pprenticeship. But when we come to _Pierrette_ herself, the story is,
I think, rather less satisfying. Her persecutions and her end, and the
devotion of the faithful Brigaut and the rest, are pathetic no doubt,
but tend (I hope it is not heartless to say it) just a very little
towards _sensiblerie_. The fact is that the thing is not quite in
Balzac's line.

_Le Cure de Tours_, is certainly on a higher level, and has attracted
the most magnificent eulogies from some of the novelist's admirers. I
think both Mr. Henry James and Mr. Wedmore have singled out this
little piece for detailed and elaborate praise, and there is no doubt
that it is a happy example of a kind in which the author excelled. The
opening, with its evident but not obtruded remembrance of the old and
well-founded superstition--derived from the universal belief in some
form of Nemesis--that an extraordinary sense of happiness, good luck,
or anything of the kind, is a precursor of misfortune, and calls for
some instant act of sacrifice or humiliation, is very striking; and
the working out of the vengeance of the goddess by the very
ungoddess-like though feminine hand of Mademoiselle Gamard has much
that is commendable. Nothing in its well exampled kind is better
touched off than the Listomere coterie, from the shrewdness of Monsieur
de Bourbonne to the selfishness of Madame de Listomere. I do not know
that the old maid herself--cat, and far worst than cat as she is--is at
all exaggerated, and the sketch of the coveted _appartement_ and its
ill-fated _mobilier_ is about as good as it can be. And the battle
between Madame de Listomere and the Abbe Troubert, which has served as
a model for many similar things, has, if it has often been equaled,
not often been surpassed.

I cannot, however, help thinking that there is more than a little
exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The Abbe Birotteau
is surely a little too much of a fool; the Abbe Troubert an Iago a
little too much wanting in verisimilitude; and the central incident of
the clause about the furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the
first and the last points together, is it likely that any one not
quite an idiot should, in the first place, remain so entirely ignorant
of the value of his property; should, in the second, though, ignorant
or not, he attached the greatest possible _pretium affectionis_ to it,
contract to resign it for such a ridiculous consideration; and should,
in the th