e better in the next chapter, for reasons obvious to some readers no
doubt already, but to be made so to others there. And so--for this
division or subdivision--an end, with one word more on Petrus Borel's
_Champavert_.

[Sidenote: Borel's _Champavert_.]

Borel, whose real Christian name, it is almost unnecessary to say, was
Pierre, and who was a sort of incarnation of a "Jeune-France" (beginning
as a _bousingot_--not ill translated by the contemporary English
"bang-up" for an extreme variety of the kind--and ending as a
_sous-prefet_), wrote other things, including a longer and rather
tedious novel, _Madame Putiphar_. But the tales of _Champavert_,[310]
which had the doubly-"speaking" sub-title of _Contes Immoraux_, are
capital examples of the more literary kind of "rotting." They are
admirably written; they show considerable power. But though one would
not be much surprised at reading any day in the newspaper a case in
which a boatman, plying for hire, had taken a beautiful girl for "fare,"
violated her on the way, and thrown her into the river, the subject is
not one for art.

FOOTNOTES:

[262] It will be observed that I use the words referred to in this note
with more discrimination than is always the case with some excellent
folk. I sympathise with Cadoudal most of the three, but I quite
recognise that Bonaparte had a kind of right to try, and to execute him.
So, if Pichegru had been tried, he might have been executed. The Enghien
business was pure murder. In some more recent instances these
distinctions have not, I think, been correctly observed by public
speakers and writers.

[263] This _philosophe inconnu_ (as his ticket-name goes in French) is,
I fancy, even more unknown in England. I have not read much of him; but
I think, if it had come in my way, I should have read more.

[264] Without doing this, it my be suggested that the contrast elsewhere
quoted "Merimee etait gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'etait pas," was
likely to make its unfavourable side specially felt in this connection.
He seems to have disgusted even the Princess Mathilde, one of the
staunchest of friends and certainly not the most squeamish or prudish of
women. Nor, in another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture of
rum and curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinking
it might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, and
the curacao does not really improve the rum. It is a pity he did not
know