rt and not very happy, beginning with a rather feeble
following of Xavier de Maistre,[375] continuing with stock
_liaison_-matter, and ending rather vulgarly. Let us, however, give
thanks to Alexander the younger in that he nobly defends the sacred
persons of our English ladies against the venerable Gallic calumny of
large feet, though he unhappily shows imperfect knowledge of the idioms
of our language by using "Lady" as if it were like "Milady": "Reprit
Lady," "Lady vit," etc. _Le Docteur Servans_ is more substantial, though
itself not very long. It is a rather well-engineered story (illustrative
of a fact to be noticed presently in regard to much of its author's
work) about a benevolent doctor who, at first as a method of kindness
and then as a method of testing character, "makes believe," and makes
others believe, that he has the secret of Resurrection.[376] On the
other hand, I have only read _Le Roman d'une Femme_ in the beloved
little old Belgian edition which gave one one's first knowledge of so
many pleasant things, and the light-weighting and large print of which
are specially suitable to fiction. Putting one thing aside, it is not
one of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal of
that rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young persons
which, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe"
will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long--as duly happens here.
There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing the
departure of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecot
with that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. And I must admit
that, after a middle of commonplace grime, the author works up an end of
complicated and by no means unreal tragedy.

[Sidenote: The habit of quickening up at the end.]

The point referred to about the two principal books just noticed, and
indeed about Alexander the Younger's books generally, is the remarkable
faculty--and not merely faculty but actual habit--which he displays, of
turning an uninteresting beginning into an interesting end. I cannot
remember any other novelist, in any of the literatures with which I am
acquainted, who possesses, or at least uses, this odd gift to anything
like the same degree. On the contrary, some of the greatest--far greater
than he is--give results exactly contrary. Lady Louisa Stuart's reproach
to Scott for "huddling up" his conclusions is well known and by no means
il