Le Chevrier : Scenes de la Fie Rustique. Par Ferdinand
Fabre. (Hachette.)—A rough, rude pastoral, true to many a modern Arcadia. English readers will have some difficulty in mastering the style, which is impregnated with a rustic element, and which often makes us think of the grief that the provincialisms of English novels must cause the foreign reader. This and the length of the story will bo against it, but if those two obstacles are overcome, our patience is to some extent rewarded. There is a rugged force in many of the scenes and descrip- tions. We are given a glimpse into an almost savage life—that of the peasants in the Cevennes. The picture is not attractive. The story is alternately wild and gloomy. But M. Fabre manages to interest us with a hero who has none of the elements of romance, with a heroine who breaks every law of the kingdom of novels, and with a set of minor characters who are quite in keeping with the two principal ones.
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