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ushing honour! hide that wedding-day." But, you see, the Paul-de-Kockian hero was not like Lord Welter. There was hardly anything that _this_ "fellow couldn't do." Paul, however, has kept his word with his subscribers by shutting out all sculduddery, even of the mildest kind, and has, if not reconciled, partly conciliated critics by throwing in some tolerable minor personages. Pelagie, Constance's lively friend, has a character which he could somehow manage without Richardsonian vulgarity. Her amiable father, an orchestra musician, who manages to find _des jolies choses_ even in a damned piece, is not bad; and, above all, Pelagie's lover, and, till Edmond's misconduct, his friend, M. Ginguet--a modest Government clerk, who adores his mistress, is constantly snubbed by her, but has his flames crowned at last,--is, though not a particularly novel character, a very well-played part. [Sidenote: _Andre le Savoyard._] One of the author's longer books, _Andre le Savoyard_, is a curious blend of the _berquinade_ with what some English critics have been kind enough to call the "candour" of the more usual French novel. The candour, however, is in very small proportion to the berquinity. This, I suppose, helped it to pass the English censorship of the mid-nineteenth century; for I remember a translation (it was the first book of the author's I ever read) far away in the 'fifties, among a collection of books where nothing flagrantly scabrous would have been admitted. It begins, and for the most part continues, in an almost completely Marmontelish or Edgeworthian fashion. A selfish glutton and _petit-maitre_ of a French count, M. de Francornard, loses his way (with a postilion, a valet, and his little daughter, whom he has carried off from her mother) in the hills of Savoy, and is rescued and guested by a good peasant, whom he rewards with a _petit ecu_ (three _livres_, not five or six). The peasant dies, and his two eldest boys set out for Paris as chimney-sweeps. The elder (eleven-year-old) Andre himself is befriended by a good Auvergnat water-carrier and his little daughter Manette; after which he falls in with the Francornards--now, after a fashion, a united family. He is taken into their household and made a sort of protege by the countess, the child Adolphine being also very fond of him; while, though in another way, their _soubrette_ Lucile, a pretty damsel of eighteen, is fonder still. Years pass, and the fortunate An
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