ith his ecclesiastical) views pretty decidedly; I think (speaking as
usual with the due hesitation of a foreigner) that he writes excellent
French; and I am sure--a point of some consequence with me, and not too
commonly met--that he generally writes (when he does not get _too_
angry) like a gentleman. He sometimes has phrases which please me very
much, as when he describes two lovers embracing so long that they "must
have drunk a whole bottle of kisses," or when he speaks of the voice of
a preacher "_tombant_ de la chaire dans cette eglise ou _pleuvaient_ les
tenebres du soir," where the opposition-combination of "tombant" and
"pleuvaient," and the image it arouses, seem to me of a most absolute
fancy. He can write scenes--the finale of his best book, _L'Ensorcelee_;
the overture of _Un Pretre Marie_; and nearly the whole of the last and
best _Diabolique_, "Une Vengeance de Femme"--which very closely approach
the first class. And, whether he meant me to do so or not, I like him
when in "Un Diner d'Athees" he makes one of them "swig off" (_lamper_) a
bumper of Picardan, the one wine in all my experience which I should
consider fit _only_ for an atheist.[446] But a good novelist I cannot
hold him.

The inability does not come from any mere "unpleasantness" in his
subjects, though few pleasant ones seem to have lain in his way, and he
certainly did not go out of that way to find them. But _L'Ensorcelee_
can only be objected to on this score by an absurdly fastidious person,
and I do not myself want any more rose-pink and sky-blue in _Un Pretre
Marie_;[447] while the last _Diabolique_, already mentioned, is a
capital example of grime made more than tolerable.[448] Indeed, nothing
of the sort can be more unmistakable than the sincerity of Barbey's
"horrors." They mark, in that respect, nearly the apex of the triangle,
the almost disappearing lower angles of which may be said to be
represented by the crude and clumsy vulgarities of Janin's _Ane Mort_,
and the more craftsmanlike, indeed in a way almost artistic, but
unconvinced and unconvincing atrocities of Borel's _Champavert_.

[Sidenote: And defects.]

[Sidenote: Especially as shown in _L'Ensorcelee_.]

The objection, and the defect which occasions the objection, are quite
different. Barbey d'Aurevilly has many gifts and some excellencies. But
his work in novel constantly reminds me of the old and doubtless
well-known story of a marriage which was almost ideally perfec