the Romantic movement generally--is a fantasia of
nightmare based on the beginning of _The Golden Ass_, with, again, a
sort of prologue and epilogue of modern love. It is undoubtedly a fine
piece of work of its kind and beautifully written. But in itself it
seems to me a little too much of a _tour de force_, and its kind a
little rococo. Again, _mea maxima culpa_ perhaps. On the other hand,
_Soeur Beatrix_ is a most charmingly told version of a very
wide-spread story--that of Our Lady taking the place of an erring sister
during her sojourn in the world, and restoring her to it without any
scandal when she returns repentant and miserable after years of absence.
It could not be better done.

[Sidenote: _Ines de las Sierras._]

But the jewel of the book, and of Nodier's work, to me, is _Ines de las
Sierras_--at least its first and larger part; for Nodier, in one of
those exasperatingly uncritical whims of his which have been noticed,
and which probably prevented him from ever writing a really good novel
of length, has attached an otiose explanation _a la_ Mrs. Radcliffe,
which, if it may please the weakest kind of weak brethren, may almost
disgust another, and as to which I myself exercise the critic's
_cadi_-rights by simply ignoring and banishing what I think superfluous.
As for what remains, once more, it could not be done better.

Three French officers, at the moment of disturbance of the French
garrisons in the north of Spain, owing to Napoleon's Russian disasters
(perhaps also to more local events, which it was not necessary for
Nodier to mention), are sent on remount duty from Gerona to Barcelona,
where there is a great horse-fair on. They are delayed by bad weather
and other accidents, and are obliged to stop half-way after nightfall.
But the halting-place is choke-full of other travellers on their way to
the same fair, and neither at inn nor in private house is there any room
whatever, though there is no lack of "provant." Everybody tells them
that they can only put up at "the castle of Ghismondo." Taking this for
a Spanish folkword, they get rather angry. But, finding that there _is_
a place of the name close by in the hills--ruinous, haunted, but
actual--they take plenty of food, wine, and torches, etc., and persuade,
with no little difficulty, their _arriero_ and even their companion and
the real hirer of the vehicle (a theatrical manager, who has allowed
them to accompany him, when they could get no other)