But if any one feels a little shaken, let him try it another
way. There is a character in M. Alphonse Daudet's " Fro-
ment Jeune et Rissler Aind " — a character who, people say,
is taken bodily from Dickens. This is Ddsirde Delobelle,
the deformed girl, the daughter of un rate, a pretentious
imbecile actor. She is poor, stunted, laborious, toiling at
a small industry; she is in love, is rejected, she tries to
drown herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in
Dickens's vein ; but read the tale, and I think you will see
how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced
it is, compared with analogous persons and scenes in the
work of the English master. The idiotic yell of " plagiarism "
has.been raised, of course, by critical crktins. M. Daudet,
as I understand what he says in "Trente Ans de Paris,"
had not read Dickens at all, when he wrote "Froment
Jeune " — certainly had not read " Our Mutual Friend." But
there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's,
and that something is kept much better in hand by the
Frenchman, is more subordinated to the principles of taste
and of truth.
On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at
Delobelle, the father of D^sirde, and compare him with
Dickens's splendid strollers, with Mr. Vincent Crummies,
and Mr. Lenville, and the rest. As in D6sirfe so in
Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much the more truthful.
But it is truthful with a bitter kind of truth. Now, there is



DICKENS. 125

nothing not genial and delightful in Crummies and Mrs.
