ollegiate one; and of
pleasant bird-worship. But M. Fabre should have told us whether the
bishop actually received and appreciated[525] the dinner of Truscas
trout and Faugeres wine (alas! this is a blank in my fairly extensive
wine-list), and the miscellaneous _maigre_ cookery of the excellent
Prudence, and the splendid casket of _liqueurs_ borrowed from a brother
_cure_. _Cathinelle_ (an unusual and pretty diminutive of Catherine) is
an admirably told pendant to it; and I venture to think the "idyllic"
quality of both at least equal, if not superior, to the best of George
Sand. _Le R. P. Colomban_ is, according to M. Fabre's habit, a sort of
double-edged affair--a severe but just rebuke of the "popular
preacher," and a good-humoured touch at the rebuker, Monseigneur Onesime
de la Boissiere, Eveque de Saint-Pons, who incidentally proposes to
submit _L'Abbe Tigrane_ to the Holy Congregation of the Index. Finally,
the book closes with a delightful panegyric of Alexandre Dumas _pere_,
and an anecdote avowedly autobiographic (as, indeed, the whole book
gives itself out to be, though receivable with divers pinches of salt)
of that best-natured of men franking a bevy of impecunious students at a
_premiere_ of one of his plays.

[Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Pierrerue._]

To read _Le Marquis de Pierrerue_ after these two books--one the piece
with which Fabre established his reputation, and the other a product of
his proved mastery--is interesting to the critic. Whether it would be so
to the general reader may be more doubtful. It is the longest of its
author's novels; in fact its two volumes have separate sub-titles;[526]
but there is no real break, either of time, place, or action, between
them. It is a queer book, quite evidently of the novitiate, and
suggesting now Paul de Kock (the properer but not _quite_ proper Paul),
now Daudet (to whom it is actually dedicated), now Feuillet, now Murger,
now Sandeau, now one of the melodramatic story-tellers. Very possibly
all these had a share in its inspiration. It is redolent of the medical
studies which the author actually pursued, between his abandonment of
preparation for the Church and his settling down as a man of letters.
Its art is palpably imperfect--blocks of _recit_, wedges of not very
novel or acute reflection, a continual reluctance or inability to "get
forrard." Of the two heroes, Claude Abrial, Marquis de Pierrerue--a
fervent Royalist and Catholic, who lavishes his own m