himself, a most appalling "tiger," as his own time would have
called him; and the enigmatic English cousin, indifferently designated
as "Sir Rodolphe Brown," "Sir Ralph," "Sir Brown," and "M. Brown," with
whom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" and
unattained happiness--are all inhabitants of a sort of toy doll's-house
partaking of the lunatic-asylum. But the author's three prefaces,
written at intervals of exactly ten years, passably inconsistent in
detail, but all agreeing in contempt of critics and lofty anarchist
sentiment, are great fun, and are almost a reward for reading the book.

[Sidenote: _Valentine._]

_Valentine_ has more of the really admirable description of her beloved
Berry with which the author so often honeys her drugs; but the
novel-part of it is largely composed of the same sort of violent bosh
which almost monopolises _Indiana_. In fact, the peasant-_bourgeois_
hero Benedict, whom every woman loves; who is a conceited and
ill-mannered mixture of clown and prig; who is angry with his mistress
Valentine (Madame de Lansac) for "not knowing how to prefer him to her
honour," though one would have said she had given ample proofs of this
preference; and who finally appeases the reader by tumbling on the
points of a pitchfork placed in his way by an (as it happens) unduly
jealous husband, is a more offensive creature than any one in the
earlier book.[179] One is, on the other hand, a little sorry for
Valentine, while one is sorry for nobody in _Indiana_ except perhaps for
the husband, who has the sense to die early.

[Sidenote: _Lelia._]

_Lelia_, some years younger than these and later than the Musset
tragedy, is a good deal better, or at least less childish. It is beyond
all question an extraordinary book, though it may be well to keep the
hyphen in the adjective to prevent confusion of sense. It opens, and to
a large extent continues, with a twist of the old epistolary style
which, if nothing else, is ingeniously novel. George Sand was in truth a
"well of ingenuity" as D'Artagnan was a _puits de sagesse_, and this
accounts, to some extent, for her popularity. You have not only no dates
and no places, but no indication who writes the letters or to whom they
are written, though, unless you are very stupid, you soon find out. The
_personae_ are Lelia--a _femme incomprise_, if not incomprehensible;
Stenio, a young poet, who is, in the profoundest and saddest sense of
the adverb, hope