, but in short and almost dramatised
dialogue. No doubt this is often clumsy, but it may seem to have been
not a whole mistake in itself--only an abortive attempt at something
which, much later again, had to come before real novel-writing could be
achieved, and which the harangues of the Scudery type could never have
provided. There is a little actual history in them--not the
key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and
distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages,
proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced
"vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as
abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as much
propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by them, are very
rare.

[Sidenote: Examples of their style.]

No one will be surprised to hear that the "Phebus" or systematised
conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved
Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a
large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful
of all these, if not also of all known to me in any language, the
following:

During this task, Love, who had ambushed himself, plunged
his wings in the tears of the lover, and dried them in the
burning breast of the maiden.

"A squadron of sighs" is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting
to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of
the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the
shipwreck of his own concupiscence."

And I like this:

The grafts of our desires being inarched long since in the
tree of our loves, the branches thereof bore the lovely
bouquets of our hopes.

And this is fine:

Paper! that the rest of your white surface may not blush at
my shame, suffer me to blacken it with my sorrow!

It has always been a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences
should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very
stuff of which dreams and love and poetry--the three best things of
life--are made.[134]

[Sidenote: Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_.]

The British Museum possesses not very many of the, I believe, numerous
works of Nicolas de Montreux, _alias_, as has been said, Ollenix du Mont
Sacre, a "gentleman of Maine," as he scrupulously designates himself.
But it does possess two parts (the first two