uke of Parma; with his master, the feebly cruel and feebly tyrannical
Ranuce-Ernest IV.; with the opposition intriguers at court; with the
Archbishop, to whom Fabrice is made, by the influence of Count and
Duchess, coadjutor and actual successor; with Clelia's father and her
very much belated husband--with all of them in short. You cannot say
they are "out"; on the contrary they do and say exactly what in the
circumstances they would do and say. Their creator's remarks about them
are sometimes of a marvellous subtlety, expressed in a laconism which
seems to regard Marivaudage or Meredithese with an aristocratic disdain.
But at other times this laconic letter literally killeth. Perhaps two
examples of the two effects should be given:

(_Fabrice has found favour in the eyes and arms of the
actress Marietta_)

The love of this pretty Marietta gave Fabrice all the charms
of the sweetest friendship. _And this made him think of the
happiness of the same kind which he might have found with
the Duchess herself._

If this is not "piercing to the accepted hells beneath" with a
diamond-pointed plunger, I know not what is.

But much later, quite towards the end of the book, the author has to
tell how Fabrice again and Clelia "forgot all but love" in one of their
stolen meetings to arrange his escape.

(_He has, by the way, told a lie to make her think he is
poisoned_)

She was so beautiful--half-dressed and in a state of extreme
passion as she was--that Fabrice could not resist an almost
involuntary movement. No resistance was opposed.[132]

Now I am not (see _Addenda and Corrigenda_ of the last volume) avid of
expatiations of the Laclosian kind. But this is really a little too much
of the "Spanish-fleet-taken-and-burnt-as-per-margin" order.

[Sidenote: _L'Abbesse de Castro_, etc.]

Much the same characteristics, but necessarily on a small scale, appear
in the short stories usually found under the title of the first and
longest of them, _L'Abbesse de Castro_. Two of these, _Mina de Wangel_
and _Le Philtre_, are _historiettes_ of the passion which is absent from
_La Chartreuse de Parme_; but each is tainted with the _macabre_ touch
which Beyle affected or which (for that word is hardly fair) was natural
to him. In one a German girl of high rank and great wealth falls in love
with a married man, separates him from his wife by a gross deception,
lives with him for a tim