r rather odd abbey somehow accommodating
not merely her own irregularly arrived child (_not_ Belle-Rose's), but
Belle-Rose himself and his marchioness after their marriage; and she is
poisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There are
actually two villains--a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is a
more difficult person than your hero) very unusual--one of whom is
despatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actual
curtain. There is the proper persecuting minister--Louvois in this case.
There are valiant and comic non-commissioned officers. There is a brave,
witty, and generous Count; a lover of the "fatal" and ill-fated kind;
his bluff and soldierly brother; and more of the "affair of the poisons"
than even that mentioned above. You have the Passage of the Rhine,
fire-raisings, duels, battles, skirmishes, ambuscades, treachery,
chivalry--in fact, what you will comes in. And you must be a very
ill-conditioned or feeble-minded person if you _don't_ will. Every now
and then one might, no doubt, "smoke" a little reminiscence; more
frequently slight improbabilities; everywhere, of course, an absence of
any fine character-drawing. But these things are the usual spots, and
very pardonable ones, of the particular sun. I do not remember any
French book of the type, outside the Alexandrian realm, that is as good
as _Belle-Rose_;[306] and I am bound to say that it strikes me as better
than anything of its kind with us, from James and Ainsworth to the
excellent lady[307] who wrote _Whitehall_, and _Whitefriars_, and _Owen
Tudor_.

[Sidenote: Souvestre, Feval, etc.]

It must, however, be evident that of this way in making books, and of
speaking of them, there is no end.[308] Fain would I dwell a little on
Emile Souvestre, in whom the "moral heresy," of which he was supposed to
be a sectary, certainly did not corrupt the pure milk of the
tale-telling gift in such charming things as _Les Derniers Bretons_, _Le
Foyer Breton_, and the rather different _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_;
also on the better work of Paul Feval, who as certainly did not
invariably do suit and service to morality, but Sue'd and Soulie'd it in
many books with promising titles;[309] and who, once at least, was
inspired (again by the witchery of the country between the Baie des
Trepasses and the Rock of Dol) to write _La Fee des Greves_, a most
agreeable thing of its kind. Auguste Maquet (or Augustus MacKeat) will
com