“ ‘Thank you!’ absently and innocently responded the quiet Quakeress.
“ ‘I suppose, then, we need not even pray for you?’ said one.
“ ‘You always was a little queer, Sister White, you and Brother White, too, now that we come to think it over,’ said another.
“ ‘Extremely odd it is for one to lose all sense of propriety, and assume the responsibility of such a fearful step,’ rapidly spoke little Sarah.
“ ‘We pity you, and would help you, but you won't let us,’ was Mrs. Sand's trembling good-by.
“ ‘We wash our hands of all sin in this matter. It lies at your own door,’ were the last consolatory words of Miss Nancy.”
Many another reader might say with Myrrha, “When I took up that small book called A General Catechism of the [pg 570]Christian Doctrine, I little dreamed upon what a study I had entered. Again, after reading it through, I as little dreamed upon what a sea of speculation I had launched.” May the result of such reading prove as fruitful of good to all readers as to Myrrha! But such results seem to happen oftener in books than in real, selfish life. The best of this story is its ending, which, this time, is neither marriage nor death for the lovers.
Fleurange. By Mme. Augustus Craven. Translated by M. P. T. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
Rarely, indeed, have we met a work whose author exhibits so many of the qualities indespensable in a good novelist, as the one under consideration. Artistic in conception, pure and elevated in style, it is withal faultless in tone and sentiment.
It is not our purpose to give an outline of the plot of this tale, or to enlarge on the actors through whom it is evolved, but we shall confine ourselves to some observations on certain characteristics of the writer as developed in her work.