replace _it_, while the hundred men will, at the very moment they are
killed, be replaced, just as good on the average, by the ordinary
operations of nature. Besides, by partially ruining the castle, you give
an opening to the sin of the restorer, for which there is, we know, _no_
pardon, here or hereafter.[190]

[Sidenote: _La Daniella._]

_La Daniella_ is a rather long book and a rather dull one. There is a
good deal of talkee-talkee of the _Corinne_ kind in it: the heroine is
an angelic Italian soubrette; the hero is one of the coxcombish heroes
of French novels, who seem to have set themselves to confirm the most
unjust ideas of their nation entertained in foreign climes; there is a
"Miss Medora," who, as the hero informs us, "plays the coquette
clumsily, as English girls generally do," etc. _Passons outre_, without
inquiring how much George Sand knew about English girls.

[Sidenote: _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore._]

One of the best of her books to read, though it has neither the human
interest of _Lucrezia Floriani_, nor the prettiness of the Idylls, nor
the style-colour of some other books, is _Les Beaux Messieurs de
Bois-Dore_. It is all the more agreeable that we may even "begin with a
little aversion." It suggests itself as a sort of interloper in the
great business of Dumas and Co.: it opens, indeed, only a few years
before D'Artagnan rode up to the inn on the buttercup-coloured pony.
And, in manner, it may look at first as if the writer were following
another but much inferior example--our own G. P. R. James; for there are
"two cavaliers," and one tells the other a tale fit to make him fall
asleep and off his saddle. But it improves remarkably, and before you
have read a hundred pages you are very fairly "enfisted." The figure of
the old Marquis de Bois-Dore--an aged dandy with divers absurdities
about him,[191] but a gentleman to his by no means yet stiffened or
stooping backbone; a heart of gold, and a wrist with a good core of
steel left in it--might easily have been a failure. It is a success. His
first guest and then adversary, the wicked Spaniard, Sciarra d'Alvimar
or de Villareal, whom the old marquis runs through the body in a
moonlight duel for very sufficient reason,[192] may not be thought quite
equally successful. Scoundrel as he is, George Sand has unwisely thrown
over him a touch of _guignon_--of shadowing and resistless fate--which
creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good ol