ed,
uncommonly lively, and for once, not only in the final retribution, Paul
has distributed the _peine du talion_ pretty equally between his
personages. Dorsan has already lost another grisette mistress, Caroline
(for whose sake he has neglected Nicette), and a _femme du monde_, with
whom he has for a short time intrigued; while in both cases Raymond,
though not exactly the cause of the deprivation, has, in his meddling
way, been mixed up with it. In yet other scenes we have a travelling
magic-lantern exhibition in the Champs Elysees; a night in the Tivoli
Gardens; an expedition to a party at a country house, which, of course,
Raymond's folly upsets, literally as well as metaphorically; a long
(rather too long) account of a musical evening at a very
lower-middle-class house; a roaringly farcical interchange of dinners
_en cabinet particulier_ at a restaurant, in which Raymond is the
victim. But, on the whole, he scores, and is a sort of double cause of
the hero's last and greatest misfortune. For it is a lie of his about
Nicette which determines Dorsan to make a long-postponed visit to his
sister in the country, and submit at last to her efforts to get him
married to the exaggeratedly _ingenue_ Pelagie, and saddled with her
detestable aunt, Madame de Pontchartrain. The end of the book is not
quite equal to some other parts of it. But there is abundance of
excellent farce, and Nicette might reconcile the veriest sentimentalist.

[Sidenote: _Le Barbier de Paris._]

At one time in England--I cannot speak for the times of his greatest
popularity in France--Paul de Kock's name, except for a vague knowledge
of his grisette and _mauvais sujet_ studies, was very mainly connected
with _Le Barbier de Paris_. It was an instance of the constant mistakes
which almost all countries make about foreign authors. I imagine, from a
fresh and recent reading of it, that he probably did take more trouble
with it than with most of his books. But, unfortunately, instances of
lost labour are not confined to literature. The subject and the author
are very ill matched. It is a romance of 1632, and so in a way competing
with the most successful efforts of the great Romantics. But for such a
task Paul had no gifts, except his invariable one of concocting a
readable story. As for style, imagination, atmosphere, and such high
graces, it would be not so much cruel as absurd to "enter" the book with
_Notre-Dame de Paris_ or the _Contes Drolatiques_,