ent in greater novelists, but
as often found in company with a certain accomplishment, in _ordonnance_
and readable quality, that marks the later novel. The very great
prominence of description is common to all of them, and in three out of
the four the scenes are from the same district--almost from the same
patch--of country. The heroine is the most prominent character and, as
she should be, the most attractive figure of all; but she is made up and
presented, if not exactly _a la douzaine_, yet with a strong, almost a
sisterly, family likeness. Far be it from the present writer to regret
or desiderate the adorably candid creature who so soon smirches her
whiteness. Even the luckless Sauvageonne--worst mannered, worst
moralled, and worst fated of all--is a jewel and a cynosure compared
with that other class of girl; while Raymonde (whose maltreatment of M.
de Prefontaine is to a great extent excused by her mother's bullying,
her real father's weakness, and her own impulsive temperament); the
Therese of _Le Fils Maugars_; and the Marianne of _Le Don Juan de
Vireloup_ are, in ascending degrees, girls of quite a right kind. Only,
it is just a little too much the _same_ kind. And without unfairness,
without even ingratitude, one may say that this sameness does somewhat
characterise M. Theuriet.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Georges Ohnet.]

There were some who did not share the general admiration, a good many
years ago, of the dictum of a popular French critic on a more popular
French novelist to the effect that, though it was his habit, in the
articles he was writing, to confine himself to literature, he would
break this good custom for once and discuss M. Ohnet. In the first
place, this appeared to the dissidents a very easy kind of witticism;
they knew many men, many women, and many schoolboys who could have
uttered it. In the second, they were probably of the opinion (changing
the matter, instead of, like that wicked Prince Seithenyn, merely
reversing the order, of the old Welsh saying) that "The goodness of wit
sleeps in the badness of manners." But if the question had been then, or
were now, asked seriously whether the literary value of _Le Maitre de
Forges_ and its companion novels was high, few of them would, as
probably, have been or be able to answer in the affirmative. For my own
part, I always used to think, when M. Ohnet's novels came out, that they
were remarkably like those of the em