ncluding all
the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a
single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There
is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most
frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues.
The commonest case is, of course, that which has become the staple plot
of French novelists, where the interesting young woman is sacrificed to
the brutality of a dull husband: that, for example, is the story of the
'Femme de Trente Ans,' of 'Le Lys dans la Vallee,' and of several minor
performances; then we have the daughter sacrificed to the avaricious
father, as in 'Eugenie Grandet;' the woman sacrificed to the imperious
lover in the 'Duchesse de Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to
the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Miseres des
Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Menage
de Garcon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the
contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employes;' and, indeed,
in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure
of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous
heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven
to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless cure,
Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart
by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the
Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his
detestable mother-in-law; Pere Goriot is left to starvation by his
daughters; the Marquis d'Espard is all but condemned as a lunatic by the
manoeuvres of his wife; the faithful servant Michu comes to the
guillotine; the devoted notary Chesnel is beggared in the effort to save
his scape-grace of a master; Michaud, another devoted adherent, is
murdered with perfect success by the brutal peasantry, and his wife dies
of the news; Balthazar Claes is the victim of his devotion to science;
and Z. Marcas dies unknown and in the depths of misery as a reward for
trying to be a second Colbert. The old-fashioned canons of poetical
justice are inverted; and the villains are dismissed to live very
happily ever afterwards, whilst the virtuous are slain outright or
sentenced to a death by slow torture. Thackeray, in one or two of his
minor stories, has touched the same note. The history of Mr. Deuceace,
and especially its catas