in case of refusal. There are of course difficulties, but the count,
like a man and a gentleman, consents at once; the father, _bon gre mal
gre_, has to do so, and the King, a tyrant who has had his way, gives a
sulky and qualified acquiescence. What follows need only be very rapidly
sketched. After a little time Caroline sees, at her old-new home, an
engaging young man, a Herr von Lindorf; and matters, though she is quite
virtuous, are going far when she receives an enormous epistle[62] from
her lover, confessing that he himself is the author of her husband's
disfigurement (under circumstances discreditable to himself and
creditable to Walstein), enclosing, too, a very handsome portrait of the
count _as he was_, and but for this disfigurement might be still. What
happens then nobody ought to need, or if he does he does not deserve, to
be told. There is no greatness about this book, but to any one who has
an eye for consequences it will probably seem to have some future in it.
It shows the breaking of the Sensibility mould and the running of the
materials into a new pattern as early as 1786. In 1886 M. Feuillet or M.
Theuriet would of course have clothed the story-skeleton differently,
but one can quite imagine either making use of a skeleton by no means
much altered. M. Rod would have given it an unhappy ending, but one can
see it in his form likewise.[63]

[Sidenote: Madame de Genlis _iterum_.]

Of Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de Genlis, it were tempting to say a
good deal personally if we did biographies here when they can easily be
found elsewhere. How she became a canoness at six years old, and shortly
afterwards had for her ordinary dress (with something supplementary, one
hopes) the costume of a Cupid, including quiver and wings; how she
combined the offices of governess to the Orleans children and mistress
to their father; how she also combined the voluptuousness and the
philanthropy of her century by taking baths of milk and afterwards
giving that milk to the poor;[64] how, rather late in life, she attained
the very Crown-Imperial of governess-ship in being chosen by Napoleon to
teach him and his Court how to behave; and how she wrote infinite
books--many of them taking the form of fiction--on education, history,
religion, everything, can only be summarised. The last item of the
summary alone concerns us, and that must be dealt with summarily too.
_Mlle. de Clermont_--a sort of historico-"sensible" story in st