For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as many admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and ton, in his style, which, if we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas. We have then—“Gerfaut,” a novel: a lovely creature is married to a brave, haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the boar. The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris; instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into dissipation; and so the tale ends.
Next: “La Femme de Quarante Ans,” a capital tale, full of exquisite fun and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night; for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, “Alphonse, when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;” “Isadore, when that bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline,” &c.
“Un Acte de Vertu,” from which we have taken Dambergeac’s history, contains him, the husband—a wife—and a brace of lovers; and a great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the other.—Pretty morals truly!
If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit, exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax—duel, death, despair, and what not? In the “Faubourg St. Germain,” another novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, who falls in love with his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the conduct of the lady, who is reprehended—not for deceiving her husband (poor devil!)—but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
