note: _Heureusement._]

There is also much good in _Heureusement_, the nearest to a
"Crebillonnade" of all, though the Crebillonesque situations are
ingeniously broken off short. It is told by an old marquise[394] to an
almost equally old abbe, her crony, who only at the last discovers that,
long ago, he himself was very nearly the shepherd of the proverbial
hour. And _Le Mari Sylphe_, which is still more directly connected with
one of Crebillon's actual pieces, and with some of the weaker stories
(_v. sup._) of the _Cabinet des Fees_, would be good if it were not much
too long. Others might be mentioned, but my own favourite, though it has
nothing quite so magnetic in it as the _nez de Roxelane_, is _Le
Philosophe Soi-disant_, a sort of apology for his own clan, in a satire
on its less worthy members, which may seem to hit rather unfairly at
Rousseau, but which is exceedingly amusing.

[Sidenote: _Le Philosophe Soi-disant._]

Clarice--one of those so useful young widows of whom the novelists of
this time might have pleaded that they took their ideas of them from the
Apostle St. Paul--has for some time been anxious to know a _philosophe_,
though she has been warned that there are _philosophes_ and
_philosophes_, and that the right kind is neither common nor very fond
of society. She expresses surprise, and says that she has always heard a
_philosophe_ defined as an odd creature who makes it his business to be
like nobody else. "Oh," she is told, "there is no difficulty about
_that_ kind," and one, by name Ariste, is shortly added to her
country-house party. She politely asks him whether he is not a
_philosophe_, and whether philosophy is not a very beautiful thing? He
replies (his special line being sententiousness) that it is simply the
knowledge of good and evil, or, if she prefers it, Wisdom. "Only that?"
says wicked Doris; but Clarice helps him from replying to the scoffer by
going on to ask whether the fruit of Wisdom is not happiness? "And,
Madame, the making others happy." "Dear me," says naive Lucinde, half
under her breath, "I must be a _philosophe_, for I have been told a
hundred times that it only depended on myself to be happy by making
others happy." There is more wickedness from Doris; but Ariste, with a
contemptuous smile, explains that the word "happiness" has more than one
meaning, and that the _philosophe_ kind is different from that at the
disposal and dispensation of a pretty woman. Clarice, admitt