d some of the
tales are amusing in almost the highest degree, being nearly as witty as
Voltaire's, and entirely free from ill-nature and sculduddery. Not that
Marmontel--though a great advocate for marriage, and even (for a
Frenchman of his time) wonderfully favourable to falling in love
_before_ marriage--pretends to be altogether superior to the customs of
his own day. We still sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" series
of Crebillon,[391] though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome would
have been almost more horrified than she was at _Joseph Andrews_ by the
perusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, _Annette et
Lubin_. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtful
kind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involve
bowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive their
bait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume and pass it by" as a
fashion of the time.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiade ou le Moi._]

We may take three or four of them as examples. One is the very first of
the collection, _Alcibiade ou le Moi_. Hardly anybody need be told that
the Alcibiades of the tale, though nominally, is not in the least really
the Alcibiades of history, or that his Athens is altogether Paris; while
his Socrates is a kind of _philosophe_, the good points of Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Diderot being combined with the faults of none of them,
and his ladies are persons who--with one exception--simply could not
have existed in Greece. This Alcibiades wishes to be loved "for
himself," and is (not without reason) very doubtful whether he ever has
been, though he is the most popular and "successful" man in Athens. His
_avoir_, for the moment, is concerned with a "Prude." (Were there prudes
in Greece? I think Diogenes would have gladly lent his lantern for the
search.) He is desperately afraid that she only loves him for _her_self.
He determines to try her; takes her, not at her deeds, but at her words,
which are, of course, such as would have made the Greeks laugh as
inextinguishably as their gods once did. She expresses gratitude for his
unselfishness, but is anything but pleased. Divers experiments are tried
by her, and when at last he hopes she will not tempt him any more,
exclaiming that he is really "l'amant le plus fidele, le plus tendre et
le plus respectueux" ... "et le plus sot," adds she, sharply, concluding
the conversation and shutting her, let us say, doors[39