on by that ingenious Presidente. Yet, allowing all
this, there remains to Feuillet's credit such a full and brilliant
series of novels, hardly one of which is an actual failure, as very few
novelists can show. Although he lived long and wrote to the end of his
life, he left no "dotages"; hardly could the youngest and strongest of
any other school in France--Guy de Maupassant himself--have beaten _La
Morte_, though it is not faultless, in power.

[Sidenote: Brief notes on some--_Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_.]

I suppose few novels, succeeding not by scandal, have ever been much
more popular than the _Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_, the title of
which good English folk have been known slightly to alter in meaning by
putting the _pauvre_ before the _jeune_. It had got into its third
hundred of editions before the present century had reached the end of
its own first lustrum, and it must have been translated (probably more
than once) into every European language. It is perfectly harmless; it is
admirably written; and the vicissitudes of the loves of the _marquis
dechu_ and the headstrong creole girl are conducted with excellent
skill, no serious improbability, and an absence of that tendency to
"tail off" which has been admitted in some of the author's books. It
was, I suppose, Feuillet's diploma-piece in almost the strictest
technical sense of that phrase, for he was elected of the Academy not
long afterwards. It has plenty of merits and no important faults, but it
is not my favourite.

[Sidenote: _M. de Camors._]

[Sidenote: Other books.]

Neither is the novel which, in old days, the proud and haughty scorners
of this _Roman_, as a _berquinade_, used to prefer--_M. de Camors_.[411]
Here there is plenty of naughtiness, attempts at strong character, and
certainly a good deal of interest of story, with some striking incident.
But it is spoilt, for me, by the failure of the principal personage. I
think it not quite impossible that Feuillet intended M. de Camors as a
sort of modernised, improved, and extended Lovelace, or even
Valmont--superior to scruple, destined and able to get the better of man
or woman as he chooses. Unfortunately he has also endeavoured to make
him a gentleman; and the compound, as the chemists say, is not "stable."
The coxcombry of Lovelace and the priggishness, reversed (though in a
less detestable form), of Valmont, are the elements that chiefly remain
in evidence, unsupported by the vigorous