"Why did I not take her in my arms, seize her like a prey, carry her far from the abodes of man, and proclaim her my wife in the sight of heaven! Oh, if even this desire be a crime, why is it so intimately entwined with every fibre of my being that I cannot renounce it and live? A crime, did I say I In uncivilised times, in the days of ignorance and of slavery, some one or other of the barbarous horde took it into his head to write down his personal prejudices and say: 'There are laws for you!' How easily deluded men are! What a contemptible comedy to see so many generations ruled by the prejudices and whims of a dead past!" Immediately upon this follows, quaintly enough, a long, solemn panegyric on Klopstock's _Messiah_, obviously inspired by other, but very dissimilar, reminiscences of Werther. "O divine Klopstock!" cries Charles, "how magnificently you present the assembled miracles of poetry to our eyes, whether you introduce us into the presence-chamber of the Most High, where the first-born among the angels hymn the mysteries of heaven, or show us the cherubims in holy adoration covering their faces with their golden wings!" The transition from revolutionary sentiments to pious ecstasy is somewhat abrupt, but the mixture of revolutionary with romantic tendencies which would seem extraordinary in any other age, does not surprise in the Emigrant Literature. It is to be found in all its authors. We have it in Chateaubriand as Satanic Catholicism; in Sénancour as sentimental and romantic atheism; here it is revolt against social laws in combination with enthusiasm for the _Messiah_--different developments of the same phenomenon. It presently appears that Eulalia's husband is no happier than her unfortunate lover. He has been deprived by death of the love of his youth and cannot forget his bereavement even by the side of Eulalia. He observes the attachment existing between his wife and Charles, and, not wishing to stand in their way, takes poison and dies, after begging them to forgive the suffering he has involuntarily caused them "by his hapless existence." It would be impossible to imagine a more considerate husband. The lovers, however, are not a whit less noble. Eulalia especially is too high-minded to profit by so melancholy a death. She retires to a convent, and Charles drowns himself in the Danube. Two suicides and a retreat to a nunnery was the regulation ending in those days. To us, nowadays, this romance is a very insignificant intellectual production, but a very interesting piece of historical evidence. Its author soon passed into another phase of development. We shall find Nodier again upon a higher plane of the evolution of French literature; no one changed form more frequently than he--and the butterfly is more beautiful than the grub. VII CONSTANT: "ON RELIGION"--"ADOLPHE"