[135] It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with a
pastoral play entitled _Athlette_, from the heroine's rather curious
name.

[136] It _has_ two poems and some miscellanea. Something like this is
the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.

[137] It may be childish, but the association in this group of
ladies--three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of
France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other
namesake of whom I ever met--seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps
worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely
dedicatee but part author of the first tale.

[138] The habit is common with these authors.

[139] He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the author's
"affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively rather
harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.

[140] _La Vie et les Oeuvres de Honore d'Urfe._ Par le Chanoine O. C.
Reure, Paris, 1910.

[141] The Abbe Reure, to whom I owe my own knowledge of the translation
and dedication, says nothing more.

[142] M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown that, as
one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller French
love-novels which preceded the _Astree_; indeed, as we saw, it is
obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the
_Heptameron_. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or
till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic
triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual
passion.

[143] They had, indeed, neither luck nor distinction after Honore's
death: and the last of the family died, like others of the renegade
nobles of France, by his own hand, to escape the guillotine which he
himself had helped to establish.

[144] The more orthodox "laws of love" which Celadon puts up in his
"Temple of Astraea" are less amusing.

[145] He constantly plays this part of referee and moraliser. But he is
by no means exempt from the pleasing fever of the place, and some have
been profane enough to think his mistress, Diane, more attractive than
the divine Astree herself.

[146] Very delicate persons have been shocked by the advantages afforded
to Celadon in his disguise as the Druid's daughter, and the consequent
familiarity with the innocent unrecognising heroine. But _honi soit_
will cover them.

[147] There is plenty of thi