A short account of the last novel (except _Le Solitaire_) mentioned above must stand for sample, not merely of the dozen other works of its author, Auguste Ricard, but for many more advertised on the fly-leaves of this time, and long since made "alms for oblivion." Their titles, _Le Portier_, _La Grisette_, _Le Marchand de Coco_, by Ricard himself, on one side, _L'Homme des Ruines_, _Bleack-_ (sic) _Beard_, _La Chambre Rouge_ (by a certain Dinocourt) on the other, almost tell their whole story--the story of a range (to use English terms once more) between the cheap followers of Anne Radcliffe and G. W. M. Reynolds. _L'Ouvreuse de Loges_, through which I have conscientiously worked, inclines to the latter kind, being anti-monarchic, anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic (though it admits that these aristocrats are terrible fellows for behaving in a way which the _roturier_ cannot imitate, however hard he tries), and anti-things-in-general. Its title-heroine is a bad old woman, who "keeps the door" in the Elizabethan sense as well as theatrically. Its real hero is a _ci-devant_ duke; malversator under the Republic; supposed but not real victim of the Septembriseurs; atheist; winner and loser of several fortunes; and at last _particulier_ of Paris under a feigned name, with an apartment full of _bric-a-brac_, a drawer full of little packets of money, after the expenditure of the last of which he proposes to blow his brains out; tall man of stature and of his hands, etc., etc. The book is in a way one of purpose, inculcating the danger of wooing opera-girls, and instancing it with three very weak young men, another duke, a rich young _parvenu_, and a musician. Of these the first and the last are, with their wives, rather arbitrarily saved from the clutches into which they have fallen, by the mysterious "M. Luc," while the other comes to a very bad end. The novel, which is in five volumes, is, like most of those mentioned in this section, not of the kind that one would read by preference. But it is a very fair specimen of the "below stairs" romance which sometimes prepares the way for others, fit to take their places above stairs. And so it has its place here.[76] [Sidenote: The importance of these minors not inconsiderable.]