We have heard

we have to yield to the exigencies of the story. Notwithstanding all she can say in her defence; notwithstanding her explanation before the judge, which charms him, "Quelle admirable comédienne!" notwithstanding even the yielding of the weak husband, who forgives and condones everything, but nevertheless is carried off by his father, and prevented from giving effect to his repentance; notwithstanding even the intrigues of the duke in her favour, whose schemes are spoiled by the divorce, the edict goes forth, and Zyte loses at a stroke both husband and child. They day when the divorce is finally concluded, a friend of Gaston, a young millionaire who has been a witness of her whole career, offers his hand and name to the forsaken woman, who rejects him with gratitude and despair :

"I am no longer a wife. I am no longer a mother. I am an actress only. A great artist, who had also suffered through her love, said to me four years ago words which for some months past have returned perpetually to my ear. You have a tender heart; may the good God turn aside misfortune from your path. Love your art-love nothing but that.' Her prayer has not been granted. Her counsel shall be followed. Marriage, what a jest it has been made what a farce-most tragical!"

The book leaves one's heart aching. We cannot but think it likely that M. Malot must have another chapter of Zyte' to say, and that a sequel will come, which will be less perfect art, but a concession to humanity. If the new law of divorce has had as much effect in life as it has had in fiction, it must have been potent

late on our own shores. But no one in England has advised himself as yet to take it for the subject of a novel-no one, at least, of the force of M. Hector Malot. Mr Hardy, in the curious novel of the Woodlanders,' just published, where the still life is as fine and the human characters as queer as is usual in that gentleman's productions, makes his high-minded and delicate heroine encourage the attentions of a former lover, in the simple faith that she can, as her rustic father believes, obtain a divorce from her husband, who has gone away, supposedly, with another woman; but Mr Hardy has peculiar ideas in this way. We fear, however, that the French reader is scarcely likely to believe much in the superiority of English taste in this respect.

'L'Affaire Froideville' is a work of a very different kind. M. André Theuriet is perhaps not so well known to English readers as his merits deserve. We should have said a little while ago that the bewildered traveller, especially when of the feminine gender, in admiration (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) before a shop-full of French romances, knowing not how to select something which will not revolt his (or her) sense of what is lovely and of good report, yet shall be good French and worth the trouble, might have been safe with anything that bore his name. But since then this fine writer, some of whose books breathe the very spirit of the woods and fields, has followed the bad example of his brethren, and in Le Paradis des Enfans' has given us a miserable story of a brutal intrigue which ruins a poor little inoffen

sive girl, and spoils what might have been a pretty and touching study. Had M. Theuriet possessed the unspeakable advantage of having before his eyes the dread of that Young Person whom our last great British success in the way of romancers declares to be the English novelist's bugbear, he might have been preserved from destroying a quaint and delightful character-piece by this vulgar and unutterably tiresome expedient. However, L'Affaire Froideville' opens up to us an entirely new field. French romance of the present moment seems to delight in presenting itself as illustrating the life and ways of certain classes of society. Maurs militaires, mœurs d'ouvriers, mœurs d'employés-they abound in all senses. It is at once something more and something a great deal less than those scenes of the Comédie Humaine which Balzac set himself to expound with force and knowledge so tremendous. It is into the interior of a Government office in Paris in the year 1864 that our present guide introduces us, at the mid-day hour of general repose, when all the personnel of the office, in happy indifference to the wants of the public, are breakfasting or resting after the brief labours of the morning. It is possible that in English official life there may be a similar sacred pause consecrated to luncheon. At such a moment the applicant in want of information or of furtherance in his affairs appeals to the civil servants of their country, it appears, in vain.

"This misfortune befell on an April morning an unfortunate stranger, whose outline might have been seen from time to time appearing at the head of a stair, stumbling against the great wooden benches, at obscure corners, then plunging again into the

darkness of the corridors. Sometimes in the distance, at the extremity of a passage lighted by some end window, his forehead, stammering a the poor man might be seen wiping question at the door of an anteroom. Breathless and lost, he toiled up staircase J, hurried along corridor N, then stopped, consulted his notes, and with a gesture of despair went down staircase B, and lost himself again in the wilderness of the Government office, labyrinth of passages in that great

at that moment as silent as a deserted

island."

This is a simple suitor from the country, anxious to open again the question of the Froideville succession, a story of family wrong and injustice. His wife's mother had been the wife of the Marquis de Froideville, one of three brothers, a man of sombre humour, who illtreated and banished ner from his house, affecting not to acknowledge her daughter as his own, a supposition altogether without foundation. He died some time after, leaving his fortune to the State, under the supposition that he left no heir. The affaire Froideville is the lawsuit brought by the neglected and disowned daughter, who has, however, a strong body of evidence in proof of her identity. It is scarcely necessary to say that the humble inquirer is her husband, and that it is in the interests of his charming and beautiful young daughter that he wishes to revive the arrested lawsuit. This is the necessary occasion of the story, as it is, of course, admiration for the young lady which moves M. Jacques Marly, one of the clerks (his grade being that of redacteur), to overhaul the dust-covered dossier in which all the papers pertaining to the cause are preserved. But the little romance is of no particular consequence, and the object of the book is to set before us the

office, with all its ambitions and intrigues, and the manner in which the representative of the Froideville family, a certain Count d'Entrevernes, counterchecks every movement, and finally attains an ignoble victory by flattering the ambition and serving the interests of the different officials. Marly, who takes up the case, and reports it favourably to his immediate superior, is quite disinterested, or rather he is interested only on behalf of the young plaintiff whose rights, and to a certain degree her honour, are involved. But as the suit proceeds from sous-chef to chef, from hand to hand, it becomes more and more a question of interest, of flattered vanity, of mutual services. There is a great deal of humour, sometimes grim enough, in the portraiture of the group of officials. Deshorties, sous-chef aux Instances, is the first presented to us :—

"His horizon was limited to the details of official life. He perceived nothing outside of those limits, and the little irritations of the existence of the office bore tragic proportion's in his eyes. Although he might have been sufficiently accustomed to all the defects of that career, its injustices still exasperated him beyond measure. Since he had attained the position of sous-chef two of his subordinates had been promoted over his head-Perceval made Chef aux Instances, and Couturier Chef aux Epaves et Déshérences. He pardoned the elevation of Perceval, whose merit he acknowledged even while grumbling; but he could not swallow that of Couturier, his comrade, originally promoted at the same time, and who, according to his belief, was a fool (un sot-il prononcait sotte pour donner plus d'énergie à cette qualification). From the day of Couturier's promotion to the head of his department Deshorties had placed him in quarantine. He never addressed nor even recognised him again. When he met him in the corridor he stared him in the face, then turned away his

head with a growl of contempt. This treatment, which, thanks to their close vicinity, was repeated five or six times in the day, had the power of exasperand cowardly Couturier. Deshorties ating to the last degree the nervous had the effect upon him of Medusa's head. When he caught a glimpse of him at a distance, he took refuge in the shadow of a doorway, or in the room of a colleague. Then Deshorties triumphed."

The third chef is a certain Dubrac, chef du personnel, between whom and Perceval there is a silent struggle for the office of sous-directeur (we do not pretend to understand nor translate the exact value of these different grades), which is supposed likely means of these three chefs that to be shortly vacant. It is by the affaire Froideville is lost and won. All seems to go well at first.

for the famous suit enrages DeThe contempt of Couturier shorties, who recommends it to the consideration of his immediate superior, M. Perceval.

"The Froideville business,' repeated Perceval. Yes, I rememberan old affair. The parties themselves gave it up. Let it drop: the State has no interest in opening it up again.'

it.

46 4 'However!'

"No, my friend, I know all about Couturier has told me.'

"Has M. Couturier also told you,' answered Deshorties, emphasising the name of his enemy with the most contemptuous tone, that General Jametz takes a great interest in it?'

"The Senator Jametz!' exclaimed Perceval, pricking up his ears. . . . The name of the Senator Jametz, thrown in carelessly by his subordinate, had modified at once the opinion of the ambitious head of the office. At bottom, Perceval had but one dominant idea, that of replacing the sous-directeur Pécoul. For this reason, his chief object was to make friends in the political world, and secure influential patrons who

"I am myself an official,' he says. I have the honour to see her Majesty the Empress daily,

and it has often been my good fortune to ask and happily to obtain for my friends the august support of her Majesty. She is extremely kind to me, and rarely refuses my requests. But, pardon me, let us go back to the real question at issue. All that I would say is, that it lies in your department to extinguish in the bud the unlucky appeal of these Sombernons, and that I come with all frankness to ask you whether, legally and without injury to the Government, you could not put a stop to it."

This statement dazzles the ambitious official. He abandons the applicant whose cause he had

taken up, and throws himself at once on the side of the great man who has the ear of the Empress. The other chef, Couturier, is influenced in a simpler way. His wife is deeply humiliated by the fact that her husband is not yet décoré. The moment is approaching when the yearly promotions take place, and poor Deshorties has already announced to his friends that he is to have the ribbon, by special recommendation of the DirectorGeneral. But Deshorties knows nothing of this little intrigue going on underground, the issue of which is that it is his enemy Couturier, and not himself, who is décoré, and that the affaire Froideville is once more remitted in its dossier to the dust and oblivion of the office shelves. There is a moment of despair in the office, where all young Marly's friends have ranged themselves on his side: followed by a renewed onslaught from the papers (in which they all write more or less), which once more awakes the public attention and that of the Minister; and the Comte d'Entrevernes returns annoyed to Perceval, all efforts having thus failed, to threaten and implore. Perceval defends himself with dignity: he has done all he could, but how to succeed in face of the clamour of the papers, and the fact that the Minister has sent back the dossier to be reexamined.

"I look for promotion,' continued the head of the office, and the place of sous-directeur is about to fall vacant.

This is a piece of good fortune which happens seldom, and many mouths water for it. I have a dangerous competitor, strongly backed in the secretary's office, and if in my wish to please you in respect to the new inquiry into the Froideville case, I put myself in opposition to the Minister, who will defend me?"

"I, sir,' the Comte answered coldly,