reams of paper
for love-letters, and a supply of rose-coloured and avanturine wax.[206]
He is going to be, if he is not as yet, "fatal," "vague,"
"fallen-angelical," "volcanic." There is only one desirable quality
which unkind fate has put beyond his reach. He is not, and cannot make
himself, an illegitimate child! Now, I am sorry for any one who, having
read this, cannot lean back in his chair and follow it up for himself by
a series of fancy pictures of Jeunes-something from 1830 to 1918.[207]

Of the actual stories "Daniel Jovard" takes up the cue of the _Preface_
directly, and describes the genesis of a _romantique a tous crins_.
"Onuphrius" honestly sub-titles itself "Les Vexations Fantastiques d'un
admirateur d'Hoffmann," and has, I think, sometimes been dismissed as a
Hoffmannesque _pastiche_. Far be it from me to hint the slightest
denigration of the author of the _Phantasiestuecke_ and the
_Nachtstuecke_, of the _Serapion's-Brueder_ and the _Kater Murr_--not the
least pleasing features on the right side of the half-glorious,
half-ghastly contrast between the Germany of a hundred years ago and the
Germany of to-day. But "Onuphrius" is Hoffmann Gautierised, German
"Franciolated," a _Walpurgisnacht_ softened by Morgane la Fee. "Elias
Wildmanstadius," one of the earliest, remains one of the most
agreeable, pictures of a fanatic of the mediaeval. The overture and the
finale, both pieces in which the great motto "Trinq!" is perhaps a very
little abused, nevertheless contain a considerable amount of wisdom, and
the last not a little wit.[208] But the central story _Celle-ci et
Celle-la_, which fills nearly half the book, is no doubt the article on
which one must--as far as this essay-piece is concerned--judge Gautier's
tale-telling gifts. It is "improper" in part; indeed, the thing, which
is largely dialogic, may be thought to have been a young romantic's
challenge to Crebillon. The points of the contest would require a very
careful judge to reckon them out. Although Gautier was no democrat, and
certainly no misogynist, his lady of quality, Madame de M., is terribly
below the Crebillonesque Marquises and Celies in every respect, except
the beauty, which we have to take on trust; while, if she is not quite
such a fiend as Laclos's heroine, she is also unlike her in being
stupid. The hero, Rodolphe, though by no means a cad and possessed of
much more heart than M. de Clerval or Clitandre, has neither their
manners nor