Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/20

x they are not of the first class, that the drawbacks of Les Chouans lie. Though the present version is not my work, I translated the book some years ago, a process which brings out much more vividly than mere reading the want of art which distinguishes the management of the story. There are in it the materials of a really first-rate romance. The opening skirmish, the hairbreadth escape of Montauran at Alençon, the scenes at the Vivetière, not a few of the incidents of the attack on Fougères, and, above all, the finale, are, or at least might have been made, of the most thrilling interest. Nor are they by any means ill supported by the characters. Hulot is one of the best of Balzac's grognard heroes; Montauran may be admitted by the most faithful and jealous devotee of Scott to be a jeune premier who unites all the qualifications of his part with a freedom from the flatness which not unfrequently characterizes Sir Walter's own good young men, and which drew from Mr. Thackeray the equivocal encomium that he should like to be mother-in-law to several of them. Marche-à-Terre is very nearly a masterpiece; and many of the minor personages are excellent for their work. Only Corentin (who, by the way, appears frequently in other books later) is perhaps below what he ought to be. But the women make up for him. Mademoiselle de Verneuil has admirable piquancy and charm; Madame du Gua is a good bad heroine; and Francine is not a mere soubrette of the machine-made pattern by any means.

How is it, then, that the effect of the book is, as many readers unquestionably feel it to be, "heavy"? The answer is not very difficult; it is simply that Balzac had not yet learned his trade, and that this particular trade was not exactly his. He had a certain precedent in some—not in all, nor in the