Corneille's;[268] when, having written to a cousin excusing herself, she gets a mocking letter telling her that _he_ is married already; when the remorseless turn of Fortune's wheel loses her the real lover whom she at last really does love--then it is not mere sentimental-Romantic twaddle; it is a slice of life, soaked in the wine of Romantic tragedy.[269] [Sidenote: Bernard's] In Charles de Bernard (or, if anybody is unable to read novels published under a pseudonym with sufficient comfort, Charles Bernard du Grail de la Villette[270]) one need not look for high passions and great actions of this kind. He does try tragedy sometimes,[271] but, as has been already admitted, it is not his trade. Occasionally, as in _Gerfaut_, he takes the "triangle" rather seriously _a la_ George-Sand-and-the-rest-of-them. The satirists have said that, though not invariably (our present author contains cautions on that point) yet as a rule, if you take yourself with sufficient seriousness, mankind will follow suit. It is certainly very risky to appear to take yourself not seriously. _Gerfaut_, I believe, is generally held to be Bernard's masterpiece. I remember that even my friend Mr. Andrew Lang, who seldom differed with me on points of pure literature, almost gravely remonstrated with me for not thinking enough of it. There are admirable things in _Gerfaut_; but they are, as it seems to me, _separately_ admirable, and so are more like grouped short stories than like a whole long novel. He wrote other books of substance, two of them, _Un Beau-pere_ and _Le Gentilhomme Campagnard_, each extending to a brace of well-filled volumes. But these, as well as the single-volume but still substantial _Un Homme Serieux_ and _Les Ailes d'Icare_, like _Gerfaut_ itself, could all, I think, be split up into shorter stories without difficulty and with advantage. It is of course very likely that the comparative slighting which the author has received from M. Brunetiere and other French critics of the more theoretic kind is due to this. The strict rule-system no doubt disapproves of the mere concatenation of scenes--still more of the mere accumulation of them.