| | | | | To judge from the sameness of type observable in the | countless tales with which the adultery school of French | novelists feed the avidity of their fashionable readers, it | must be a very easy thing to write a French work of | fiction. They all seem to be prepared after a single recipe. | Take one unfaithful wife (if possible, two), a gallant lover | with a taste for suicide, and an angelic young lady, who, | out of pure love either for her parents or her | future, comes forward to impute the | unchastity to herself. Compound them together, with | plenty of sentiment, sweeten up with a little French | religion, and the preparation is complete. In M. About's | Germaine, which we noticed a | short time ago, the angelic young lady, by a process of | law peculiar to French jurisprudence, sells her good name, | and falsely swears herself impure, in order to provide | money for a scamp of a father. M. About is not singular | in his view of the duties of daughters, and of the use to | which young ladies ought to put their reputations. An | immoral self-sacrifice, of some sort or other, is the | motif of all the compositions of the | school to which the author of Tolla | has ~~ we trust only temporarily ~~ condescended | to attach himself. Every member of that school sits down | to excogitate some new and more exquisite species of | immolation, to which his heroes and heroines are made to | subject themselves, in obedience to some provision of | that abnormal code of morality which guides the | demi-monde of Paris ~~ some fraud | or falsehood, whose only peculiarity is that it utterly ruins | the person who commits it. The creme | de la creme of heroism is the greatest conceivable | self-sacrifice in the teeth of the plainest duties. | The Famille Lambert, by M. | Gozlan, would be a tale of considerable power, but for his | scrupulous adherence to this monotonous pattern. There | is force and humour in the opening, for, instance: ~~ | | But after this spirited beginning, the story runs on in the | old style, with

"as implacable an uniformity"

as | that which the author denounces in the canals and the | children of Holland. There is a father with a grown-up | daughter, a partner in trade who is a suitor for her hand, | and a wife ~~ the latter being a lady who has a holy | horror of growing old, and, by way of perpetuating her | youth, carries on a love affair with a | roue Count. The husband is introduced as being on | the point of starting on a journey, in order to take | possession of the Count's estates, which the latter has | gambled away; and the interest of the dialogue is made to | turn on the wife's agony at hearing her husband detail the | circumstances of her lover's ruin. At last he goes away, | and she hastens to an assignation with the Count. But | instead of the Count, there appears a letter of excuse; and | while she is reading it, her husband suddenly comes back, | and finds it in her hand. In his fury, he draws out a pistol | to shoot her on the spot; but just as he is on the point of | doing so, his daughter rushes between them, and by way | of saving her mother, asserts the criminal intrigue to be | her own. Of course the result is, that the daughter's | intended marriage is broken off, and she is ready to break | her heart. At last the mother, unable to bear her | daughter's agony, makes up her mind to confess ~~ the | Famille Lambert have a good | cry all round ~~ and the husband is reconciled to his wife | in the following truly natural style: ~~ | | In M. Magnet's Dettes de Coeur, | there is a still more thrilling succession of sacrifices, and | a still more original code of morality. The characters of | angel and adulteress are scrupulously preserved | according to regulation; but they are fused in a single | person. A Russian princess falls in love with a Parisian | young gentleman. In the heyday of the intrigue, the | Russian war breaks out, and she is compelled to retire | from France, and to join her husband in Russia. The | Parisian young gentleman, with a weakness for which the | author almost apologizes, forgets his guilty flame, and | falls in love with an unexceptionable young heiress; but, | just a he is on the point of marrying her, a letter reaches | him from the Princess, informing him that their | correspondence has fallen into the hands of a hostile Pole, | who intends to show it to her husband. He loses not a | moment ~~ it is a Dette de Coeur | ~~ in leaving his fiancee | and dashing off to the | | Russian frontier, to grapple with the treacherous Pole. He | succeeds in finding him, and of course in running him | through the body; but he also finds, to his great surprise, | the Princess herself, who tells him that her husband has | died of grief at the discovery of her infidelities, and that | she has decamped with some of his jewels. New | sacrifices await the unhappy Parisian. True, he has quite | ceased to love the estimable Princess, and is dying to | return to his intended bride; but French society, though it | may treat the marriage tie with something of laxity, | guards with holy jealousy the indissoluble bond of | adultery. With a stern self-denial he proceeds to jilt the | woman to whom he his really attached, and to marry one | for whom he has no affection, and who has committed as | many crimes as a decent woman can well cram into a | couple of years. Fortunately, the laws of the | demi-monde are double-edged, | and relieve him from the dilemma into which they have | plunged him. The widow finds out that he does not love | her, by the very characteristic expedient of stealing his | letters, and, in a similar spirit of self-sacrifice, cuts the | knot by drowning herself, with many touching and | romantic incidents, in the Lake of Como. | Of course we are far from the prudery of saying that a | species of guilt from which so large a portion of this | world's misery has ever flowed ought to be entirely | banished from the canvas of fiction. A picture of life | with so huge a section of its shadows left out, would be a | mere delusion. You can no more ignore incontinence | than you can ignore murder. But the most dainty dish | may pall upon the palate ~~ the raciest story may be worn | threadbare at last. It is possible to be tired even of | adultery; and these authors give us nothing else. It is the | one theme on which their imagination warms and their | pen grows eloquent. The most stirring adventures | become tame under their hands, unless they are lit up | with the mellowed tints of a conjugal infidelity. If some | monk of the Grande Chartreuse, suddenly emerged from | his living tomb, were to take up, for information's sake, | the Bibliotheque Choisie or the | Collection Hetzel, as professing | to depict the manners of the age, he would infer that life | was a very dull, cold, and spiritless affair ~~ that its | incidents, as a rule, furnished little of interest, and | nothing of pathos or of passion ~~ but that there was one | thing which would at once convert the arid desert into a | flower-land of romance, namely, that a woman should | break her marriage vow. Now, on the immoral tendency | of constantly associating all that is vicious with all that is | touching, it is scarcely necessary to enlarge ~~ the text is | somewhat stale, and has been too much besmeared with | unction to be savoury. Nor, indeed, have we any right to | object to this strange gallery of portraits, if they really are | a fair representation of French society. We can only wish | their authors success in the salutary though unattractive | task of disclosing to Europe the cesspool of filth which | lies in their midst. But if it be not so ~~ if conjugal | infidelity is not really the informing spirit of French | society ~~ they commit as great an offence against art as | they do against morality. They deserve to be ranked on | no higher level than the artist who could paint nothing but | a red lion, and whether he painted a king's head or a | crown and scepter, it came very much to a red lion after | all. It is the fashion to speak of French novels of this | school as very clever, but very wicked ~~ perhaps the | most fascinating assemblage of qualities to the youthful | mind that can possibly be conceived. But this monotony | of plot, which never travels, as the lawyers say, out of the | mischief of the seventh commandment, certainly seems to | us to bespeak a very slender ingenuity. It may in part, | perhaps, arise from causes with which the authors are not | fairly chargeable. Something of it may be due to the | national mania for startling effects and dramatic | situations, which can hardly be furnished by the real lives | of sober people, who do not make love to each other's | wives ~~ something to the gregarious life of Frenchmen, | who pass their time mostly in large assemblages and | places of general resort, and know little of the inner life | of the domestic circle, where alone there is scope for the | study of delicate shadings of character. But, after all | allowances made, there is still a large residue which can | only be attributed to the barren invention of the authors, | or the imperious pruriency of their readers.