Unions, call "victimisation," but in a constant state of alarm for its
position, and "looking over its shoulder" with a sort of threefold
squint, at the white flag, the eagles--and the guillotine. Nothing
really happens, but it takes 240 pages to bring us to an actual meeting
between Lieutenant Lucien Leeuwen and his previously at distance adored
widow, the Marquise de Chasteller.

The book is not a _very_ good novel, even as a fragment, and probably
nothing would ever have made it so as a whole. But there is good
novel-stuff in it, and it is important to a student of the novel and
almost indispensable to a student of this novelist. Of the cynical
papa--who, when his son comes to him in a "high-falutin" mood, requests
him to go to his (the papa's) opera-box, to replace his sire with some
agreeable girl-officials of that same institution, and to spend at least
200 francs on a supper for them at the Rocher--one would gladly see
more. Of the barrack (or rather _not_-barrack) society at Nancy, the
sight given, though not agreeable, is interesting, and to any one who
knew something of our old army, especially before the abolition of
purchase, very curious. There is no mess-room and apparently no common
life at all, except on duty and at the "pension" hotel-meals, to
which,--rather, it would seem, at the arbitrary will of the colonel than
by "regulation,"--you have to subscribe, though you may, and indeed
must, live in lodgings exactly like a _particulier_. Of the
social-political life of the place we see rather too much, for Beyle,
not content with making the politics which he does not like make
themselves ridiculous--or perhaps not being able to do so--himself tells
us frequently that they _are_ ridiculous, which is not equally
effective. So also, instead of putting severe or "spiritual" speeches in
Lucien's mouth, he tells us that they _were_ spiritual or severe, an
assurance which, of course, we receive with due politeness, but which
does not give us as much personal delectation as might be supplied by
the other method. No doubt this and other things are almost direct
results of that preference for _recit_ over semi-dramatic evolution of
the story by deed and word, which has been noticed. But they are
damaging results all the same: and, after making the fairest allowance
for its incomplete condition, the thing may be said to support, even
more than _Lamiel_ does, the conclusion already based upon the
self-published storie