemed asleep. 'Mama,' said Marcelle, pulling her dress. She made no reply. Mama!' cried the little girl, mama!' Louise drew back a step, and looked at the young woman with an attention mixed with alarm. 'She is asleep,' she said to the keeper, who approached. 'It is very unwholesome to sleep here in the night air,' he said; you must awake her. Madame!' Marie remained immovable. Marcelle

climbed upon her lap, and threw herself back with a piercing cry. Under the touch of these little hands the

body of the mother yielded, threatening to fall upon her. The keeper raised it up, and replaced it in its first position. Moved by that vague and indescribable rumour which announces a catastrophe, a group collected round the children. A doctor approached and laid his hand upon Marie's brow-She is dead,' he said."

Thus, without trace whence she has come-for they had arrived in Paris only that morning, and the child was too young to remember the name of the hotel in which she had spent only a few hours-the little Marcelle is perdue; and the novel is the story of her adventures, her treatment, cruel and kind, the friends she found, and the adventures of her young life up to the time when her father-compelled to sail next day without any idea but a wild suggestion of jealousy and despair, as to what has become of his wife and child-finally returns and finds her. The circumstances are somewhat artificially forced, so as to cut off all trace of the child's belongings; but the situation is possible for a time at least. The extraordinary coolness of the father in departing all the same, notwithstanding that he had heard, in answer to his telegram, that his wife had never returned to the hotel, does not seem to surprise anybody; but people in novels can bear a great many things without being surprised. Marcelle grows up a most remarkable child, and at eight becomes a valuable servant, and does the entire work of the shopkeeper, the mother of Louise, who had taken her in; but as this was not a position for a heroine, Louise turns out a little tyrant, and Marcelle falls into the hands of a certain Mademoiselle Hermine, a gentle and kind-hearted old maid, who lives at Passy with

her old servant Rose, and spends her time in reading novels. This romantic old maiden, living in a visionary world of imaginary troubles and pleasures, makes a pretty picture; but we refuse to believe in such a cruelty of fate as that once more Marcelle's benefactor should die in the absence of all who could befriend her, leaving the child as desolate as ever. This repetition of circumstances is feeble; and though there is both humour and pathos in Mademoiselle Hermine, the story is somewhat wearisome and without character. The ultra-virtuous lover is a personage well known in English domestic fiction; and though there is a touch of originality in bringing back the ill-tempered and jealous father as disagreeable as ever-sorrow, and anxiety, and remorse having punished him severely, without touching his fundamental defects there is nothing beyond the tea-party novelist, so well known at home, in this mild production,-which is totally unobjectionable, we need not say, in point of morality, and may be put into the most innocent hands.

The success of M. Malot's novel, 'Sans Famille,' and the enthusiasm with which it was received in England, were remarkable.

Perhaps this was due also to the pure morality, which it is always a surprise and delight to the reader on this side of the Channel to find within the yellow covers of that supposedly brilliant and dangerous phenomenon, a French novel. But the author, whose beginning gained him so much applause, has stepped into the field with another story,* for which we think it very unlikely that he will reap any laurels. To start with, he has had the maladresse to brand it with the very uncomfortable title of Seduction.' To

6

*

To

be sure, it is not for an English public that M. Malot writes. Imagine the consternation, the dismay of Paternoster Row, or even one of the lighter resorts of literature in the West, if a MS. with such a name was laid upon the table. 'Seduction'! but let the reader make himself easy. Nobody is seduced in the book. The heroine is immaculate as a heroine of the Family Herald,' and something of that superior complexion. When we open the book, however, or at least when we are introduced, after a pretty and pleasant beginning, by the father's sudden death-now an almost inevitable preface-into the story, we fall plump at once into the eighteenth century,—into the materials of Richardson, among a succession of vulgar Lovelaces, with none of the grace or fascinating power of that irresistible herocoarse, brutal, and stupid. think that the expectant reader, perhaps fancying himself a little superior to the long-drawn descriptions of ordinary life, and the wearisome analysis of character not much worth the trouble, which he finds in his own language, should fall flat into a modified version of the excitements of Pamela in defence of her "virtue" as the best that "the brilliant Frenchman" can do for him! The downfall is extraordinary. It is useless to point out, though it is at the same time scarcely possible to refrain from doing so, that the apparently easy expedient of procuring their effects with little expenditure of trouble into which so many writers fall, is a sort of selfsuicide of the most foolish description. The author of 'Sans Famille' has a talent, not, we think, so great as the public supposed by that essay, yet worthy and worth cul

tivating. His villages and rural scenes were true and fresh, with much of that characteristic individuality in them, in which French rustics abound. But no doubt, it requires more labour, more trouble, to observe and enter into that real development of life, with all its revelations of human nature, than to invent hair-breadth escapes and exciting dangers, which will carry a simple reader on without taxing in any way the writer's powers. The heroine of Séduction' is a high-spirited girl, who, left penniless at her father's death, and burdened with the charge of an old grandmother, of whom she knows little-a poor old peasant-woman, while Hélène has all the tastes and instincts of the educated classes resolves to become a national schoolmistress in order to be independent, and give a home to her only relative. Hélène's difficulties in getting her school, her troubles with the Government inspector, and applications to the authorities, would be extremely interesting, as opening up corners of French society altogether beyond the cursory knowledge of a stranger, if M. Malot did not think proper to lay snares from the very beginning before her virtuous feet. He balks our interest in his heroine, and stultifies his own powers, by replacing the real interests of life by the unutterably commonplace overtures of a coarse and contemptible profligate, such as have, alas! been done to death in every tongue, and can scarcely touch the simplest, or the most depraved imagination, When she abandons this pursuit in despair, and takes a situation as a governess, the father and son of the house both repeat the attempts of the rural potentate, and drive her out of that refuge. She then procures an appointment, which nobody else will take, to a village school, of which the municipal

council have just voté la laïcité. The school has been held up to this moment by nuns; and as the lay teacher is likely to have very little support save that of the democratic members of the municipality, the position is one which does not attract many candidates. Hélène, however, who is almost in despair, accepts it at once; and here we have again every hope of a curious picture of village life, full of all the human passions in little, -and especially of the humours of French rural society, so old world as it is, with that infusion of flaming newness and wild theory which give a bizarre and whimsical interest to its vagaries.

It is impossible to imagine a more complete disappointment than M. Malot prepares for us. He rains down impossible humiliation, indeed, upon the devoted young woman, and assails her cruelly on all sides; but though we have vague glimpses-just enough to show us what he might have done if he pleased-of the noisy rural demagogues, whose object is not to get superior instruction, but to "faire la barbe aux sœurs," and of all the little politics and furies of the place, we are suddenly brought up short in our career by the discovery that all the insults addressed to the poor young schoolmistress are the invention of the vicar, who persecutes her thus barbarously because he, too, has fallen in love at first sight, without ever exchanging a word with her, with the too attractive Hélène; and thus the pretty quarrel, which sets the commune by the ears, and the picture of the excited village, and the dramatic struggle for which we were prepared, disappears in a melodramatic declaration from the priest, and all the despair and horror natural to such a situation. Virtuous Hélène has scarcely watched from her window the sudden departure of M. le