"What! His Eminence not at home! Where is he then?"
"Gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes."
"Where?" &c., &c.
This is taken at random, from the volume last published of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, in which romance the marvellous and Crichtonian musketeers, brought forward again, when hard upon threescore, show less sign of suffering from the march of years than does the narrative of their adventures from its unconscionable protraction. Much more than half the book is made up of such wearisome conferences as that above-cited, where the interlocutors carry on a sort of cut-and-thrust conversation, with an economy of words explicable by the fact that in a French feuilleton, or volume, one word of dialogue makes a line, as well as ten. With the assistance of his secretary, M. Maquet, and of his son, Alexander the Younger, M. Dumas gets through a prodigious amount of this sort of trash, at once productive to his pocket and damaging to his reputation; and then, when he finds publishers beginning to grumble, and the public detecting the device, and rejecting the windy repast, he applies himself in earnest, and produces something exceedingly good, of which he is quite capable, if once he gets the spur. It is to the necessity of thus occasionally redeeming his reputation, that we are indebted for the few really praiseworthy romances he has written—for the Chevalier d'Harmental, for the earlier portion of the Mousquetaires, and for his masterpiece, Le Comte de Monte Christo. His enemies and libellers have asserted, that the first-named of these books was written by M. Maquet, and only fathered by Dumas; but the assertion is absurd, and is belied by the book itself, replete with that vivid animation which characterises whatever Alexander writes. Moreover, the man who could write such a novel would have no need to purchase the name of M. Dumas. He would not lack a publisher, and his reputation would soon be made. We believe the fact to be, that Maquet is a sort of industrious drudge, employed by Dumas to rummage chronicles, and to collate and write down historical incidents and facts, for his employer to distort and expand into romances. For, as an historical romance writer, M. Dumas is utterly without a conscience. By him characters and events are twisted and turned as best suits his convenience. "I have twenty years' work before me," he is reported to have said, "to illustrate French history." Heaven knows what sort of an illustrator he is! We would advise no one to take their notions of French historical personages from M. Dumas' novels, or from his history either—for he writes history also, at times, and the only doubt is, which is the greatest fiction, his history or his romance. But for the titles, it were not always easy to distinguish between them. It were unfair, however, whilst quizzing his absurdities, to lose sight of his merits. These are numerous and remarkable. His spirit and vivacity of style are extraordinary; and we can call to mind no living writer superior to him for invention. Monte Christo is his masterpiece. It is indeed a very striking and amusing book. With defects that forbid our calling it a first-rate romance of its class, it is yet far more entertaining than many that claim and obtain the title. The readers of the Journal des Debats well remember the eagerness with which each successive feuilleton was looked for, during its appearance in that paper. We ourselves abominate the feuilleton system, by which one is a year or two reading a book, imbibing it by daily crumbs, like the lady who eats her pillau with a bodkin. We waited till the work was complete, and then read it off the reel,—not at a sitting, certainly, considering the length, but early and late, in bed and at board. And being somewhat fastidious in matter of novels, it is evident Monte Christo must have great attractions thus to carry us at a canter through its interminable series of volumes. Its chief fault is the usual one of its author—exaggeration. We are sure M. Dumas is one of those persons who love to dream with their eyes open—to build themselves palaces in fairyland, to arrange gardens after the fashion of that of Eden, to furnish the most preterperfect of apartments with the most fabulous of furniture, to hang diamonds on their trees, and a roc's egg in their drawing-room. His air-constructed castles find a site in the pages of his romances. The right way to read them is to forget as fast as possible the improbabilities and impossibilities. The supernatural being out of vogue, he does not give to Edmund Dantes the lamp of Aladdin, but (which is quite equivalent) a few double handfuls of precious stones, whereof the smallest specimen is caught at by a Jew for a thousand pounds; whilst one of the largest, hollowed out, forms a convenient receptacle for a score of pills, as big as peas, which it is the Count's custom to carry about with him. With the aid of this incalculable wealth, Dantes pursues his grand scheme of revenge upon the persons to whom he is indebted for fourteen years' undeserved imprisonment in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If. Gold being the universal key, all doors fly open before him: nothing is impossible to the man who scatters millions upon the path leading to the goal of his desires. Take the treasure for granted, and still there is much exaggeration to get over; but there are also many truthful touches, many finely-drawn characters. How exquisitely tender are some of the scenes between the paralytic and his granddaughter; how capital and characteristic the interview between the old Italian gambler and the young French thief, when they are paid by the Count to consider each other as father and son! In this romance there is none of the make-weight dialogue so lavishly interpolated in most of the same author's works. In style, too, and description, M. Dumas here rises above his average. His style, always lively and piquant, is usually loose, unpolished, and defaced by conventionalisms the Academy would hardly sanction. In Monte Christo he has evidently taken pains to do well, and the result is the best written book he has yet produced.
But we lose sight of our parcel, as yet but half unpacked. Here is a volume of the Député d'Arcis, (another of the continuation family,) heavy stuff, seemingly, by Balzac; and this brings us to the end of the continuations. With these exceptions, the French writers who have not altogether left off writing, have at least kept within circumscribed limits. Here we have a volume from M. Méry of Marseilles, a clever, careless writer, not much known in England; another by the authoress of Consuelo; two more from M. Alphonse Karr; a couple from that old sinner, Paul de Kock, who is not often so concise, having superadded, of late years, to his other transgressions the crime of long-windedness; a brief Sicilian sketch from M. Paul de Musset. We turn aside a heap of political matter, of no great merit or value; a few pamphlets, of some talent, but fugitive interest, by Girardin and others; a ream of portraits and caricatures; a few more novels whose authors' names or whose first pages condemn them; Mourir pour la Patrie, and some other revolutionary staves, bad music and worse words, and the box is empty. We sit down to peruse the little we have selected as worth perusal from the pile of printed paper. La Famille Alain, by Karr, is the first thing that comes to hand. We have read the greater part of it already, in the French periodical in which it first appeared. M. Karr is rather a favourite of ours. There are many good points about his novels, although he is, perhaps, less popular as a novelist than as the writer of a small monthly satirical pamphlet, Les Guèpes, The Wasps, which has existed for several years, with varying, but, upon the whole, with very great success. M. Karr's wit is of a peculiar order, approaching more nearly to humour than French wit generally does. There is an odd sort of dryness and fantastic naïveté in some of his drolleries, quite distinct from what we are accustomed to in the comic writings of his countrymen. With this the German origin to be inferred from his name may have some connexion. There is also a Germanic vagueness and dreaminess in some of his books, although their scene is usually on French ground, frequently on the coast of Brittany, a country M. Karr evidently well knows and loves. One of his great recommendations is the general propriety of his writings. Of most of them, the tone and tendency are alike unexceptionable, and some are mere "simple stories," which the most fastidious papas—who deny that any good thing can proceed from a French press, and look upon the yellow paper cover with "Paris" at its foot as the ineradicable mark of the beast, the moral quarantine flag, betokening uncleanness which no amount of lazaretto can purge or purify—might with safe conscience place in the hands of their blooming artless sixteen-year-old daughters. The fact is, that people will read French novels—so long as they are not audaciously indecent, immoral, or irreligious—because the present race of French novelists are far cleverer and more amusing than their English brethren. And although some French novels are offensive and abominable, it is not fair to include all in the black list, or to deny that a great improvement has taken place since the period (the early years of the reign of the first and last King of the French) when the Paris press was clogged with indecency and infidelity. We should be very sorry to put Mrs George Sand's works into the hands of any young woman; we would insult no woman, of any age, by commending to her notice the obscene buffoonery of De Kock; but neither would we condemn the whole flock for a sprinkling of scabby sheep. There are many French writers of a very different stamp from the two just named; and M. Karr is one of the better sort. The tale now before us is a Norman story, possessing better plot and incident than many of its predecessors; for in these respects, this author—from indolence, we suspect—is often rather deficient. We need hardly tell our readers that the Norman is noted for his cunning, and for his litigious propensities, as the Gascon is for his boasting and vanity, the Lorrainer for his stolidity, &c., &c. In La Famille Alain, the characteristics of the province, and the casualties of the peasant's and fisherman's life, are cleverly illustrated. Tranquille Alain, surnamed Risquetout, from certain bold feats of his earlier years, lives by the seaside on the produce of his nets. His family consists of his wife Pélagie, his sons and daughter, Cæsar, Onesimus, and Berenice, and of his foster-daughter Pulchérie. With respect to these magnificent names, M. Karr thinks it necessary to offer some explanation. "I am not their inventor," he says, "and they are very common in Normandy. There is not a village that has not its Berenices, its Artemesias, its Cleopatras. I know not whence the inhabitants originally took these names. Perhaps they were given by dames of high degree, who took them from Mademoiselle de Scudery's romances, to bestow them on their rustic god-children, and they have since remained traditional in the country." The book opens with the christening of a new fishing-boat, to build which Tranquille Alain has borrowed a hundred crowns of his cousin Eloi, miller and usurer. In France, as elsewhere, and especially in Normandy, millers have a roguish reputation. The loan is to be repaid, part at the beginning and part at the end of the fishing season, with twenty crowns interest. But the season sets in stormy and unfavourable; the fish shun the coast; and at the date appointed for the first payment, the debtor is unprepared with either principal or interest. At last the wind lulls, and the angry waves subside into a long sullen swell. Risquetout and his sons put to sea.
"Towards the close of day, as the boats reappeared on the horizon, Eloi Alain came down from Beuzeval, and waited their arrival upon the beach. They had taken a few whitings. Onesimus was proud, because almost all the fish had been caught on his line.
"Risquetout, who had started that morning rather prematurely, without waiting till the fine weather had thoroughly set in, had a feeling of fear and embarrassment at sight of the miller.
"'Have you caught any thing?' said Eloi.