r Mutual Friend_.

[179] Valentine has an elder sister who has a son, irregularily
existent, but is as much in love with Benedict as if she were a girl and
he were a gentleman; and this son marries the much older Athenais, a
lovely peasant girl who has been the unwilling _fiancee_ and wife of the
ingenious pitchforker. You have seldom to go far in George Sand for an
unmarried lady with a child for chastity, and a widow who marries a boy
for maternal affection.

[180] There is also an Irish priest called Magnus, who, like everybody
else, is deeply and (in the proper sense of _sans espoir_) desperately
in love with Lelia. He is, on the whole, quite the maddest--and perhaps
the most despicable--of the lot.

[181] If any one says, "So, then, there are several 'most
intolerables,'" let me point out that intolerableness is a more than
"twy-peaked" hill or range. Julien Sorel and Marius were not designed to
be gentlemen.

[182] It is bad for Amelie, who, in a not unnatural revulsion from her
_fiance's_ neglects and eccentricities, lets herself be fooled by the
handsome Italian.

[183] George Sand's treatment of the great Empress, Marie Antoinette's
mother, is a curious mixture of half-reluctant admiration and Republican
bad-bloodedness.

[184] Porpora is included, but the amiable monarch, who has heard that
the old _maestro_ speaks freely of him, gives private orders that he
shall be stopped at the frontier.

[185] _Cow's_ breath has, I believe, been prescribed in such cases by
the faculty; hardly children's.

[186] She does not make the delicate distinction once drawn by another
of her sex: "I can tell you how many people I have kissed, but I cannot
tell you how many have kissed _me_."

[187] She is rather fond of taking her readers into confidence this way.
I have no particular objection to it; but those who object to
Thackeray's _parabases_ ought to think this is a still more
objectionable thing.

[188] The Count Albani plays his difficult part of thirdsman very well
throughout, though just at first he would make an advance on "auld lang
syne" if Lucrezia would let him. But later he is on strict honour, and
quarrels with the Prince for his tyranny.

[189] It is very pleasing to see, as I have seen, this famous phrase
quoted as if it had reference to the _joys_ of Arcadia.

[190] If any among my congregation be offended by apparent flippancy in
this notice of a book which, to my profound astonishment, some pe