Even so, the
two modes of life which made up, between them, the experience of the
_Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon (nee Horatia Grenville_) are too cleanly
severed by the estranging Channel to be brought into sharp antithesis,
except in the heart of the one woman. And, since it is difficult to
understand why anyone so British in her independence and aloofness
should have surrendered her heart to the first good-looking Frenchman
who came her way, we never get to be on very intimate terms with that
organ. The construction of the story tends to break up the action and
make its interest desultory. While we are spending a hundred odd pages
at one time and fifty odd at another in Paris and Brittany we forget,
very contentedly, about Oriel; and while we are in residence at Oxford
we are practically cut off--no doubt, to our spiritual gain--from
the things of France. The authors seem to belong to the solid
old-fashioned school that had the patience to spread itself and leave
as little as might be to the imagination. I suspect one of them
of supplying the foreign information and the other of being the
correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of
them--if any--are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of
the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too--both
of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of _Armand de la
Roche-Guyon_, and the picture of his lover, _Madame de Vigerie_.
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