But American readers doubtless know Ludovic Halévy most affectionately by his “Abbé Constantin,” which has gone through more than one hundred and fifty editions in France, besides numberless printings in other lands. In its first year of issue, 1882, at least thirty-five editions were required to meet the demand. It is a novelette in length, and a simple story in plot. Charming, ingenuous, idyllic, popular with all classes, it is a refreshing breath from rural France. The large estate of Longueval, comprising the castle and its dependencies, two fine farms and a forest, is announced for sale at auction. The Abbé Constantin, a warm-hearted, genial, self-sacrificing priest, quite the typical Abbé of romance--“a Curé, neither young, nor gloomy, nor stern; a Curé with white hair, and looking kind and gentle”--has been for three decades the village priest. He is disconsolate at the thought that all his associations must be broken up, and is all the more distressed when he hears that an American millionaire has bought the property. Lieutenant Jean Renaud, his godson, the orphaned son of the Abbé’s old friend, the village doctor, is about to sit down at meat with the old priest when two ladies arrive--the wife of the millionaire purchaser of Longueval, Mrs. Scott, and her sister, Miss Bettina Percival. How these bright and fascinating women win the heart of the benevolent priest, and adapt themselves to their new surroundings, and how Lieutenant Jean and Miss Bettina find their happiness, furnish the incidents for this crystal little romance. “A Marriage for Love” (1881) is the most popular of Halévy’s longer short-stories. A young French officer marries a well-bred and ingenuous girl. Soon each discovers that the other has kept a diary from childhood. Thinking that the declarations of love which she sees written in her husband’s journal refer to some other woman, the young wife cries out, but is consoled by his protests, and it is agreed that they shall read aloud passages from their own diaries, turn about. With all the naïveté which it seems the special province of English eighteenth-century and French nineteenth-century writers to depict, these young people disclose in this fashion the birth and growth of their mutual love. A simple story enough, yet refreshing in the midst of so many Gallic records of marital infidelity. Of Halévy’s shorter stories several stand out in particular. “Princess” tells with admirable directness how “the bourgeois heroine ... contrives to escape the lawyers ... and marry a real prince.” “A Grand Marriage” is the equally uncomplicated narrative of how the betrothal of an alert young Parisienne is arranged by her parents, with the clever and worldly-wise assistance of the prospective bride.