BOOKS.

TWO FRENCH NOVELS.*

La Neuvaine de Colette is one of the most delightful stories we have read for a long time. It is curiously different from the ordinary Prench novel, being perfectly pure and whole- some and idealistic, without being high-flown or unnatural. Mademoiselle Colette, too, is in some ways a good deal more like an Irish girl than a French girl. And, in fact, we have some idea, or have heard it hinted by somebody, that the story itself has an Irish original. But in spite of this, in all its best qualities of style and character, the story is entirely French ; its quickness of fancy and lightness of touch belong to no other nation, and its fearless extravagances, which never weigh down the balance as far as absurdity,—except perhaps in Colette's notions of anatomy, and M. le Comte's grave explana- tions. Yet even this passage shows the power of the French wit to make realism inoffensive, and the extreme, unconscious naturalness of both the Count and Colette is only laughable.

It is always a little dangerous to take a national type, and to venture to say that such-and-such a person is unlike his or her nation. Our first instinct, as we have already said, led us to think that Colette was not French. But then we became conscious of knowing more than one living Frenchwoman who, in her hurried decisions, her quick and natural ways, her sensitiveness, her pretty bras queries and impatiences, her varying spirits, her eager adventurousness, and, if we may use the word, her lifefulness altogether, might have been the model for Colette. We therefore gladly accept her as a French girl of the truest and most charming kind; and we also place M. de Civreuse high among modern Frenchmen, having before our mind's eye the reviewer who once, much to his own satis- faction, set down a good and noble Frenchman as "the most chivalrous son of Gaul ever evolved from a novelist's imagina- tion." It is only ignorance which imagines that all French- men, or even all Parisians, are like those sketched by Parisian novelists.

M. de Civreuse, in fact, is a very clever study, quite as clever and almost as delightful as Colette herself. His disgust and rage at the providential accident which changes the course of both their lives, his dismay at being kept a prisoner in the old, half-ruined chateau, his general sourness and discontent, his severe criticism of his young hostess and all her ways, the gradual and most amusing manner in which the whole tone of things changes, faults become merits, and criticism becomes adoration—the whole picture, in fact, of the unfortunate Comte, who in his most despairing moments tries hard to keep up a politeness that might have belonged to the last century, is touched by the hand of a true artist. Colette d'Erlange leaves her Paris convent to live in this lonely old chateau with a supremely disagreeable old aunt. This chateau,

• (1.) La Nsusaine de Colette. Paris : Calmann Levy. 1889.—(2.) L'Oncle Soiption. Par Andre Thenriet. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre. 1890.

which appears to be in the Pyrenees, is blocked up in the

month of March by snowdrifts. Like a maiden of romance, Colette finds herself shut up in prison, and by the advice of a wise old woman in the village, she begins a nine days' devotion to St. Joseph, with the object of gaining liberty and happiness. In Mademoiselle Colette's mind, these are, of course, to take the shape of a hero. She knows exactly what he will be like, and expects him day by day. But the nine days pass ; St. Joseph does not give any sign of being gratified by his neuvaine ; and at last, when they are over, when the snow continues, and the ruinous cluiteau, with its thick gloomy walls and last-century furniture, becomes more like a prison than ever, Mademoiselle Colette, in despair, seizes the silver image on which all her devotion has been wasted, and dashes it through the nearest window. It falls on the head of a solitary tourist, wandering aimlessly round the walls, and lays him flat and insensible, with a broken head and a broken leg, at Mademoiselle Colette's feet.

Certainly the charming little book has not much that one may call plot. It is the story of a girl's daily life for two months, told partly by herself, partly in letters from the sacrificed tourist to his friend. Every touch tells, and we cannot say enough of the charm and grace of the writing, the quaintness of the pictures, the fun and humour with which the story is told. These two, beginning with more than "a little aversion," and gradually drawn nearer to each other till

the sad day when M. de Civreuse is well enough to leave his hospital, are living people who remain with us as friends. They are both so straightforward, so incapable of acting, so earnest, that here and there, watching them, one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. One delightful scene is that where the Count and Colette gravely take each other's portraits before he goes away. He is an artist, and his picture of her satisfies even himself. She will not be left behind, and there- fore sketches him :— " Mais, au bout d'un quart d'heure, retais lasse, enervee et incapable de continuer. La figure qui etait sur mon papier representait tout ce qu'on voulait, une perruque do juge, un

epouvantail a moineaux ou an roi nagre En touts sutra occasion, raurais ri; mais lea minutes que je comptais, toujours en songeant au depart, me mettait resprit a l'envers, et je sentis que lea larmes me montaient aux yeux."

But it is difficult to make quotations from a little book so com- plete in its prettiness. We can only hope that mir readers will make acquaintance with it for themselves.

• Compared with La Neuvaine de Colette, L'Oncle Scipion is a commonplace and even a vulgar book. But it also is per- fectly harmless, and it has the merit of being true to Nature, and a real picture of life,—a less romantic Nature and a lower level of life, but many people will not like it any the less for that. There is something of Dickens in the story, and even in the characters: especially in the orphan boy among his rich and small-minded relations, subject to all kinds of petty persecution, and living in unfriendly rivalry with a selfish, conceited, well-

behaved cousin of his own age. Then the one agreeable uncle, showy, flourishing, generous, appears upon the scene, with his prot4gee, little Alice—all the poetry of the book hangs round her—and after a time Jacques, the hero, runs away to Paris to this one kind and pleasant relation, and for several years shares his fortunes, which are of the most varied character. M. Scipion Mouginot is very well drawn. As kind

and generous as he is selfish and self-indulgent ; invariably equal to the occasion, but thoughtless for anything beyond it; enthusiastic, imaginative, for ever inventing new schemes, which one after the other fail,—he is a perfect type of the adventurer of the most amiable kind, who deceives himself just as much as other people. His nephew first finds him in a very dismal abode, the head of a Company for selling- " Chanvres et toiles des Vosges." Then, when this has failed, a grand inspiration makes a fine gentleman of him for the time, and be is a director of the "Societe Industrielle des Gallons de Castro :" this Company is going to raise certain Spanish galleons, sunk in 1707 in the Bay of Castro, " avec

leur cargaison de lingots, gemmes, doublons et piastres," —an imaginary sight to dazzle the eyes of any public. But many are the enterprises of " l'oncle Scipion," who runs

cheerfully through them all, in Paris, at Nice, in America, and comes in at last to a third of a rich brother's fortune, so

that he is no doubt carrying them on still. But we are glad that young Jacques Mouginot has escaped from his influence, and cast anchor at Jeand'heurs, with the excellent cousin

Delorme and his daughter Zelie. Little Alice, his first love, lies in the cemetery at Nice, among the flowers whose strong scents helped to suffocate and kill her.

The pictures of Paris life in L'Oncle Scipion are very clever ; M. Andre Theuriet's name is warrant enough for that. There is, indeed, a great deal worth noticing in the book, which has in parts a strongly pathetic interest. And yet it is not to us altogether attractive, perhaps from a certain commonness of tone out of which it seldom rises. This could not be other- wise, however, in a true picture of French bourgeois life, which L'Oncle Scipion evidently is. Men and women alike of the Mouginot kind cannot help being of the same character—of the earth, earthy—and if one of them has an imagination, it brings ill luck to himself and his neighbours by diving into the deep sea in search of "lea galions de Castro."