not regret having been obliged to read it for the third time. The
romance is both well conceived and admirably executed. To have written
it, a union of character and talent was necessary. A Republican tried
and proved, permitting his ideal to be tarnished and sullied; a patriot
wronged by the vices of the times in which he lived; an honest,
clean-handed man; the representative of a family of rigid morality; the
strict impartiality of the artist who cares for nothing but his ideas of
art, and who protects those ideas from being injured or influenced by
the pretensions of any group or coterie; a close and long
acquaintanceship with the ins and outs of Parisian life; an eye at once
inquiring, calm and critical, a courageous indifference, hatred for the
mighty ones of the hour, and a loftiness of soul which refuses to yield
to the unjust demands of timid friendship: such are the qualities that
make the value of this matchless book. Monsieur Claretie has been
accused of having gathered together and exposed to the public gaze two
or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using
them as the foundation of his romance. The fictitious name of Vaudrey
has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those,
however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for
private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the
tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the
romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman nor that.
He is the Minister whom we have had before our eyes for the last quarter
of a century. He is that one, at once potential and universal. In him
are united and portrayed all the traits by which the species may be
determined. He had been elected to office without knowing why, and to do
him this justice, at least without any fault of his; he was deposed from
power without knowing the reason, and we have no hesitation in saying,
without his having done anything either good or bad to deserve his fall.
There he is minister, however; Minister of the Interior, and who knows?