ment is in M. Karr's worst style. The substance of the offending portion may be inoffensively given in very few words. Monsieur Lauter is a German, good, kind-hearted, generous, and resident at Chalons-surMarne. An affectation of a stoical and unbending character is his principal weakness. His wife, Rosalie, a blooming Frenchwoman seventeen years younger than himself, has rendered him the happy father of two beautiful children, son and daughter. A few years after their birth he detects her in an intrigue with an empty coxcomb, a new comer to the town. Rosalie's character, although tinged with coquetry, was previously unsullied. Lauter forgets his stoicism, puts a pistol-case under his arm, and walks out in the grey of the morning with the seducer. From that day forward neither husband nor lover are seen or heard of. This last sentence brings us to page 50, where the scene changes: a leap is taken over three years, and one reads far into the book before conjecturing the necessity of the preliminary incident. And when its intimate connection with the plot of the novel at last appears, we are under the charm of a most engaging narrative, delicately told; and the cynical levity of the commencement, already wellnigh forgotten, flashes upon our memory as doubly offensive. The incident could hardly have been dispensed with, but it might have been very differently told, with a gravity and conciseness that would have greatly increased its effect. The manner is here the offence. Doubtless there are very few of the weaknesses and sins to which humanity is liable of which the novelist may not rightfully avail himself, with the laudable view of pointing a moral and warning from vice. But he should beware of missing his aim, and making that from which it is his duty to deter, appear, even for the moment, venial or attractive. The handling may constitute all the difference between a wholesome lesson and a repugnant and dangerous picture. "Let us talk a little," says M. Karr, by manner of heading to his tenth chapter, after effecting, in the last line of the ninth, the disappearance of M. Lauter and his rival, "of M. Chaumier, burgess of the little town of Fontainebleau." And here we pause to remark that nothing can be more capricious and fantastical than the general arrangement of M. Karr's books. His chapters are of all lengths, from six lines to any number of pages. We could point out some of two lines, and of a line and a half, and that are considerably shorter than their argument. Sometimes he devotes a chapter to a letter to Jules Janin, or some other friend, or to the narration of an incident personal to himself, and entirely unconnected with the book, or to gossip about a dog, a flower, or a lizard-in short, to anything that comes uppermost. At first one smiles at the oddity of these digressions, and admires the neatness and independent point that some of them possess; but after a time they become wearisome, the reader considers them as knots upon the thread of the story, and wonders why they are introduced, unless with the purpose of swelling the volume to the attainment of which object the three line chapters, made a pretext for three pages of white paper, very considerably contribute. And doubtless many of M. Karr's readers, puzzled to explain his vagaries, his occasional crude sophisms and impertinent assertions, end by imputing to him either an immoderate share of affectation, or a slight derangement in the cells of his brain, insufficient, however, to neutralise his amusing qualities as a writer. If he has his defects, he, upon the other hand, carefully avoids many to which his contemporaries are prone. He is conscientiously brief in his descriptions, and scruples not to quiz Balzac unmercifully for his long-windedness in this particular. A satirist by profession, the editor of the Guèpes gives his brother novelist the full length of his lash. Fortunately poor Balzac's broad shoulders were pretty well used to the thong, which is applied, moreover, with all good humour. Nobody will mistake the object of the following bit of parody, extracted from Une Histoire Invraisemblable. A friend has been reproaching M. Karr with a brevity too great for his own interest. "When you write romances," he says, arc you not paid, like other people, by the line, the page, the sheet? Certainly," replies M. Karr; "why should I not conform to the established custom in such matters?" "Conform to established custom as much as you like, but at least study the masters of the art, and learn of them not to squander your subject. Recollect that, paid by the line, Larochefoucauld, if he had lived in our days, and lived by the produce of his pen, would have obtained by his Maxims scarcely a fortnight's subsistence. You have already brought upon the scene an innkeeper, half-a-dozen travellers, a conscript and his family, all of which were portraits to paint. And the inn! do you think one of the masters I speak of would have let off the inn as cheaply as you have done? Far from it. Every saucepan would have paid him toll to the tune of ten sous, at the very least. And the chimney! he would not give the chimney for fifteen franc3; and there is also a carriage from which you might have extracted a profit." "Would you have had me stop it on the road?" "No, but that carriage owes you ten francs, which you might have paid yourself." And the friend proceeds with caricatures of the verbose style of various literary celebrities. Thus instructed, M. Karr watches an opportunity to profit by the valuable hints he has received. Presently casual mention is made of a fan. The chance is too good to be lost. "This time," he exclaims," the fan shall not escape toll-free; the fan shall not pass without paying a ransom. It is a fan in white satin, with golden spangles. Upon it are painted shepherds, but what shepherds! trees, but what trees! sheep, but what sheep! The shepherdess has a sprinkling of powder on her hair! a boddice of pink satin, with green ribbons; a petticoat of the same, puffed out over enormous hoops, and elegantly turned up with green bows, like the boddice. On her feet she has little shoes, with high heels; in her hand a crook, adorned with ribbons; she is seated on blue grass, beneath the shadow of lilac trees," &c. &c., to the extent of a page and a half. "I do not know many of my cotemporaries," M. Karr then observes," who, having caught a masons Watteau fan, would let the reader off so cheaply. The most fertile of our novelists, [Balzac is here meant,] who, after all, is a man of great talent, once built a house with the price of the description of a chest of drawers. There was nothing deficient in the house, except a staircase, but that must not be attributed to the insufficiency of the drawers, but to the absence of mind of the author, who, being his own architect, had omitted the stairs in the plan he gave to the a circumstance which I neither invent nor exaggerate." This is the sort of sarcastic gossip and caricature indulged in by M. Karr, to an extent sometimes nearly as tiresome as Balzac's interminable descriptions of chairs and tables. To return, however, to M. Chaumier, of Fontainebleau, the brother of Madame Rosalie Lauter, who had married against his will, and with whom he had since held no communication. Here is his house, as described by M. Karr, who, himself an enthusiastic lover of the country, of gardens, trees, and flowers, is very happy in sketches of the kind. "The entrance was through an alley of acacias, with thick and tufted foliage, at the extremity of which was a little dark green door, where hung a deer's foot, by way of bell-handle. When the door was opened, you entered a court, each of whose flags was surrounded by a fringe of grass. In one corner was a well, so old that the stone brim was worn away, and covered with reddishgreen moss. At the bottom of the courtyard stood a two-storey house, reached by a small flight of steps, with a rusty iron railing; the groundfloor comprising the dining-room, M. Chaumier's bed-room and study, and the kitchen. On the first floor were the bedchambers of little Rose Chaumier, of her brother Albert, and of Dame Modeste Rolland, M. Chaumier's confidential housekeeper. The upper story served as fruit and store-room: the linen was spread there to dry, and sometimes Honoré Rolland, Modeste's husband, and a soldier by profession, occupied it for the rare intervals during which the state could dispense with his services. In rear of the house was a large garden, of wild and uncultivated aspect. Before M. Chaumier 74 Alphonse Karr. bought the property, the garden had been perfectly cultivated; but since then, thanks to neglect, thistles, nettles, and other weeds had choked the delicate flowers; the trees alone and a few vigorous plants had resisted, and had even attained a remarkable size. Two large appletrees, a service-tree, over which a clematis twined, lilacs, enormous moss-grown rose-trees, formed the principal riches of the garden; poppies sowed themselves every year, and at the angle of the coping of the wall, blossomed a bright cluster of wallflower." Add to the persons mentioned in this description Madame Rosalie Lauter and her two children, Leon and Genevieve, and we at once group together all, save one, of the prominent characters of the book. Three years after her husband's disappearance, Madame Lauter writes to her brother. Herself ignorant of Lauter's fate, she has lived repentant and retired, devoting herself to her children. "By selling all I have," she says to M. Chaumier, "I shall realise about thirty thousand franes. Will you let me go and live with you? You shall guide me in the employment of my little fortune, and in the education of my children; I will replace, for yours, the mother they have lost-and thus surrounded, we will grow old in peace and affection. Your answer, my good brother, will restore me to happiness or plunge me into deepest discouragement." In spite of the manoeuvres of Modeste Rolland, who purloins the letter from her master's pocket, and does all she dares to prevent compliance with its request, M. Chaumier, who, although a negro-emancipator and theoretical philanthropist, is not quite dead to the more practical sympathies of humanity, welcomes his sister and her children. Madame Lauter has over-estimated the probable proceeds of her little property. It yields but twenty thousand franes; and as she dares not, and will not, be a tax upon her brother, she sinks this little sum upon her life, justifying the act in her own eyes by the reflection that it will enable her to give her children a good education, which leads to everything. The four cousins grow up together. The development of their respective [July, characters; the description of their happy life in the little country-house and its wild old garden; the envy, hatred, and malice of Modeste Rolland, who racks her spiteful invention Lauter, to whom she has vowed to devise annoyances for Madame eternal detestation; the long-suffering of Rosalie, who, humbly penitent and anxious for her children, courageously and patiently submits to the petty insults of her persecutor rather than disturb the tranquillity of her brother's house-these and other domestic matters furnish M. Karr with several charming chapters, tolerably free from those unseasonable digressions and speculations with which, however, he larding and deteriorating his volumes. never can entirely abstain from interLeon and Albert go to study at Paris; Madame Lauter sells her last trinkets, that her son may have the same allowance as his cousin. In her letters she urges him to work hard; but Leon takes this for a mere matter-of-course recommendation, and attends more to music than to books. He has a fine voice, and in a short time he becomes a proficient on the violin. This pursuit, and the recollection of his pretty cousin Rose, his childish partiality for whom is merging in manly love, preserve him from the dissipation indulged in by Albert, who is of a more volatile and frivolous character. Rebuffed by a pretty widow, whose conquest, in his boyish vanity, he fancied he had made, Albert retreats to rustication at Fontainebleau. And now begin poor Genevieve's sorrows. She loves her cousin with the purest affection, and is repaid by indifference. Albert never dreams of regarding her otherwise than as a sister, and is wholly unaware of her sentiments towards him. carving upon the trees of the forest He tortures her by the initials of his disdainful Parisian beauty, and returns to Paris for his last year of pretended study and real idleness. dreams of Rose, neglects his law All this time Leon books, and plays concertos. He is on the way to become a first-rate musician and no lawyer. An unexpected letter from Genevieve gives him a terrible shock. Madame Lauter is dead, during the absence of her brother, to whom on the eve of her decease she dictates a letter, commending her children to his care. Two days after her funeral, M. Chaumier's fortune is trebled by the favourable termination of a long-pending law, suit. He promises Genevieve and Leon to be a father to them, and keeps his promise tolerably well until Leon one day declares his rooted aversion to the law, and his intention to adopt music as a profession. Whereupon his uncle desires him to reckon no longer on his support, and to keep away from his house-which Leon accordingly leaves, after declaring his love to Rose and obtaining an assurance that it is reciprocated. Besides his cousin Albert and his student comrades, Leon has one intimate, who is almost a friend. This is a fellow-lodger named Anselmo, a fanatico per la musica, who, attraeted by Leon's musical skill, has sought his acquaintance, and occasionally visits him to smoke a pipe and listen to his violin. He makes long absences from Paris, and Leon has not seen much of him, but has nevertheless conceived a sort of affection for him, founded on the simple but distinguished manners of Anselmo, on the interest he seems to take in his affairs, and on the encouragement he gives him to struggle bravely along the up-hill road of life. Indeed, Anselmo shows a degree of good feeling and sympathy naturally captivating to a young and generous heart. After his rupture with his uncle, Leon at once proceeds to consult his friend, and to inform him of his project, or rather of his resolution. "M. Anselmo encouraged him, and, without ceasing to be his assiduous auditor, entirely changed his manner of listening. It was no longer a personal satisfaction he sought when Leon played on the violin; he no longer gave himself up to the charm of melody. He judged, criticised, found fault, insisted on numerous repetitions of the same passages. Then, when there was an important opera, a good concert, or a great artist to be heard, M. Anselmo always had, by chance, in the pocket of his old brown coat, a ticket for the concert or theatre. One day he said to Leon-' I am very intimate with M. Kreutzer; he will be most happy, on my recommendation, to give you the few lessons you still need; call upon him to-morrow with a letter I will give you.' Kreutzer gave no lesson under twenty francs; it was a piece of good luck Leon would never have dared to hope for. He could not help admiring the punctuality and exactness of the professor, who never abridged the lesson even by five minutes. And what equally astonished him was, that, whilst Kreutzer thus faithfully fulfilled the duties of a friendship such as is rarely met with, he never inquired after his friend. One day Leon and M. Anselmo met Kreutzer in the street, To whom did you bow?' said M. Anselmo to Leon. "Did you not recognise him?' No.' It was your friend, M. Kreutzer.' "I did not see him.' "He passed close to us; but neither did he seem to recognise you.' "One morning M. Anselmo said to Leon-It is time for you to earn money; you have a fine talent; my friend Kreutzer will be so obliging as to give you a few more lessons, and any advice you may need. But whilst thus perfecting yourself, you must make yourself heard, and give lessons in your turn. Here is the address of a pupil with whom you will commence the day after tomorrow; he will give you ten francs a lesson. The price is almost ridiculous for a young professor; but you should give no lessons at a lower rate. There are few real connoisseurs, and the majority estimate music only by what it costs.' Leon knew not how to thank M. Anselmo; but M. Anselmo said to him-' You owe me no thanks; one of my friends, a very rich man, wishes his son to learn the violin. He asked me to tell him of a good professor; you were at hand: I must have gone out of my way not to render you this little service; and, besides, I know few professors whose play pleases me as much as yours. I am off to Germany, and shall not return till spring. Write to me sometimes, and tell me of your success, for I am sure you will succeed. Farewell.'" M. Karr here skips over a year in three pages, occupied by gossip about an ink-bottle and a barcarole. In the interim, Genevieve had been forbidden to see her brother, had declined obeying, and had gone to live with him. Leon, whose reputation daily augmented, and who earned a tolerable income, occupied a little apartment in the Rue St Honoré. His musical talent made him much sought after in society; and his uncle, to whom he never failed respectfully to bow when they met at a ball or concert, was not sorry sometimes to say: The young man is my nephew. "Once, when M. Chaumier had said this, he found himself puzzled to reply to the very natural questionWhy do we never meet him at your Sunday parties?' It was impossible to say- Because I forbade him my house; and I did so because he would be a musician, and acquire the talent you applaud, and of which I myself cannot help being rather proud.' So, one day M. Chaumier beckoned Leon to him, and said- Nephew Leon, there is mercy for every offence. I may have thought it right to punish an outbreak of youthful wilfulness, but I did not mean to banish my sister's children for ever from my house. Rose and Albert-when we see Albert-speak of you two every Sunday, when there are always two places empty at table, which I do not like to see. Come, then, next Sunday, with your sister, and let us forget our little differences.' By an involuntary impulse, Rose threw her arms round her father's neck, to thank him for this good thought, which he had confided to no one. Leon thanked M. Chaumier aloud, and Rose with her eyes and heart. Thenceforward Genevieve and Leon dined every Sunday at their uncle's. "Albert had bought a solicitor's practice, and left everything to his head clerk, whilst he himself thought only of amusement." "M. Anselmo had written twice to Leon, who had forgotten to answer him." Perhaps the reader may already have his suspicions concerning this M. Anselmo, who, notwithstanding the shabbiness of his only coat, abounds in opera and concert tickets, and has interest to procure, gratis, music-lessons usually paid at twenty francs a-piece. About this time he returns from Germany, in the same threadbare garb and ancient hat; traces Leon to his new lodgings, secures a room in the same house, and becomes acquainted with Rose. His arrival was opportune to raise the spirits of the brother and sister. It was a Sunday evening; they had been to dine as usual at their uncle's, and had found no one. M. Chaumier and Rose had gone upon a party of pleasure. As to Albert, he had not been seen at his father's for a week. Genevieve and Leon looked mournfully at each other. For them the Sunday was the festival that supported them through the privations and monotony of the other six days. But their concern was more for each other than for themselves. Under all disappointments, the tenderest fraternal love supported them. M. Anselmo happened to have opera tickets in his pocket. And this time, by a lucky chance, it was a whole box, instead of two places; so that Rose accompanied her brother and his friend, who soon, by his kindness and attention, became her friend also. One morning he came early to visit them. "I have a walk to propose to you,' he said. 'I am the agent of Baron Arnberg, a rich German nobleman, who proposes residing at Paris, and I am having a house built for him in the Champs Elysées. He has given very exact instructions on all the principal points, but he leaves the details to me. The house is just finished, but wants decorations, and the garden has to be laid out. M. Arnberg has a son and daughter, whom he tenderly loves. Their apartments must be fitted up, but I am old, and have forgotten what pleases a young man; and I am entirely ignorant as to the tastes of a young lady. I want you, therefore, to help me in my undertaking with your advice. We will breakfast together at the Champs Elysées, and afterwards we will visit the baron's future habitation.' On his return from the house, where, having received_carte blanche as to expense, he and Gene |