There are over six hundred pages in the story, and they cover just a year and a half of Antoine’s life. This appears to be an impossible literary feat; any orthodox novelist will tell you that you can’t hold a reader through six hundred pages with the story of a fourteen-year-old boy. But Miss Sidgwick’s holding power is—well, I read Succession during a brief trip to Boston, and much as I longed to absorb Concord and all its charms, I found I only had half my capacity with me; the rest was with Antoine, and it stayed there till in desperation I shut myself up in a hotel room and saw him safely off to America with his nice, wholesome, inartistic father. Then came the awful realization that I’d have to wait a whole year for the next volume—for surely Miss Sidgwick intends to make a trilogy.
The explanation of this absorption is simply that Antoine is so interesting. His professional life is dramatic; but even in the commonest experiences of every day his world is as vivid as it can only be to a dramatic nature. For instance, in this little scene with his brother:
“There was a little thing on legs,” he announced, “that went under the carpet just now. It was rather horrible, and I have not looked for it.”
“A blackbeetle, I presume,” said Philip.
“It was not black,” said Antoine. “It was pink—a not-clean pink, you understand. I found it”—a pause—“disagreeable.”
“How could you find it when you had not looked for it?” said Philip. Another pause, Antoine considering the point, which was an old one.
“You will catch it,” he suggested, shooting a soft glance at his brother.
“Why should I?” said Philip. “They’re perfectly harmless.”
“I shall dream of it,” said Antoine, shutting his eyes. “It was too long, do you see, and pink as well.” His brow contracted, and he finished with gentle conviction. “If it comes upon my bed in the night, I shall be sick.”
Of course, most interesting of all is his musical development, in which are involved several personalities of striking character: Duchâtel, the revolutionary, more a son, after the French fashion, than a man or a musician; Savigny, the celebrated alienist, who treats the child hypnotically in his severe illnesses; Lemonski, a rival child wonder, who is like a pig, and vulgar—which it is silly to say, because he is a beautiful artist, according to Antoine; Reuss, the great German conductor, and the boy’s staunch friend, who hates “the cursed French training” of making life weigh so heavily on its youth; Jacques Charretteur, the vagabond violinist, “a man to play French music in France”; Cécile, the aunt, who has the perception to understand the little genius with the dark eyes, whose “expression was so beautiful that she could hardly bear it”; and Ribiera, the famous Spanish pianist, who “warms” the piano, in Antoine’s words, and calls the boy an intelligent ape, by way of expressing his admiration. All these people are drawn with consummate skill.