most loving appreciation with
which this cheaply gross forerunner of the later American industrial
brigand was greeted by the American public. The book repels her by
"that mixture of good sense with mad folly--disorder"; but she praises
Mark Twain's accuracy as a reporter. The things which offend her
sensibilities are the wilful exaggeration of the characters, and the
jests which are so elaborately constructed that "the very theme itself
disappears under the mass of embroidery which overlays it." "The
audacities of a Bret Harte, the grosser temerities of a Mark Twain,
still astonish us," she concludes; "but soon we shall become accustomed
to an American language whose savoury freshness is not to be disdained,
awaiting still more delicate and refined qualities that time will
doubtless bring."

In translating 'The Jumping Frog' into faultless French (giving Mark
Twain the opportunity for that delightful retranslation into English
which furnished delight for thousands), in reviewing with elaboration
and long citations 'The Innocents Abroad' and 'The Gilded Age', Mme.
Blanc introduced Mark Twain to the literary public of France; and Emile
Blemont, in his 'Esquisses Americaines de Mark Twain' (1881), still
further enhanced the fame of Mark Twain in France by translating a
number of his slighter sketches. In 1886, Eugene Forgues published in
the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' an exhaustive review (with long citations)
of 'Life on the Mississippi', under the title 'Les Caravans d'un
humoriste'; and his prefatory remarks in regard to Mark Twain's fame in
France at that time may be accepted as authoritative. He pointed out
the praiseworthy efforts that had been made to popularize these
"transatlantic gaieties," to import into France a new mode of comic
entertainment. Yet he felt that the peculiar twist of national
character, the type of wit peculiar to a people and a country, the
specialized conception of the _vis comica_ revealed in Mark Twain's
works, confined them to a restricted milieu. The result of all the
efforts to popularize Mark Twain in France, he makes plain, was an
almost complete check; for to the French taste Mark Twain's pleasantry
appeared macabre, his wit brutal, his temperament dry to excess. By
some, indeed, his exaggerations were regarded as symptoms of mental
alienation; and the originality of his verve did not succeed in giving a
passport to the incoherence of his conceptions. "It has been said,"
remark