w better excuses for such carelessness
than the fact that you have pulled the letter out with a silk wrapper,
which you proceed to fold tenderly round the beautiful neck of a damsel
in a cab somewhere about midnight. A holograph will made on the eve of
Waterloo and preserved for fifteen years by the faithful depositary; a
good doctor, of course; many bad Jesuits, of course; another, and this
time virtuous, though very impudent, carrying-off of the _other_ young
woman from the clutches of the hated _congreganistes_;[73] a boghei;[74]
a jokei; a third _enlevement_ of the real Ludovica, who escapes by a
cellar-trap; and many other agreeable things, end in the complete defeat
of the wicked and the marriage of the good to the tune of _four_
couples, the thing being thus done to the last in Ducange's usual
handsome manner.[75] I do not know whether _Ludovica_ was
melodramatised. _Le Jesuite_ of the same year by Ducange and the great
Pixerecourt looks rather like it; and so does _Il y a Seize Ans_ of a
year later, which he seems to have written alone. But if it was not it
ought to have been. The half-moustache-spider-kissing-screaming scene,
and the brilliant youth retreating through the laughing crowd with the
other half of his decoration, might have reconciled even me to the
theatre.

[Sidenote: Auguste Ricard--_L'Ouvreuse de Loges_.]

A short account of the last novel (except _Le Solitaire_) mentioned
above must stand for sample, not merely of the dozen other works of its
author, Auguste Ricard, but for many more advertised on the fly-leaves
of this time, and long since made "alms for oblivion." Their titles, _Le
Portier_, _La Grisette_, _Le Marchand de Coco_, by Ricard himself, on
one side, _L'Homme des Ruines_, _Bleack-_ (sic) _Beard_, _La Chambre
Rouge_ (by a certain Dinocourt) on the other, almost tell their whole
story--the story of a range (to use English terms once more) between the
cheap followers of Anne Radcliffe and G. W. M. Reynolds. _L'Ouvreuse de
Loges_, through which I have conscientiously worked, inclines to the
latter kind, being anti-monarchic, anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic
(though it admits that these aristocrats are terrible fellows for
behaving in a way which the _roturier_ cannot imitate, however hard he
tries), and anti-things-in-general. Its title-heroine is a bad old
woman, who "keeps the door" in the Elizabethan sense as well as
theatrically. Its real hero is a _ci-devant_ duke; malversator und