Revenants. Sophie Printemps.
Two early and slight books (one of them, perhaps, the "bad" one referred to above) may find place in a note. Revenants is a fantasy, in which the three most famous pairs of lovers of the later eighteenth century, Des Grieux and Manon, Paul and Virginie, Werther and Charlotte, are revived and brought together (v. sup. p. 378). This sort of thing, not seldom tried, has very seldom been a success; and Revenants can hardly be said to be one of the lucky exceptions. Sophie Printemps is the history of a good girl, who, out of her goodness, deliberately marries an epileptic. It has little merit, except for a large episode or parenthesis of some forty or fifty pages (nearly a sixth of the book), telling the prowess of a peremptory but agreeable baron, who first foils a dishonest banker, and then defends this very banker against an adventurer more rascally than himself, whom the baron kills in a duel. This is good enough to deserve extraction from the book, and separate publication as a short story.
[380] It is constantly called (and I fear I have myself sinned in this respect) L'Affaire Clémenceau. But this is not the proper title, and does not really fit. It is the heading of a client's instruction—a sort of irregular "brief"—to the advocate who (resp. fin.) is to defend him; and is thus an autobiographic narrative (diversified by a few "put-in" letters) throughout. The title is the label of the brief.
[381] This is probably meant as the first "fight" on the shady side of Iza's character; not that, in this instance, she means to insult or hurt, but that the probability of hurting and insulting does not occur to her, or leaves her indifferent.
[382] Second "light," and now not dubious, for it is made a point of later.
[383] It has sometimes amused me to remember that some of the warmest admirers of Dumas fils have been among the most violent decriers of Thackeray—for preaching. I suppose they preferred the Frenchman's texts.
[384] Neither morality, nor friendship, nor anything like sense of "good form" could be likely to hold him back. But he is represented as nothing if not un homme fort in character and temperament, who knows his woman thoroughly, and must perceive that he is letting himself be beaten by her in the very act of possessing her.
[385] Vide Mr. Midshipman Easy.
[386] This phrase may require just a word of explanation. I admitted (Vol. I. p. 409) the abnormality in La Religieuse as not disqualifying. But this was not an abnormality of the individual. Iza's is.