inent Mrs. Henry Wood[542] in
English--of course _mutatis mutandis_. They displayed very fair aptitude
for the _business_ of novel manufacture, and the results were such as,
in almost every way, to satisfy the average subscriber to a circulating
library, supposing him or her to possess respectable tastes (scarcely
"taste"), moderate intelligence, and a desire to pass the time
comfortably enough in reading them once, without the slightest
expectation of being, or wish to be, able to read them again. They might
even sometimes excite readers who possessed an adjustable "tally" of
excitableness. But beyond this, as it seemed to their critic of those
days, they never went.

Re-reading, therefore--though perhaps the consequence may not seem
downright to laymen--promised some critical interest. I first selected
for the purpose, to give the author as good a chance as possible, _Serge
Panine_, which the Academy crowned, and which went near its hundred and
fifty editions when it was still a four-year-old; and _Le Maitre de
Forges_ itself, the most popular of all, adding _Le Docteur Rameau_ and
_La Grande Marniere_, which my memory gave me as having seemed to be of
such pillars as the particular structure could boast.

[Sidenote: _Serge Panine._]

I suppose the Forty crowned _Serge Panine_ because it was a virtuous
book, and an attack on the financial trickeries which, about the time
and a little later, enriched the French language with the word "krach."
Otherwise, though no one could call it bad, its royalty could hardly
seem much other than that which qualifies for the kingdom of the blind.
The situations are good, and they are worked up into a Fifth Act, as we
may call it (it occupies almost exactly a fifth of the book, which was,
of course, dramatised), _melo_dramatic to the _n_th, ending in a
discovery of flagrant delict, or something very like it, and in the
shooting of a son-in-law by his mother-in-law to save the downfall of
his reputation. But the characters do not play up to their parts, or
each other, very well, with the possible or passable exception of the
mother-in-law, and of one very minor personage, the secretary Marechal,
whom M. Ohnet, perhaps distrustful of his power to make him more, left
minor. The hero is a Polish prince, with everything that a stage Polish
prince requires about him--handsome, superficially amiable, what the
precise call "caressing" and the vulgar "carneying" in manner, but
extravagant, q