s genius is most fully represented in a score
or so of delightful tales rarely exceeding some sixty or seventy pages
in length, but perfect in proportion, full of invention and originality,
and saturated with the purest and pleasantest essence of the spirit
which for six centuries in tableaux, farces, tales in prose and verse,
comedies and correspondence, made French literature the delight and
recreation of Europe. 'Gerfaut' is considered De Bernard's greatest
work. The plot turns on an attachment between a married woman and the
hero of the story. The book has nothing that can justly offend, the
incomparable sketches of Marillac and Mademoiselle de Corandeuil are
admirable; Gerfaut and Bergenheim possess pronounced originality, and
the author is, so to speak, incarnated with the hero of his romance.

The most uncritical reader can not fail to notice the success with
which Charles de Bernard introduces people of rank and breeding into his
stories. Whether or not he drew from nature, his portraits of this kind
are exquisitely natural and easy. It is sufficient to say that he is
the literary Sir Joshua Reynolds of the post-revolution vicomtes and
marquises. We can see that his portraits are faithful; we must feel that
they are at the same time charming. Bernard is an amiable and spirited
'conteur' who excels in producing an animated spectacle for a refined
and selected public, whether he paints the ridiculousness or the misery
of humanity.

The works of Charles de Bernard in wit and urbanity, and in the peculiar
charm that wit and urbanity give, are of the best French type. To any
elevation save a lofty place in fiction they have no claim; but in that
phase of literature their worth is undisputed, and from many testimonies
it would seem that those whom they most amuse are those who are best
worth amusing.

These novels, well enough as they are known to professed students of
French literature, have, by the mere fact of their age, rather slipped
out of the list of books known to the general reader. The general reader
who reads for amusement can not possibly do better than proceed to
transform his ignorance of them into knowledge.

JULES CLARETIE
de l'Academie Francaise.
GERFAUT

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I. THE TRAVELLER

During the first days of the month of September, 1832, a young man about
thirty years of age was walking through one of the valleys in Lorraine
originating