Outside the "Histoire de Chactas" (which might, like _Atala_ and _Rene_ themselves, have been isolated with great advantage), and excepting likewise the passages concerning Outougamiz and Mila--which possess, in considerable measure and gracious fashion, what some call the "idyllic" quality--I have found it, on more than one attempt, difficult to take much interest in _Les Natchez_, not merely for the reasons already given, but chiefly owing to them. Rene's appearances (and he is generally in background or foreground) serve better than anything in any other book, perhaps, to explain and justify the old notion that _accidia_[29] of his kind is not only a fault in the individual, but a positive ill omen and nuisance[30] to others. Neither in the Indian characters (with the exceptions named) nor among the French and creole does one find relief: and when one passes from them to the "machinery" parts--where, for instance, a "perverse couple," Satan and La Renommee (_not_ the ship that Trunnion took), embark on a journey in a car with winged horses--it must be an odd taste which finds things improved. In Greek verse, in Latin verse, or even in Milton's English one could stand Night, docile to the orders of Satan, condescending to deflect a hatchet which is whistling unpleasantly close to Rene's ear, not that he may be benefited, but preserved for more sufferings. In comparatively plain French prose--the qualification is intentional, as will be seen a little later--with a scene and time barely two hundred years off now and not a hundred then, though in a way unfamiliar--the thing won't do. "Time," at the orders of the Prince of Darkness, cutting down trees to make a stockade for the Natchez in the eighteenth century, alas! contributes again the touch of weak allegory, in neither case helping the effect; while, although the plot is by no means badly evolved, the want of interest in the characters renders it ineffective. [Sidenote: _Les Martyrs._]