[210] He (it is some excuse for him that this suggested a better thing in certain _New Arabian Nights_) buys, furnishes, and subsequently deserts an empty house to give a ball in, and put his friends on no scent of his own abode; but he makes this "own abode" a sort of Crystal Palace in the centre of a whole ring-fence of streets, with the old fronts of the houses kept to avert suspicion of the Seraglio of Eastern beauties, the menagerie and beast fights, and the slaves whom (it is rather suggested than definitely stated) he occasionally murders. He performs circus-rider feats when he meets a lady (or at least a woman) in the Bois de Boulogne; he sets her house on fire when it occurs to him that she has received other lovers there; and we are given to understand that he blows up his own palace when he returns to the East. In fact, he is a pure anticipated cognition of a Ouidesque super-hero as parodied by Sir Francis Burnand (and independently by divers schoolboys and undergraduates) some fifty years ago. [211] I have seen an admirable criticism of this "thing" in one word, "Cold!" [212] On the cayenne-and-claret principle which Haydon (one hopes libellously, in point of degree) attributed to Keats. (It was probably a devilled-biscuit, and so quite allowable.) [213] "Theo" has no repute as a psychologist; but I have known such repute attained by far less subtle touches than this. [214] For more on them, with a pretty full abstract of _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, see the Essay more than once mentioned. [215] _V. sup._ Vol. I. p. 279-286. Of course the duplication, _as literature_, is positively interesting and welcome. [216] I--some fifty years since--knew a man who, with even greater juvenility, put pretty much the same doctrine in a Fellowship Essay. He did not obtain that Fellowship. [217] It might possibly have been shortened with advantage in concentration of effect. But the story (pleasantly invented, if not true) of Gautier's mother locking him up in his room that he might not neglect his work (of the nature of which she was blissfully ignorant) nearly excuses him. A prisoner will naturally be copious rather than terse. [218] It may amuse some readers to know that I saw the rather famous lithograph (of a lady and gentleman kissing each other at full speed on horseback), which owes its subject to the book, in no more romantic a place that a very small public-house in "Scarlet town," to which I had gone, not to quench my thirst or for any other licentious purpose, but to make an appointment with--a chimney-sweep. [219] Some might even say he had too much. [220] For reference to previous dealings of mine with Merimee see _Preface_. [221] It is sad, but necessary, to include M. Brunetiere among the latter class. [222] He was never a professor, but was an inspector; and, though I may be biassed, I think the inspector is usually the more "donnish" animal of the two.