of the leaf" from this, the strongest, and in
the best sense most faultless, of George Sand's novels of analysis, to
the "idyllic" group of her later middle and later period--the
"prettiest" division, and in another grade of faultlessness the most
free from faults, in ordinary estimation, of her entire production.

[Sidenote: The "Idylls"--_La Petite Fadette_.]

The most popular of these, the prettiest again, the most of a
_bergerie-berquinade-conte-de-fees_, is no doubt _La Petite Fadette_,
the history of two twin-boys and a little girl--this last, of course,
the heroine. The boys are devoted to each other and as like as two peas
in person, but very different in character, one being manly, and the
other, if not exactly effeminate, something like it. As for Fadette,
she, though never exactly like the other girl of the saying "horrid,"
but only (and with very considerable excuses) naughty and untidy and
rude, becomes "so very, very good when she is good" as to awake slight
recalcitrances in those who have acquired the questionable knowledge of
good and evil in actual life. But one does not want to cavil. It _is_ a
pretty book, and when the not exactly wicked but somewhat ill-famed
grandmother's stocking yields several thousand francs and facilitates
the marriage of Landry, the manly brother, and Fadette, one can be very
cheerfully cheerful, and anticipate a real ever-after happiness for
both. No doubt, too, the army did knock the girlishness out of the other
brother, Sylvinet, and we hope that one of the village gossips was wrong
when she said that he would never love any girl but one. For it is
hardly necessary to say that his agreement with his twin extends to love
for Fadette--love which is quite honourable, and quite kindly
extinguished by that agreeable materialisation of one of Titania's
lower-class maids-of-honour.

Only one slight piece of _malice_ (in the mitigated French sense) may be
permitted. We are told that Sylvinet, after the marriage, served for ten
years "in the Emperor Napoleon's glorious campaigns." This will hardly
admit of a later date for that marriage itself than the breach of the
Peace of Amiens. And this, even if Landry was no more than eighteen or
nineteen at that time (he could hardly be less), will throw the date of
his and his brother's birth well before the Revolution. Now, to insist
on chronological exactitude and draw inferences from its absence is--one
admits most cheerfully, and more