t in all
respects but one--that the girl "couldna bide her man." He can do many
things, but he cannot or will not tell a story, save in such fragments
and flashes as those noted above. His _longueurs_ are exasperating and
sometimes nearly maddening, though perhaps many readers would save
themselves by simply discontinuing perusal. The first _Diabolique_ has
metal attractive enough of its kind. A young officer boards with a
provincial family, where the beautiful but at first silent, abstracted,
and, as the Pleiade would have said, _marbrine_ daughter suddenly,
though secretly, develops frantic affection for him, and shows it by
constant indulgence in the practice which that abominable cad in
Ophelia's song put forward as an excuse for not "wedding." But, on one
of these occasions, she translates trivial metaphor into ghastly fact by
literally dying in his arms. Better stuff--again of its kind--for a
twenty-page story, or a little more, could hardly be found. But Barbey
gives us _ninety_, not indeed large, but, in the usual editions, of
exceptionally close and small print, watering out the tale intolerably
almost throughout, and giving it a blunt and maimed conclusion. _Le
Bonheur dans le Crime_,[449] _Le Dessous de Cartes_, and the
above-mentioned _Diner d'Athees_, which fill a quarter of a thousand of
such pages, invite slashing with a hook desperate enough to cut each
down to a quarter of a hundred. _Un Pretre Marie_, which perhaps comes
next to _L'Ensorcelee_ in merit, would be enormously improved by being
in one volume instead of two. Of _Une Vieille Maitresse_ I think I could
spare both, except a vigorously told variant (the suggestion is
acknowledged, for Barbey d'Aurevilly was much too proud to steal) of
Buckingham's duel[450] and the Countess (not "Duchess," by the way) of
Shrewsbury. _Une Histoire sans Nom_, a substantial though not a very
long book, is only a short story spun out. Even in _L'Ensorcelee_ itself
the author, as a critic, might, and probably would, have found serious
fault, had it been the work of another novelist. There is less
surplusage and more continuous power, so that one is carried through
from the fine opening on the desolate moor (a _little_ suggested,
perhaps, by the meeting of Harry Bertram and Dandie Dinmont, but quite
independently worked out) to the vigorous close above referred to. But
the story is quite unnecessarily muddled by information that part of it
was supplied by the Norman M