But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
pathos of the death, under persecution, of the innocent Clemence does
not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
hopeless "cad"--is too much punished, though an Englishman may think
that Dr. Johnson's receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels,
applied repeatedly and unsparingly, would have been better than
elaborately prepared accidents and duels, which were too honorable for
a Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers
to the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid;
these fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage
properties, and should never be fetched out of the theatrical
lumber-room by literature.

_La Duchesse de Langeais_ is, I think, a better story, with more
romantic attraction, free from the objections just made to _Ferragus_,
and furnished with a powerful, if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind, subject
to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any
such critical reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly
satisfactory.

The third of the series, _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_, in some respects
one of Balzac's most brilliant effects, has been looked at askance by
many of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think
of calling it _La Femme aux Yeux Rouges_. To those who consider the
story morbid or, one may say, _bizarre_, one word of justification,