throned. When his pride
is at ease he is a prince. I can read men. Now, Colonel De Craye, pray,
be lively."

"I should have been livelier, I'm afraid, if you had dropped a bit of a
hint to Willoughby. But you're the magnanimous person, ma'am, and
revenge for a stroke in the game of love shows us unworthy to win."

Mrs. Mountstuart menaced him with her parasol. "I forbid sentiments,
Colonel De Craye. They are always followed by sighs."

"Grant me five minutes of inward retirement, and I'll come out formed
for your commands, ma'am," said he.

Before the termination of that space De Craye was enchanting Mrs.
Mountstuart, and she in consequence was restored to her natural wit.

So, and much so universally, the world of his dread and his unconscious
worship wagged over Sir Willoughby Patterne and his change of brides,
until the preparations for the festivities of the marriage flushed him
in his county's eyes to something of the splendid glow he had worn on
the great day of his majority. That was upon the season when two lovers
met between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps over the Lake of Constance.
Sitting beside them the Comic Muse is grave and sisterly. But taking a
glance at the others of her late company of actors, she compresses her lips.

THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS

A STUDY IN A WELL-KNOWN STORY

By George Meredith

1892

BOOK 1.

The word 'fantastical' is accentuated in our tongue to so scornful an
utterance that the constant good service it does would make it seem an
appointed instrument for reviewers of books of imaginative matter
distasteful to those expository pens. Upon examination, claimants to the
epithet will be found outside of books and of poets, in many quarters,
Nature being one of the prominent, if not the foremost. Wherever she can
get to drink her fill of sunlight she pushes forth fantastically. As for
that wandering ship of the drunken pilot, the mutinous crew and the angry
captain, called Human Nature, 'fantastical' fits it no less completely
than a continental baby's skull-cap the stormy infant.

Our sympathies, one may fancy, will be broader, our critical acumen
shrewder, if we at once accept the thing as a part of us and worthy of
study.

The pair of tragic comedians of whom there will be question pass under
this word as under their banner and motto. Their acts are incredible:
they drank sunlight and drove their bark in a manner to eclipse
historical couples upon our planet.