HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.
| INTRODUCTION |
| ONLY A WALTZ |
| THE DANCING-MASTER |
| THE CIRCUS CHARGER |
| BLACKY |
| THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN PARIS |
| THE STORY OF A BALL-DRESS |
| THE INSURGENT |
| THE CHINESE AMBASSADOR |
| IN THE EXPRESS |
To most American readers of fiction I fancythat M. Ludovic Halévy is known chiefly, if notsolely, as the author of that most charming of modernFrench novels, The Abbé Constantin. Some ofthese readers may have disliked this or that novelof M. Zola's because of its bad moral, and this orthat novel of M. Ohnet's because of its bad taste,and all of them were delighted to discover in M.Halévy's interesting and artistic work a story writtenby a French gentleman for young ladies. Hereand there a scoffer might sneer at the tale of theold French priest and the young women from Canadaas innocuous and saccharine; but the story ofthe good Abbé Constantin and of his nephew, andof the girl the nephew loved in spite of her Americanmillions—this story had the rare good fortuneof pleasing at once the broad public of indiscriminatereaders of fiction and the narrower circle ofreal lovers of literature. Artificial the atmosphereof the tale might be, but it was with an artifice atonce delicate and delicious; and the tale itself wonits way into the hearts of the women of Americaas it had into the hearts of the women of France.
There is even a legend—although how solid afoundation it may have in fact I do not dare to discuss—thereis a legend that the lady-superior of acertain convent near Paris was so fascinated byThe Abbé Constantin, and so thoroughly convincedof the piety of its author, that she ordered all hisother works, receiving in due season the lively volumeswherein are recorded the sayings and doingsof Monsieur and Madame Cardinal, and of the twolovely daughters of Monsieur and Madame Cardinal.To note that these very amusing studies ofcertain aspects of life in a modern capital originallyappeared in that extraordinary journal, La VieParisienne—now sadly degenerate—is enough to indicatetha