therewith. The picture of the actual _Celibataires_, the brother and
sister Rogron, with which it opens, is one of Balzac's best styles,
and is executed with all his usual mastery both of the minute and of
the at least partially repulsive, showing also that strange knowledge
of the _bourgeois de Paris_ which, somehow or other, he seems to have
attained by dint of unknown foregatherings in his ten years of
apprenticeship. But when we come to _Pierrette_ herself, the story is,
I think, rather less satisfying. Her persecutions and her end, and the
devotion of the faithful Brigaut and the rest, are pathetic no doubt,
but tend (I hope it is not heartless to say it) just a very little
towards _sensiblerie_. The fact is that the thing is not quite in
Balzac's line.

_Le Cure de Tours_, is certainly on a higher level, and has attracted
the most magnificent eulogies from some of the novelist's admirers. I
think both Mr. Henry James and Mr. Wedmore have singled out this
little piece for detailed and elaborate praise, and there is no doubt
that it is a happy example of a kind in which the author excelled. The
opening, with its evident but not obtruded remembrance of the old and
well-founded superstition--derived from the universal belief in some
form of Nemesis--that an extraordinary sense of happiness, good luck,
or anything of the kind, is a precursor of misfortune, and calls for
some instant act of sacrifice or humiliation, is very striking; and
the working out of the vengeance of the goddess by the very
ungoddess-like though feminine hand of Mademoiselle Gamard has much
that is commendable. Nothing in its well exampled kind is better
touched off than the Listomere coterie, from the shrewdness of Monsieur
de Bourbonne to the selfishness of Madame de Listomere. I do not know
that the old maid herself--cat, and far worst than cat as she is--is at
all exaggerated, and the sketch of the coveted _appartement_ and its