ir
_raison d'etre_, historical and social. He comes on the scene in the
novel, already worn by deceptions; he thought to revive through his
love, and he does not revive. Marriage was for him only the drop of
bitterness that made the cup overflow. He killed himself to bequeath to
others the happiness for which he cared not, and in which he believed
not."

_Jacques_, taken as a _plaidoyer_ against domestic institutions,
singularly misses its aim. As critics have remarked, some of the most
eloquent pages are those that treat of married bliss. Our sympathies
are entirely with the wronged husband against his silly little wife. It
is a kindred work to _Lelia_, and its faults are the same; but whilst
dealing ostensibly with real life and possible human beings it cannot,
like _Lelia_, be placed apart, and retain interest as a literary
curiosity.

_Andre_ is a very different piece of work and a little masterpiece of
its kind. The author, in her preface, tells us how, whilst mechanically
listening to the incessant chatter of the Venetian sempstresses in the
next room to her own, she was struck by the resemblance between the mode
of life and thought their talk betrayed, and that of the same class of
girls at La Chatre; and how in the midst of Venice, to the sound of the
rippling waters stirred by the gondolier's oar, of guitar and serenade,
and within sight of the marble palaces, her thoughts flew back to the
dark and dirty streets, the dilapidated houses, the wretched moss-grown
roofs, the shrill concerts of the cocks, cats, and children of the
little French provincial town. She dreamt also of the lovely meadows,
the scented hay, the little running streams, and the floral researches
she had been fond of. This tenacity of her instincts was a safeguard she
may have sometimes rebelled against as a chain; it was with her an
essential feature, and, despite all vagaries, gave a great unity to her
life.

"Venice," she writes to M. Chatiron in June, "with her marble staircases
and her wonderful climate, does not make me forget anything that has
been dear to me. Be sure that nothing in me dies. My life has its
agitations; destiny pushes me different ways, but my heart does not
repudiate the past. Old memories have a power none can ignore, and
myself less than another. I love on the contrary to recall them, and we
shall soon find ourselves together again in the old nest at Nohant."
_Andre_ she considered the outcome of this feeling of