Irony is one of M. Halevy's chief characteristics, perhaps the chiefest. It is gentle when he deals with the people of the stage--far gentler then than when he is dealing with the people of Society, with fashionable folk, with the aristocracy of wealth. When he is telling us of the young loves of millionaires and of million-heiresses, his touch may seem caressing, but for all its softness the velvet paw has claws none the less. It is amusing to note how often M. Halevy has chosen to tell the tale of love among the very rich. The heroine of _The Abbe Constantin_ is immensely wealthy, as we all know, and immensely wealthy are the heroines of _Princesse_, of _A Grand Marriage,_ and of _In the Express_.[A] Sometimes the heroes and the heroines are not only immensely wealthy, they are also of the loftiest birth; such, for instance, are the young couple whose acquaintance we make in the pages of _Only a Waltz_. [Footnote A: Perhaps the present writer will be forgiven if he wishes to record here that _In the Express (Par le Rapide)_ was published in Paris only towards the end of 1892, while a tale not wholly unlike it, _In the Vestibule Limited_, was published in New York in the spring of 1891.] There is no trace or taint of snobbery in M. Halevy's treatment of all this magnificence; there is none of the vulgarity which marks the pages of _Lothair_, for example; there is no mean admiration of mean things. There is, on the other hand, no bitterness of scourging satire. He lets us see that all this luxury is a little cloying and perhaps not a little enervating. He suggests (although he takes care never to say it) that perhaps wealth and birth are not really the best the world can offer. The amiable egotism of the hero of _In the Express_, and the not unkindly selfishness of the heroine of that most Parisian love-story, are set before us without insistence, it is true, but with an irony so keen that even he who runs as he reads may not mistake the author's real opinion of the characters he has evoked. To say this is to say that M. Halevy's irony is delicate and playful. There is no harshness in his manner and no hatred in his mind. We do not find in his pages any of the pessimism which is perhaps the dominant characteristic of the best French fiction of our time. To M. Halevy, as to every thinking man, life is serious, no doubt, but it need not be taken sadly, or even solemnly. To him life seems still enjoyable, as it must to most of those who have a vivid sense of humor. He is not disillusioned utterly, he is not reduced to the blankness of despair as are so many of the disciples of Flaubert, who are cast into the outer darkness, and who hopelessly revolt against the doom they have brought on themselves.