similar ones, which abound in
Brantome, I make up a character in my head, and resuscitate a lady of
Henry the Third's court." The "Chronicle" is the result of much reading
and combination of the kind here referred to; and M. Merimee has even
been accused of adhering too closely to reality, to the detriment of the
poetical character of his romance. He does not make his heroes and
heroines sufficiently perfect, or his villains sufficiently atrocious,
to suit the palate of some critics, but depicts them as he finds
evidence of their having existed--their virtues obscured by the coarse
manners and loose morality, their crimes palliated by the religious
antipathies and stormy political passions of a semi-civilised age. He
declines judging the men of the sixteenth century according to the ideas
of the nineteenth. And, with regard to minor matters, he does not, like
some of his contemporaries, place in the mouth of a Huguenot leader, or
a _Guisarde_ countess, the tame and dainty phrase appropriate enough in
that of an equerry, or lady of the bed-chamber at the court of the
Citizen King. Eschewing conventionality, and following his own judgment,
and the guidance of the old chroniclers, in whose quaint records he
delights, he has written one of the best existing French historical
romances.

It would have been easy for a less able writer than M. Merimee to have
extended the "Chronique" to thrice its present length. It is not a
complete romance, but a desultory sketch of the events and manners of
the time, with a few imaginary personages introduced. Novel readers who
require a regular _denoument_ will be disappointed at its conclusion.
There is not even a hint of a wedding from the first page to the last;
and the only lady who plays a prominent part in the story, a certain
countess Diane de Turgis, is little better than she should be. And yet,
if we follow M. Merimee's rule, and judge her according to the ideas and
morals of the age she flourished in, she was rather an amiable and
proper sort of person. True, she sets her lovers by the ears, and feels
gratified when they cut each other's throats: she even challenges a
court dame, who has taken the precedence of her, to an encounter with
sword and dagger, _en chemise_, according to the prevailing mode amongst
the _raffines_, or professed duellists of the time; and she writes
seductive billets-doux in Spanish, and gives wicked little suppers to
the handsome cavalier on whom her affe