and this or that novel of M. Ohnet's because of its bad taste, and all
of them were delighted to discover in M. Halévy's interesting and
artistic work a story written by a French gentleman for young ladies.
Here and there a scoffer might sneer at the tale of the old French
priest and the young women from Canada as innocuous and saccharine; but
the story of the good Abbé Constantin and of his nephew, and of the girl
the nephew loved in spite of her American millions--this story had the
rare good fortune of pleasing at once the broad public of indiscriminate
readers of fiction and the narrower circle of real lovers of literature.
Artificial the atmosphere of the tale might be, but it was with an
artifice at once delicate and delicious; and the tale itself won its way
into the hearts of the women of America as it had into the hearts of the
women of France.

There is even a legend--although how solid a foundation it may have in
fact I do not dare to discuss--there is a legend that the lady-superior
of a certain convent near Paris was so fascinated by _The Abbé
Constantin_, and so thoroughly convinced of the piety of its author,
that she ordered all his other works, receiving in due season the lively
volumes wherein are recorded the sayings and doings of Monsieur and
Madame Cardinal, and of the two lovely daughters of Monsieur and Madame
Cardinal. To note that these very amusing studies of certain aspects of
life in a modern capital originally appeared in that extraordinary
journal, _La Vie Parisienne_--now sadly degenerate--is enough to
indicate that they are not precisely what the good lady-superior
expected to receive. We may not say that _La Famille Cardinal_ is one of
the books every gentleman's library should be without; but to appreciate
its value requires a far different knowledge of the world and of its
wickedness than is needed to understand _The Abbé Constantin_.