“I tell you that its age makes a great deal of difference; we like pictures of contemporary manners. A novel more than twenty years old cannot depict the manners of to-day.”
“But it may depict the passions and absurdities of society; those things are of all times, mademoiselle. That is why people still enjoy seeing Tartufe, the Misanthrope, the Etourdi, although those works are certainly not new.”
“Oh! it all depends on the taste. But I don’t want the Femme de Bon Sens. Besides, I don’t like the title; it seems to be an epigram.”
“Well, here is something new—the Bourreau de——”
“Enough! enough! thank the Lord we have never cared for executioners—bourreaux—! we don’t like the literature of the burying ground, the manners of the Morgue. It is possible that such pictures may be true to life, but we have no desire to go to those places to find out; we would shun with horror a street or square where preparations were being made to execute a criminal; and you expect us to enjoy reading books where the author persists in describing such horrors in detail, in presenting ghastly pictures! Oh! it seems to me, madame, that a man must have a very bad opinion of women to think that they will enjoy such reading, that such tableaux can possibly have any attraction for them. It is equivalent to coupling us with the wretches who rush in crowds to look on at an execution; and I did not suppose that there could be any glory in writing for those women!”
I could not resist the desire to look up from my paper; we like to meet people who think as we do, and as I agreed absolutely with that young woman in her views regarding literature, I looked at her with satisfaction. Chance willed that she should look at me at the same moment. I smiled, no doubt, for she made a funny little face and skipped away to another part of the room.
She soon returned with four volumes, and said:
“At last, I believe I have found one that we haven’t read: Eugène et Guillaume. I will take this. It’s by Picard; it ought to be good.”
“You should not always trust to the author’s name, mademoiselle; however, when it is by a writer who knows how to write, one is sure at all events to have something which will not offend in style, even if the plot or the incidents are not well done. You say that you will take Eugène et Guillaume?”
“Yes, but I must have something else with it. Four volumes! why, they will hardly last one evening. By the way, have you anything new by the author of Sœur Anne? He is my favorite, you know.”