We should like to know what becomes
of the main body of the troop in the wood of La Saudraie
during the thirty pages or so in which the foreguard lays
aside all discipline, and stops to gossip over a woman and
some children. We have an unpleasant idea forced upon us at
one place, in spite of all the good-natured incredulity that
we can summon up to resist it. Is it possible that Monsieur
Hugo thinks they ceased to steer the corvette while the gun
was loose? Of the chapter in which Lantenac and Halmalho are
alone together in the boat, the less said the better; of
course, if there were nothing else, they would have been
swamped thirty times over during the course of Lantenac's
harangue. Again, after Lantenac has landed, we have scenes
of almost inimitable workmanship that suggest the epithet
"statuesque" by their clear and trenchant outline; but the
tocsin scene will not do, and the tocsin unfortunately
pervades the whole passage, ringing continually in our ears
with a taunting accusation of falsehood. And then, when we
come to the place where Lantenac meets the royalists, under
the idea that he is going to meet the republicans, it seems
as if there were a hitch in the stage mechanism. I have
tried it over in every way, and I cannot conceive any
disposition that would make the scene possible as narrated.
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