through.

The whole story is told by the minister himself to an otherwise
unidentified Theodore and Adelaide (who may be anybody, but who adroitly
soften the conclusion), and with that consummate management of the
difficult part of actor-narrator which has been noted. In every respect
but the purely sentimental one it seems to me beyond reproach and almost
beyond praise.[229]

[Sidenote: _La Chambre Bleue._]

There could not, as has been said, be a greater contrast than _La
Chambre Bleue_ in everything but craftsmanship. Two lovers (being French
they have to be unlawful lovers, but the story would be neither injured
nor improved, as a story, if the relation were taken quite out of the
reach of the Divorce and Admiralty division, as it could be by a very
little ingenuity) meet, in slight disguise,[230] at a railway station to
spend "a day and a night and a morrow" together at a country hotel--not
a great way from Paris, but outside the widest _banlieue_. They meet and
start all right; but Fortune begins, almost at once, to play them
tricks. They are not, as of course they wish to be, alone in the
carriage. A third traveller (one knows the wretch) gets in at the last
moment, and when, not to waste too much time, they begin to make love in
English, he very properly tells them that he is an Englishman, assuring
them, however, that he is probably going to sleep, and in any case will
not attend to anything they say. Then he takes a Greek book from his
bag, and devotes himself first to it and then to slumber. When their
journey comes to an end, so does his, and he goes to the same hotel, but
not before he has had an angry interview on the platform with some one
who calls him "uncle." However, at the moment this does not matter much.
Still, the _guignon_ is on them; their _chambre bleue_ is between two
other rooms, and--as is the common habit of French hotels and the not
uncommon one of English--has doors to both, which, though they can be
fastened, by no means exclude sound. One of the next rooms is the
Englishman's; the other, unfortunately, is a large upper chamber, in
which the officers of a departing regiment are entertaining their
successors. They are very noisy, very late, and somewhat impertinent
when asked not to disturb their neighbours; but they break up at last,
and the lovers have, as the poet says, "moonlight [actually] and sleep
[possibly] for repayment." But with the morning a worse thing happens.
The lover,