prenede is
fond of Amazons), though _not_ in the details, is of course in the idea
a replica of that between Alcamenes and Menalippe in _Cleopatre_; and
names recur freely. Moreover, in the less famous story, the whole
situation of hero and heroine is exactly duplicated in respect of the
above-mentioned Lysimachus and Parisatis, Cassandra's younger sister,
who is made to marry Hephaestion at first, and only awarded, in the same
fashion as her elder sister, at last to her true lover.

By the way, the already-mentioned "harmonising" is in few places more
oddly shown than by the remark that Plutarch's error in representing
Statira as killed was due to the fact that he did not recognise her
under her later name of Cassandra--a piece of Gascon half-naivete,
half-jest which Mlle. de Scudery's Norman shrewdness[203] would hardly
have allowed. There is also much more of the supernatural in these books
than in hers, and the characters are much less prim. Roxana, who, of
course, is meant to be naughty, actually sends a bracelet of her hair to
Oroondates! which, however, that faithful lover of another instantly
returns.

[Sidenote: _Faramond._]

La Calprenede's third novel, _Faramond_, is unfinished as his work, and
the continuation seems to have more than one claimant to its authorship.
If the "eminent hand" was one Vaumoriere, who independently accomplished
a minor "heroic" in _Le Grand Scipion_, he was not likely to infuse much
fire into the ashes of his predecessor. As it stands in La Calprenede's
own part, _Faramond_ is a much duller book than _Cassandre_ or
_Cleopatre_. It must, of course, be remembered that, though patriotism
has again and again prompted the French to attack these misty
Merovingian times (the _Astree_ itself deals with them in the liberal
fashion in which it deals with everything), the result has rarely, if
ever, been a success. Indeed I can hardly think of any one--except our
own "Twin Brethren" in _Thierry and Theodoret_--who has made anything
good out of French history before Charlemagne.[204] The reader,
therefore, unless he be a very thorough and conscientious student, had
better let _Faramond_ alone; but its elder sisters are much pleasanter
company. Indeed the impolite thought will occur that it is much more
like the Scudery novels, part of which it succeeded, and may possibly
have been the result--not by any means the only one in literature--of an
unlucky attempt to beat a rival by copying him or