translation to English and American readers as to his French audience.
The bright stories originally published in the Moniteur, afterward
collected with the title 'Les Mariages de Paris' had a conspicuous
success, and were followed by a companion volume, 'Les Mariages de
Province.' 'L'Homme à l'Oreille Cassée' (The Man with the Broken
Ear)--the story of a mummy resuscitated to a world of new conditions
after many years of apparent death--shows his freakish delight in
oddity. So does 'Le Nez du Notaire' (The Notary's Nose), a gruesome tale
of the tribulations of a handsome society man, whose nose is struck off
in a duel by a revengeful Turk. The victim buys a bit of living skin
from a poor water-carrier, and obtains a new nose by successful
grafting. But he can nevermore get rid of the uncongenial Aquarius, who
exercises occult influence over the skin with which he has parted. When
he drinks too much, the Notary's nose is red; when he starves, it
dwindles away; when he loses the arm from which the graft was made, the
important feature drops off altogether, and the sufferer must needs buy
a silver one. About's latest novel, 'Le Roman d'un Brave Homme' (The
Story of an Honest Man), is in quite another vein, a charming picture of
bourgeois virtue in revolutionary days. 'Madelon' and 'La Vielle Roche'
(The Old School) are also popular.

French critics have not found much to say of this non-evolutionist of
letters, who is neither pure realist nor pure romanticist, and who has
no new theory of art. Some, indeed, may have scorned him for the wise
taste which refuses to tread the debatable ground common to French
fiction. But the reading public has received him with less conscious
analysis, and has delighted in him. If he sees only what any clever man
may see, and is no profound psychologist, yet he tells what he sees and
what he imagines with delightful spirit and delightful wit, and tinges
the fabric of his fancy with the ever-changing colors of his own