with an
accomplished gentleman who has helped her to _esprit_ by introducing her
to those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at his
predecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandane
herself. Moreover his inset tale _L'Amour Egare_ (itself something of a
parody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satirical
account (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so to
her physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining to
give a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting his
readers, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant compliments
addressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having a
complexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and the
Dawn in having a red tip to her nose!

But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, and
in its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in the
proper sense a story--that is to say, _one_ story,--it certainly is
not: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, and
his title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The two
parts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that a
single personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,
plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This second
is wholly occupied by legal matters (Furetiere had been "bred to the
law"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,
Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky
author "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has
been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his
utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more
knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of
specially commercial and financial lingo.

This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance than
interest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, where
there is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positive
character-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal of
lively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to which
profession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentiful
compensations.

As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,
both of the legal _bourgeoisie_ by rank. The pr