mas's _Vingt Ans Apres_. Nor is it
easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,
abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model
as does Gautier's _Capitaine Fracasse_.

It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.
Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a
good deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, and
especially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings to
that scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of which
to the novel is, in fact, the subject of this whole chapter. Not
unkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and an
uncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The older
novel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture of
this latter. _Le Chateau de la Misere_ is one of the finest things of
the kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel in
literature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicate
pastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longest
and most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough
"rhyparography"[253] of the seventeenth century. But in itself the
_Roman Comique_ is no small performance, and historically it is almost
great. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; but
we have also got out of the _fatrasie_--the mingle-mangle of story,
jargon, nonsense, and what not,--out of the mere tale of adventure, out
of the mere tale of _grivoiserie_. We have borrowed the comic
dramatist's mirror--the "Muses' Looking-glass"--and are holding it up to
nature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.
The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhat
artificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, as
many live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of their
trade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely
_personae_, they are persons.

To re-read the _Roman Comique_ just after reading the _Grand Cyrus_ came
into the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I had
not fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of the
two, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;
but an interval of a great many years since the last reading of
Scarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulne