First, we must note that if the author wished to mystify her readers, she succeeded on this occasion. When the Due d'Aumale had Mile, de Clermont and M. de Melun painted as a pendant to Théophile and Sylvie, he accepted the truth of the story told by Madame de Genlis. It may possibly be said that the Due d'Aumale could not refuse such a species of posthumous homage to the tutor of Louis Philippe. But all the historians who have written of Chantilly have in turn told the story of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont, without even discussing its probability.... And now let us read the novel of Madame de Genlis. It is a short and very agreeable task. The contemporaries of Madame de Genlis united in considering Mademoiselle de Clermont as her masterpiece and as a masterpiece. On the first point, I am ready to believe them; I cannot compare Mademoiselle de Clermont with the innumerable romances, tales and novels of the same author: I do not know them. As a child, I read Les Veillées du Chateau, and I cannot say today if it is necessary to set them above the similar works of Boüilly and of Berquin. As to the Souvenirs de Félicie, it has always seemed to me a sufficiently diverting book, full of doubtful anecdotes and of untruthful portraits, but in which the author shows her true self, with all her vanities of a woman and all her ridiculous traits as a writer. Is Mademoiselle de Clermont a masterpiece? Perhaps it was, but it is no longer. It remains a delightful book. It has great merits: marvelous rapidity, perfect skill and ease in the knitting together of the different episodes, a facile, supple and natural way of telling. If we confine ourselves to the composition of the work, it is a model: neither Mérimée nor Maupassant has written anything more concise or more polished. Without doubt, the style of Madame de Genlis seems terribly out of date today; her simple, limpid, perfectly correct language entirely lacks accent; her somewhat vague expressions have today a trace of age and colorlessness; in the tragic passages she exasperates us a little by the abuse of points of suspense; finally we are sometimes tired out by the lazy sensibility of the writer, the simplicity of the maxims which she inserts in her narration, her childish efforts to give a moral appearance to the most passionate of adventures; we discover too often the author of Les Veillées du Château in a story which we would have preferred to have told by the author of La Chartreuse de Parme. But the pleasure of a well-written story is so vivid that even in spite of the affectations, the artifices and the childishness, we still feel the emotion of the drama. The two principals of the story are Mademoiselle de Clermont, sister of the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc de Melun.