sparkle and occasional flashes of wit, which seemed altogether
un-Norwegian. It was obvious that this author was familiar with the
best French writers, and had acquired through them that clear and
crisp incisiveness of utterance which was supposed, hitherto, to be
untransferable to any other tongue.

As regards the themes of these "novelettes" (from which the present
collection is chiefly made up), it was remarked at the time of
their first appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose
than their style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance,
"Pharaoh" (which in the original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without
detecting the revolutionary note which trembles quite audibly
through the calm and unimpassioned language? There is, by-the-way,
a little touch of melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with
Kielland. "Romance and Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with
the conventional romanticism in its satirical contributing of the
pre-matrimonial and the pos-tmatrimonial view of love and marriage.
The same persistent tendency to present the wrong side as well as
the right side--and not, as literary good-manners are supposed to
prescribe, ignore the former--is obvious in the charming tale "At
the Fair," where a little spice of wholesome truth spoils the
thoughtlessly festive mood; and the squalor, the want, the envy,
hate, and greed which prudence and a regard for business compel the
performers to disguise to the public, become the more cruelly
visible to the visitors of the little alley-way at the rear of the
tents. In "A Good Conscience" the satirical note has a still more
serious ring; but the same admirable self-restraint which, next to
the power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an
author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from
saying too much--from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, _a