Yet if we could survey the world at large, it is
highly probable that every day or every hour we should somewhere or
other find some Romeo on the verge of committing suicide because of a
chance misunderstanding with regard to his Juliet; and in a certain
percentage of cases the explanatory letter or telegram would doubtless
arrive too late.
We all remember how, in Mr. Hardy's _Tess_, the main trouble arises from
the fact that the letter pushed under Angel Clare's door slips also
under the carpet of his room, and so is never discovered. This is an
entirely probable chance; and the sternest criticism would hardly call
it a flaw in the structure of the fable. But take another case: Madame X
has had a child, of whom she has lost sight for more than twenty years,
during which she has lived abroad. She returns to France, and
immediately on landing at Bordeaux she kills a man who accompanies her.
The court assigns her defence to a young advocate, and this young
advocate happens to be her son.
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