+ Boston Transcript p6 Ag 25 ’20 200w
“Benoit has learned from Anatole France to display erudition but the translators make a sad mess of it. What they do to classical names should be a warning to reformers of the curriculum.”
+ − Dial 69:546 N ’20 90w
“The tale is told with an economy, a sureness and a subtlety that show how a French writer can come near to salvaging for literature themes which, in English, are condemned to a humbler sphere.” H. S. H.
+ Freeman 2:358 D 22 ’20 120w
“Excellent as Monsieur Benoit’s book is, it does not equal, either in imaginative power, fertility of invention, ingenuity and abundance of incident, suspense, dramatic effectiveness, construction, character-drawing, sustained interest or the ability to make the reader feel that the events narrated actually occurred, any save perhaps some one among the lesser of the many romances written by Sir Rider Haggard. This is not to say, however, that it is not an admirable and very entertaining story, with a conclusion both artistic and dramatic, and more than one scene of fine imaginative quality.”
+ − N Y Times p24 Ag 1 ’20 1050w
BENOIT, PIERRE. Secret spring. *$1.75 (3c) Dodd
20–7919
In this story within a story Lieutenant Vignerte tells his brother-in-arms the story of his life, which is still casting a melancholy spell over him. Just before the war he had been a tutor to the heir of the Grand Duke of Lautenburg-Detmold. He had fallen in love with the Grand Duchess, received much friendly encouragement, had come on the track of a mystery which points to the murder of her first husband—brother to the present duke—by discovering old records and a secret spring opening a door into a hidden chamber. A conflagration in the castle and the outbreak of the war prevented complete disclosure. The duchess herself took him in her private car to the French frontier and saw him safely into the hands of the French commander there. While in action in the trenches a German prisoner of high rank is discovered, by Vignerte’s confidant, to be the arch-fiend in the Lautenburg tragedy, but here again a complete revelation of the secret is foiled by a shell that kills both Vignerte and the prisoner.