to insult or
hurt, but that the probability of hurting and insulting does not occur
to her, or leaves her indifferent.

[382] Second "light," and now not dubious, for it is made a point of
later.

[383] It has sometimes amused me to remember that some of the warmest
admirers of Dumas _fils_ have been among the most violent decriers of
Thackeray--_for_ preaching. I suppose they preferred the Frenchman's
texts.

[384] Neither morality, nor friendship, nor anything like sense of "good
form" could be likely to hold him back. But he is represented as nothing
if not _un homme fort_ in character and temperament, who knows his woman
thoroughly, and must perceive that he is letting himself be beaten by
her in the very act of possessing her.

[385] Vide _Mr. Midshipman Easy_.

[386] This phrase may require just a word of explanation. I admitted
(Vol. I. p. 409) the abnormality in _La Religieuse_ as not
disqualifying. But this was not an abnormality of the _individual_.
Iza's is.

[387] Perhaps I may add another subject for those who like it. "Both
Manon and Iza do _prefer_, and so to speak only _love_, the one lover.
Does this in Iza's case aggravate, or does it partially redeem, her
general behaviour?" A less disputable addition, for the reason given
above, may be a fairly long note on the author's work outside of
fiction.

[Sidenote: Note on Dumas _fils'_ drama, etc.]

With the drama which has received such extraordinary encomia (the great
name of Moliere having even been brought in for comparison) I have no
exhaustive acquaintance; but I have read enough not to wish to read any
more. If the huge prose tirades of _L'Etrangere_ bore me (as they do) in
the study, what would they do on the stage, where long speeches, not in
great poetry, are always intolerable? (I have always thought it one of
the greatest triumphs of Madame Sarah Bernhardt that, at the very
beginning of her career, she made the heroine of this piece--_if_ she
did so--interesting.) Over the _Fils Naturel_ I confess that even I, who
have struggled with and mastered my thousands, if not my tens of
thousands, of books, broke down hopelessly. _Francillon_ is livelier,
and might, in the earlier days, have made an amusing novel. But
discounting, judicially and not prejudicially, the excessive laudation,
one sees that even here he did what he meant to do, and though there is
higher praise than that, it is praise only too seldom deserved. As for
his Prefaces