erved, felt, and expressed. Irony
shines through the pages and the final cadence includes a murder and a
suicide. For the former, bromide of potassium and gas are utilized in
combination; for the latter laudanum, taken hypodermically, suffices.
There are scenes in Biarritz and Northern Spain which include a
thrilling picture of a bull-fight. There is an interesting glimpse of
the Paris Opera. There is a description of an epithumetic library
which embraces many forbidden titles, (How that "baron of moral
endeavour ... the professional hound of heaven," Anthony Comstock,
would have gloated over these shelves!), a vibrant page about Goya,
and another about a Thibetian cat. Many passages could be brought
forward as evidence that Mr. Saltus loves the fire-side sphynx. The
Mr. Incoul of the title gives one a very excellent idea of how inhuman
a just man can be. There is not a single slip in the skilful
delineation of this monster. The beautiful heroine vaguely shambles
into a tapestried background. She is _moyen age_ in her appealing
weakness. The _jeune premier_, Lenox Leigh, is well drawn and
lighted. Time after time the author strikes subtle harmonies which
must have delighted Henry James. Why is this book not dedicated to
author of "The Turn of the Screw" rather than to "E. A. S."? The pages
are permeated with suspense, horror, information, irony, and charm,
about evenly distributed, all of which qualities are expressed in the
astounding title (astounding after you have read the book). There is a
white marriage in this tale, stipulated in the hymeneal bond. In 1877
Tschaikovsky made a similar agreement with the woman he married.

"The Truth About Tristrem Varick"[12] is written with the same
restraint which characterizes the style of "Mr. Incoul's
Misadventure," a restraint seldom to be encountered in Saltus's later
fictions. One of the angles of the plot in which an irate father
attempts to suppress a marriage by suggesting incest, bobs up twice
again in his stories, for the last time nearly thirty years later in
"The Monster." Irony is the keynote of the work, a keynote sounded in
the dedication, "To my master, the philosopher of the unconscious,
Eduard von Hartmann, this attempt in ornamental disenchantment is
dutifully inscribed." The heroine, as frequently happens with Saltus
heroines, is veiled with the mysteries of Isis; we do not see the
workings of her mind and so we can sympathize with Varick, who pursues
her w