Yet the picture of the good priest and the portraits of the little
Cardinals are the work of the same hand, plainly enough. In both of
these books, as in _Criquette_ (M. Halévy's only other novel), as in _A
Marriage for Love_, and the twoscore other short stories he has written
during the past thirty years, there are the same artistic qualities, the
same sharpness of vision, the same gentle irony, the same constructive
skill, and the same dramatic touch. It is to be remembered always that
the author of _L'Abbé Constantin_ is also the half-author of "Froufrou"
and of "Tricoche et Cacolet," as well as of the librettos of "La Belle
Hélène" and of "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein."

In the two novels, as in the twoscore short stories and sketches--the
_contes_ and the _nouvelles_ which are now spring-like idyls and now
wintry episodes, now sombre etchings and now gayly-colored pastels--in
all the works of the story-teller we see the firm grasp of the
dramatist. The characters speak for themselves; each reveals himself
with the swift directness of the personages of a play. They are not
talked about and about, for all analysis has been done by the playwright
before he rings up the curtain in the first paragraph. And the story
unrolls itself, also, as rapidly as does a comedy. The movement is
straightforward. There is the cleverness and the ingenuity of the
accomplished dramatist, but the construction has the simplicity of the
highest skill. The arrangement of incidents is so artistic that it seems
inevitable; and no one is ever moved to wonder whether or not the tale
might have been better told in different fashion.

Nephew of the composer of "La Juive"--an opera not now heard as often as
it deserves, perhaps--and son of a playwright no one of whose
productions now survives, M. Halévy grew up in the theatre. At fourteen
he was on the free-list of the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, and the Odéon.