d the rest "whistled down the wind."

[Sidenote: The difference of the Second Part.]

_Jerome Paturot a la recherche de la meilleure des Republiques_ almost
dooms itself, by its title, to be a very much less merry book than
_Jerome Paturot a la recherche d'une position sociale_. The "sparkle"
which Thackeray had justly seen in the first part is far rarer in the
second; in fact, were it not for Oscar to some extent and Malvina to a
much greater, there would hardly be any sparkle at all. The Republic has
been proclaimed; a new "Commissary" ("Prefect" is an altogether
unrepublican word) is appointed; he is shortly after stirred up to
vigorous action (usually in the way of cashiering officials), and Jerome
is a victim of this _mot d'ordre_. He goes to Paris to solicit; after a
certain interval (of course of failure) Malvina comes to look after him,
and to exercise the charms of her _chapeau grenat_ once more. But even
she fails to find the birds which (such as they were) she had caught in
the earlier years' nests, until after the bloodshed of the barricades,
where Oscar unfortunately fails to show himself a hero, while Jerome
does useful work as a fighter on the side of comparative Order, and
Malvina herself shines as a nurse. At last Paturot is appointed
"Inspector-General of Arab Civilisation in North Africa," and the pair
set out for this promised, if not promising, land. He, like Gigadibs,
provides himself with "instruments of labour"; Malvina, agreeable to the
last, provides _herself_ with several new dress-patterns of the latest
fashion, and a complete collection of the _Journal des Modes_.

This not very elaborate scenario, as worked out, fills nearly a thousand
pages; but it is very much to be feared that the "lazy novel-reader"
will get through but a few of them, and will readily return the book to
his own or other library shelves. It is, in fact, a bitterly satiric but
perfectly serious study--almost history--of the actual events of the
earlier part of the interregnum between Louis Philippe and Napoleon the
Third, of the latter of whom Reybaud (writing, it would seem, before he
was even President), gives a very unflattering, though unnamed,
description. Certainly more than half, perhaps more than three-quarters,
of the book can claim no novel character at all.[292]

[Sidenote: Not much of a novel.]

It would be possible to extract (if one had space and it were
proportionately worth while) passages from the rem