one which is very striking. I pointed
out in the appropriate place--not at the moment thinking of Feuillet at
all--the strange fashion in which Alexander the Younger constantly
"makes good" an at first unattractive story; and, even in his most
generally successful work, increases the appeal as he goes on. With
Feuillet the order of things is quite curiously reversed. Almost
(though, as will be seen, not quite) invariably, from the early days of
_Bellah_ and _Onesta_ to _La Morte_, he "lays out" his plan in a
masterly manner, and accumulates a great deal of excellent material, as
it were by the roadside, for use as the story goes on. But, except when
he is at his very best, he flags, and is too apt to keep up his curtain
for a fifth act when it had much better have fallen for good at the end
of the fourth. As has been noted already, his characters are not deeply
cut, though they are faithfully enough sketched. That he is not strong
enough to carry through a purpose-novel is not much to his discredit,
for hardly anybody ever has been. But the _Histoire de Sibylle_--his
swashing blow in the George Sand duel (_v. sup._ p. 204)--though much
less dull than the _riposte_ in _Mlle. la Quintaine_, would hardly
induce "the angels," in Mr. Disraeli's famous phrase, to engage him
further as a Hal-o'-the-Wynd on their side.

But Feuillet's most vulnerable point is the peculiar sentimental
morality-in-immorality which has been more than once glanced at. It was
frankly found fault with by French critics--themselves by no means
strait-laced--and the criticisms were well summed up (I remember the
wording but not the writer of it) thus: "An honest woman does not feel
the temptations" to which the novelist exposes his heroines. That there
_is_ a certain morbid sentimentality about Feuillet's attitude not
merely to the "triangle" but even to simple "exchange of fantasies"
between man and woman in general, can hardly be denied. He has a most
curious and (one might almost say) Judaic idea as to woman as a
temptress, in fashions ranging from the almost innocent seduction of Eve
through the more questionable[409] one of Delilah, down to the sheer
attitude of Zuleika-Phraxanor, and the street-corner woman in the
Proverbs. And this necessitates a correspondingly unheroic presentation
of his heroes. They are always being led into serious mischief ("in a
red-rose chain" or a ribbon one), as Marmontel's sham philosopher[410]
was into comic confusi