anaemia--a generation
devoted to the 'chiselled phrase,' to accumulated 'documents,' to
microscopic porings over human baseness, to minute and disgustful
records of what in humanity is least human--may readily bring
these unregarded and railing accusations. Like one of the great and
good-humoured Giants of Rabelais, you may hear the murmurs from afar,
and smile with disdain. To you, who can amuse the world--to you who
offer it the fresh air of the highway, the battle-field, and the
sea--the world must always return, escaping gladly from the boudoirs and
the _bouges_, from the surgeries and hospitals, and dead rooms, of M.
Daudet and M. Zola and of the wearisome De Goncourt.

With all your frankness, and with that queer morality of the Camp which,
if it swallows a camel now and again, never strains at a gnat, how
healthy and wholesome, and even pure, are your romances! You never gloat
over sin, nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the corruptions of sense.
The passions in your tales are honourable and brave, the motives are
clearly human. Honour, Love, Friendship make the threefold cord, the
clue your knights and dames follow through how delightful a labyrinth of
adventures! Your greatest books, I take the liberty to maintain, are
the Cycle of the Valois ('La Reine Margot, 'La Dame de Montsoreau,' 'Les
Quarante-cinq'), and the Cycle of Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze ('Les
Trois Mousquetaires,' 'Vingt Ans Apres,' 'Le Vicomte de Bragelonne);
and, beside these two trilogies--a lonely monument, like the sphinx hard
by the three pyramids--'Monte Cristo.'

In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn incense to
that great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your people worship.
You had Branto'me, you had Tallemant, you had Retif, and a dozen others,
to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that
would have outdone even the present _naturalistes_. From these alcoves
of 'Les Dames Galantes,' and from the torture chambers (M. Zola would
not have spared us one starting sinew of brave La Mole on the rack)
you turned, as Scott would have turned, without a thought of their
profitable literary uses. You had other metal to work on: you gave
us that superstitious and tragical true love of La Moles, that
devotion--how tender and how pure!--of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau.
You gave us the valour of D'Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the
melancholy nobility of Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and