e soul of every human being. But the double Trilby
signifies nothing. She is naturally in love with Little Billee: she is
also in love with Svengali, but quite unnaturally and irresponsibly.
There is no real conflict. As Gecko says of Svengali--

"He had but to say '_Dors!_' and she suddenly became an
unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful
sounds--just the sounds he wanted and nothing else--and think his
thoughts and wish his wishes--and love him at his bidding with a
strange, unreal, factitious love ... just his own love for
himself turned inside out--a l'envers--and reflected back on him
as from a mirror ... un echo, un simulacre, quoi? pas autre
chose!... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!"

This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have
produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more
artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the
tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's
position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call
forth more than a factitious love--"just his own love for himself
turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"--is a
really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein
_motif_. The tragedy of Frankenstein resides in Frankenstein himself,
not in his creature.

An Incongruous Story.

In short, _Trilby_ seems--as _Peter Ibbetson_ seemed--to fall into two
parts, the natural and supernatural, which will not join. They might
possibly join if Mr. du Maurier had not made the natural so
exceedingly domestic, had he been less successful with the Trilby, and
Little Billee, and Taffy, and the Laird, for all of whom he has taught
us so extravagant a liking. But his very success with these domestic
(if oddly domestic) figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little
Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when
we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali.
That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only
a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's _La Morte Amoureuse_; perhaps the
best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken
_La Morte Amoureuse_ and tried to write it into _Pendennis!_

MR. STOCKTON

Sept. 21, 1895. Stevenson's Testimony.

In his chapter of "Personal Memories," printed in the _Century
Maga