ay Daudet, when in his
service, was not overpaid, or treated with any particular private
confidence. But still I doubt whether any gentleman could have written
_Le Nabab_. The last Bourbon King of Naples was not hedged with much
divinity; but it is hardly a question, with some, that his _decheance_,
not less than that of his nobler spouse, should have protected them from
the catch-penny vulgarity of _Les Rois en Exil_. Gambetta was not the
worst of demagogues; there was something in him of Danton, and one might
find more recent analogies without confining the researches to France.
But even if his weaknesses gave a handle, which his merits could not
save from the grasp of the vulgariser, _Numa Roumestan_ bore the style
of a vulture who stoops upon recent corpses, not that of a dispassionate
investigator of an interesting character made accessible by length of
time. _L'Evangeliste_ had at least the excuse that the Salvation Army
was fair game; and that, if there was personal satire, it was not
necessarily obvious--a palliation which (not to mention another for a
moment) extends to _Sapho_. But _L'Immortel_ revived--unfortunately, as
a sort of last word--the ugliness of this besetting sin of Daudet's.
Even the saner members of Academies would probably scout the idea of
their being sacrosanct and immune from criticism. But _L'Immortel_,
despite its author's cleverness, is once more an essentially vulgar
book, and a vulturine or ghoulish one--fixing on the wounds and the
bruises and the putrefying sores of its subject--dragging out of his
grave, for posthumous crucifixion, a harmless enough pedant of not very
old time; and throwing dirty missiles at living magnates. It is one of
the books--unfortunately not its author's only contribution to the
list--which leave a bad taste in the mouth, a "flavour of poisonous
brass and metal sick."

[Sidenote: His "plagiarisms."]

Of another charge brought against Daudet I should make much shorter
work; and, without absolutely clearing him of it, dismiss it as, though
not unfounded, comparatively unimportant. It is that of
plagiarism--plagiarism not from any French writer, but from Dickens and
Thackeray. As to the last, one scene in _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine_
simply _must_ be "lifted" from the famous culmination of _Vanity Fair_,
when Rawdon Crawley returns from prison and catches Lord Steyne with his
wife. But, beyond registering the fact, I do not know that we need do
much more wit