is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor
Aribee, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a
tower and seems to be hopelessly cut off from rescue by the fire. The
invincible hero, however, subdues at once the rebel and the destroying
element; captures the Assyrian, who is not only his enemy and that of
his master Cyaxares, but his Rival (the word has immense importance in
these romances, and is always honoured with a capital there), and learns
that the escaping galley carried with it his beloved Mandane, daughter
of Cyaxares, of whom he is in quest, and who has been abducted from her
abductor and lover by another, Prince Mazare of Sacia.

[Sidenote: The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story.]

All this is lively and business-like enough, and one feels rather a
brute in making the observation (necessary, however) that Artamene talks
too much and not in the right way. When things in general are "on the
edge of a razor" and one is a tried and skilful soldier, one does not,
except on the stage, pause to address the unjust Gods, and inquire
whether they have consented to the destruction of the most beautiful
princess in the world; discuss with one's friends the reduction into
cinders[157] of the adorable Mandane, and further enquire, without the
slightest chance of answer, "Alas! unjust Rival! hast thou not thought
rather of thine own preservation than of hers?" However, for a time, the
incidents do carry off the verbiage, and for nearly a hundred small
pages there is no great cause for complaint. It is the style of the
book; and if you do not like it you must "seek another inn." But what
succeeds, for the major part of the first of the twenty volumes,[158] is
open to severer criticisms. We fall into interminable discussions,
_recits_, and the like, on the subject of the identity of Artamene and
Cyrus, and we see at once the imperfect fashion in which the nature of
the novel is conceived. That elaborate explanation--necessary in
history, philosophy, and other "serious" works--cannot be cut down too
much in fiction, is one truth that has not been learnt.[159] That the
stuffing of the story with large patches of solid history or
pseudo-history is wrong and disenchanting has not been learnt either;
and this is the less surprising and the more pardonable in that very
few, if indeed any, of the masters and mistresses of the novel, later
and greater than Georges and Madeleine de Sc