this monstrous creature, a cross between a siren and an atheist, was
an immoral combination of woman and philosopher who violated every
social law invented to restrain or utilize the infirmities of
womankind.

Just as Clara Gazul is the female pseudonym of a distinguished male
writer, George Sand the masculine pseudonym of a woman of genius, so
Camille Maupin was the mask behind which was long hidden a charming
young woman, very well-born, a Breton, named Felicite des Touches, the
person who was now causing such lively anxiety to the Baronne du
Guenic and the excellent rector of Guerande. The Breton des Touches
family has no connection with the family of the same name in Touraine,
to which belongs the ambassador of the Regent, even more famous to-day
for his writings than for his diplomatic talents.

Camille Maupin, one of the few celebrated women of the nineteenth
century, was long supposed to be a man, on account of the virility of
her first writings. All the world now knows the two volumes of plays,
not intended for representation on the stage, written after the manner
of Shakespeare or Lopez de Vega, published in 1822, which made a sort
of literary revolution when the great question of the classics and the
romanticists palpitated on all sides,--in the newspapers, at the
clubs, at the Academy, everywhere. Since then, Camille Maupin has
written several plays and a novel, which have not belied the success
obtained by her first publication--now, perhaps, too much forgotten.
To explain by what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation
of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a
man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she
kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would
be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal