to his wife in society and bullied her only in private and when
necessary. He struck no dramatic attitudes. "The world is mine oyster!"
is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds. Count Fosco is the
perfect villain, and also the perfect criminal, inasmuch as he not only
acts naturally, but deliberately determines the action instead of being
drawn into it or having it forced upon him.

He was a highly cultivated type of Andy Johnson, inasmuch as crime
with him was not a life purpose, but what is called in business a
"side-line." All of us have our hobbies; the closely confined clerk goes
home and roots up his yard to plant flower bulbs or cabbage plants;
another fancies fowls; another man collects pewter pots and old brass
and the millionaire takes to priceless horses; others of us turn from
useful statistics and go broke on novels or poetry or music. Count Fosco
was an educated gentleman and the pleasure of life was his purpose;
crime and intrigue were his recreations. Andy Johnson was a good
business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which
his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and
vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder
and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of
novels. I do not remember what he did, because "The Woman in White" is
the best novel in the world to read gluttonously at a sitting and then
forget absolutely. It is nearly always a new book if you use it that
way. When the world is dark, the fates bilious, the appetite dead and
the infernal twinges of pain or sickness seem beyond reach of the
doctor, "The Woman in White" is a friend indeed.

* * * * *

But the man of men for villains, not necessarily criminals; but the