ing becomes more dramatic and is
treated in a more detailed and solemn fashion. Claudie's misfortune
causes her to become a sort of personage apart, and it raises her very
high in her own esteem.

"I am not afraid of anything that can be said about me," observes
Claudie, "for, on knowing the truth, kind-hearted, upright people will
acknowledge that I do not deserve to be insulted." Her old grandfather,
Remy, has completely absolved her.

"You have repented and suffered enough, and you have worked and wept and
expiated enough, too, my poor Claudie," he says. Through all this she
has become worthy to make an excellent marriage. It is a case of
that special moral code by which, after free love, the fault must be
recompensed.

Claudie is later on the Jeannine of the _Idees de Madame Aubray_,
the Denise of Alexandre Dumas. She is the unmarried mother, whose
misfortunes have not crushed her pride, who, after being outraged, has
a right now to a double share of respect. The first good young man is
called upon to accept her past life, for there is a law of solidarity in
the world. The human species is divided into two categories, the one
is always busy doing harm, and the other is naturally obliged to give
itself up to making good the harm done.

_The Mariage de Victorine_ belongs to a well-known kind of literary
exercise, which was formerly very much in honour in the colleges. This
consists in taking a celebrated work at the place where the author has
left it and in imagining the "sequel." For instance, after the _Cid_,
there would be the marriage of Rodrigue and Chimene for us. As a
continuation of _L'Ecole des Femmes_, there is the result of the
marriage of the young Horace with the tiresome little Agnes. Corneille
gave a sequel to the _Menteur_ himself. Fabre d'Eglantine wrote the
sequel to _Le Misanthrope_, and called it _Le Philinte de Moliere_.
George Sand gives us here the sequel of Sedaine's _chef-d'oeuvre_ (that
is, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ for Sedaine), _Le Philosophe sans le savor._

In _Le Philosophe sans le savoir_ Monsieur Vanderke is a nobleman, who
has become a merchant in order to be in accordance with the ideas of
the times. He is a Frenchman, but he has taken a Dutch name out of
snobbishness. He has a clerk or a confidential servant named Antoine.
Victorine is Antoine's daughter. Vanderke's son is to fight a duel, and
from Victorine's emotion, whilst awaiting the result of this duel, it is
easy to see that sh