ing was long afterwards
succeeded by another in dramaturgy with Emile Augier, which resulted in
at least one of the most famous French plays of the nineteenth century,
_Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, based on Sandeau's _Sacs et Parchemins_. But
we need busy ourselves only with the novels themselves.

[Sidenote: Sandeau's work.]

Sandeau was barely twenty when he wrote _Rose et Blanche_, during the
time of, and with his partner in, that most dangerous of all possible
_liaisons_. But he was nearly thirty when he produced his own first work
of note, _Marianna_. In this, in _Fernand_, and in _Valcreuse_, all
books above the average in merit, there is what may be called, from no
mere Grundyite point of view, the drawback that they are all studies of
"the triangle." They are quite decently, and in fact morally, though not
goodily, handled. But it certainly may be objected that
trigonometry[267] of this kind occupies an exorbitant place in French
literature, and one may be a little sorry to see a neophyte of talent
taking to it. However, though Sandeau in these books showed his ability,
his way did not really lie _in_, though it might lie _through_, them. He
had, indeed, as a novelist should have, good changes of strings to his
bow, if not even more than one or two bows to shoot in.

No Frenchman has written a better boy's book than _La Roche aux
Mouettes_, deservedly well known to English readers in translation: and
whether he did or did not enter into designed competition with his
_quondam_ companion on the theme of Pastoral _berquinade_, I do not
myself think that _Catherine_ is much below _La Petite Fadette_ or _La
Mare au Diable_. He was a very considerable master of the short story;
you cannot have much better things of the kind than _Le Jour sans
Lendemain_ and _Un Debut dans la Magistrature_. But his special gift lay
in treating two situations which sometimes met, or crossed, or even
substantially coincided. The one was the contrast of new and old,
whether from the side of actual "money-bags and archives" or from
others. The second and higher development of, or alternative to, this
was the working out of the subdued tragical, in which, short of the very
great masters, he had few superiors, while the quietness of his tones
and values even, enhances to some tastes the poignancy of the general
effect. _Mlle. de La Seigliere_ is, I suppose, the best representative
of the first class as a novel, for _Sacs et Parchemins_, as ha