of its kind and
time) might be recommended to lovers of the detective novel, of which it
is a rather early sample. I have confessed, in a later chapter, that
this particular "wanity" is not my favourite; but I found myself getting
through M. Victor Ducange's six volumes--burdened rather than ballasted
as they are by political outbursts, rather "thorn-crackling" attempts at
humour, and the like--with considerably less effort than has sometimes
attended similar excursions. If they had been three instead of six I
hardly think I should have felt the collar at all. The superiority to
_L'Artiste et le Soldat_ is remarkable. When honest Jules Janin
attributed to Ducange "une erudition peu commune," he must either have
been confusing Victor with Charles, or, which is more probable,
exhibiting his own lack of the quality he refers to. Ducange does quote
tags of Latin: but erudition which makes Proserpine the daughter of
_Cybele_, though certainly _peu commune_ in one sense, is not so in the
other. The purposes and the jokes, as has been said, may bore; and
though the style is better than Ducray's, it would not of itself
"over-stimulate." But the man is really almost prodigal of incident, and
does not manage it badly.

Here, you have Ludovica's father and mother (the former of whom has been
crimped to perform a marriage under the impression that he is a priest,
whereas he is really a colonel of dragoons) escaping through a hole at
the back of a picture from a skylighted billiard-room. There, an
enterprising young man, "sitting out" at a ball, to attend which he has
disguised himself, kisses his partner,[72] and by that pleasing
operation dislodges half his borrowed moustache. It falls, alas! on her
hand, she takes it for a spider, screams, and so attracts an unwelcome
public. Later in the same evening he finds himself shut up in the young
lady's bedroom, and hears her and her mother talking secrets which very
nearly concern him. The carrying off of Ludovica from Poland to Paris is
very smartly managed (I am not sure that the great Alexander or one of
his "young men" did not borrow some details from it for the arrest of
D'Artagnan and Porthos after their return from England), and the way in
which she and a double of hers, Trinette van Poupenheim, are mixed up is
really clever. So is the general cross-purposing. Cabmen turn up just
when they should; and though letters dropped out of pockets are as
common as blackberries, I know fe