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