In fact it is in these mixed pieces that Gerard's great attraction lies. His regular stories, professedly of a Hoffmannesque kind, such as _La Main Enchantee_ and _Le Monstre Vert_, are good, but not extraordinarily good, and classable with many other things of many other people. I, at least, know nothing quite like _Aurelia_ and _Sylvie_, though the dream-pieces of Landor and De Quincey have a certain likeness, and Nodier's _La Fee aux Miettes_ a closer one. [Sidenote: _Aurelia._] _Aurelia_ (which, whether complete in itself or not, was pretty clearly intended to be followed by other things under the general title of _Le Reve et la Vie_) has, as might be expected, more dream than life in it. Or rather it is like one of those actual dreams which themselves mix up life--a dream in the composition. Aurelia is the book-name of a lady, loved (actually, it seems) and in some degree responsible for her lover's aberrations of mind. He thinks he loves another, but finds he does not. The two objects of his passion meet, and the second generously brings about a sort of reconciliation with the first. But he has to go to Paris on business, and there he becomes a mere John-a-Dreams, if not, in a mild way, a mere Tom of Bedlam. The chief drops into reality, indeed, are mentions of his actual visits to _maisons de sante_. But the thing is impossible to abstract or analyse, too long to translate as a whole, and too much woven in one piece to cut up. It must be read as it stands, and any person of tolerable intelligence will know in a page or two whether Gerard is the man for him or not. But when he was writing it he was already over even the fringe of ordinary sane life, and near the close of life itself. In _Sylvie_ he had not drifted so far; and it is perhaps his best diploma-piece.[243] [Sidenote: And especially _Sylvie_.] For _Sylvie_, with its sub-title, "Souvenirs du Valois," surely exhibits Gerard, outside the pure travel-books, at his very best, as far as concerns that mixture of _reve_ and _realite_--the far-off goal of Gautier's[244] _Chimere_--which has been spoken of. The author comes out of a theatre where he has only seen Her, having never, though a constant worshipper, troubled himself to ask, much less to seek out, what She might be off the stage. And here we may give an actual piece of him.