ngle" is established
nobody versed in novels needs to be told, though everybody, however well
versed, should be glad to read. Arsene of course must die; what the
others who lived did with their lives is left untold. The thing is quite
unexciting, but is done with the author's miraculous skill; nor perhaps
is there any piece that better shows his faculty of writing like the
"gentleman,"[225] which, according to a famous contrast, he was, on a
subject almost equally liable to more or less vulgar Paul-de-Kockery, to
sloppy sentimentalism, and to cheap cynical journalese.

[Sidenote: And _L'Abbe Aubain_.]

As for _L'Abbe Aubain_, it is slight but purely comic, of the very best
comedy, telling how a great lady, obliged by pecuniary misfortunes to
retire with her husband to a remote country house, takes a fancy to, and
imagines she has possibly excited fatal passion in, the local priest;
attributes to him a sentimental past; but half good-naturedly, half
virtuously obtains for him a comfortable town-cure in order to remove
him, and perhaps herself, from temptation. This moving tale of
self-denial and of averted sorrow, sin, and perhaps tragedy, is told in
letters to another lady. Then follows a single epistle from the Abbe
himself to his old Professor of Theology, telling, with the utmost
brevity and matter-of-factness, how glad he is to make the exchange,
what a benevolent nuisance the patroness has been, and how he looks
forward to meeting the Professor in his new parsonage, with a plump
chicken and a bottle of old bordeaux between them. There is hardly
anywhere a better bit of irony of the lighter kind. It is rather like
Charles de Bernard, with the higher temper and brighter flash of
Merimee's style.

[Sidenote: _La Prise de la Redoute._]

All the stories just noticed, except _Carmen_ itself (which is of 1847),
appeared originally in the decade 1830-40, as well as others of less
note, and one wonderful little masterpiece, which deserves notice by
itself. This is _La Prise de la Redoute_, a very short thing--little
more than an anecdote--of one of the "furious five minutes," or hours,
not unknown in all great wars, and seldom better known than in that of
these recent years, despite the changes of armament and tactics. It is
almost sufficient to say of it that no one who has the slightest
critical faculty can fail to see its consummateness, and that any one
who does not see or will not acknowledge that consummateness ma