. It is the idealised passion which nature has denied to
her, though not to him, and the absolute faithfulness and "forsaking of
all others" proper to what?--to a perfect wife. So here, in the realms
of spouse-breach, marriage is once more king, or rather the throne is
felt to be empty--the kingdom an anarchy--without it!

The lighter side of the matter reminds one of two celebrated
utterances. The first is Paul de Florac's criticism on the Lady
Clara-Barnes-Highgate triangle, "Do not adopt our institutions _a
demi_." Here the situation is topsy-turvied in the most curious fashion,
for it is the character of marriage that is desiderated in the absence
thereof, and in a country where that character itself is scoffed at.
Further, it reminds one still more of Sydney Smith's excellent jest when
Lady Holland, having previously asked him to stay at Holland House, sent
him a formal invitation to dinner, for a day within the period of the
larger hospitality. This, said Sydney, was "an attempt to combine the
stimulus of gallantry with the security of connubial relations." That
was precisely the moon that Mariolle sighed for, and that his not
exactly Artemis would not--indeed could not be expected to--give him.

Of Michelle de Burne herself there is less to be said. The curious
misogyny which chequered Maupassant's gynomania seems to have tried hard
to express itself in her portrait. It is less certain that it does. The
other characters are quite subordinate, except the _bonne_ Elisabeth
(who, promising as she is, merely makes her _debut_) and a novelist,
Gaston de Lamarthe, who may sometimes be taken as the author's
mouthpiece, but who does not do him justice. The book on the whole does
much to confirm, and hardly anything to invalidate, the position that
its writer had far more to say than he ever said.

[Sidenote: _Les Dimanches_, etc.]

The ordinary list of Maupassant's "Romans," as distinct from "Nouvelles"
and "Contes," ends with _Les Dimanches d'un Bourgeois de Paris_. This,
however, is merely a series of tales (some of them actually rehandled
from earlier ones), with a single figure for centre, to wit, a certain
M. Patissot, a bachelor government-official, who is a sort of mixture of
Leech's Mr. Briggs and of Jerome Paturot, with other predecessors who
get into scrapes and "fixtures." It is not unamusing, but scarcely
first-class, the two political skits at the end being about the best
part of it.

[Sidenote: _Yvette