THE COURIER.
I THE PASSING SHOW I
osass
Those Zenda Btorics by Anthony Hope
that arc appearing in JJcClure's aro
really very diverting, and they afford
one an excellent opportunity to study
the character, or rather tho character
istics of tho Priuccss Orsa, for to her
and to her various intangiblo love af
fairs they 6eetu to ba entirely devoted.
Now the princess is somewhat of a Bo
hemian and thoroughly plucky. She
visited Stephen, the silversmith, at an
hour when it is not customary for ladies
to call on gentlemen, and she masquer
aded as a peasant girl for her social high
wayman and afterward was considerate
enough to give him her red stockings as
a souvenir. She calmly stakes herself
against the castle of Zenda and plays
dice with Count Nikolas, and when we
last heard of her she coolly went forth to
woo tho indifferent miller of Hofbau.
The princess is enterprising or nothing.
And the most wonderful thing about
her is her versatility and her Catholic
tastes. She was mildly in love with
them all and did not deny it. She man
aged even to conjure up feelings of ten
derness for the miller in his red cap
But all h;r flames are so impossible and
intangible. A smith, a highwayman, a
priest and a miller. Now there are to
be six Zenda stories, so the princess has
two more chances, and I am afraid in
one of these rounds she may get the
worst of it. She has almost exhausted
the varieties of impossible men, unless
she tries a married man and a tenor
She will have to do something like that,
for it would be against Mr. Hope's prin
ciples to let anything definite come to
pass. He never does. He never gives
any particular reason why they should
not, but he makes the conditions hos
tile, and his heroes and heroines are lat
ter day folks and are never strong
enough or foolish enough to tight ex
isting conditions. So they never get
anywhere. Neither will the Princess
Orsa. She will probably keep on hav
ing adventures until the end of time and
die a respected spinster.
I picked up another book by Pierre
Loti the other day. It is called "The
Romance of a Spahi," and it is just the
kind of a book that Loti always writes
and that no other man on earth can
write. The story is simplo and soon
told. Jean Peyral was drafted for a
soldier and taken away from his mother
and little betrothed and his mountain
village, up in the Cevennes, and taken
to Africa, to old Saint Louis of the Sen
egal. He was only a boy from the moun
tains and life in the tropics told on him
the heat and the homesickness, the'
glaring lights and the eternal flatness of
the desert. He had an affair with a
mulatress, the wife of a trader, a woman
who had lived in Paris, who was at once
violent and cunning, as wise as Europe,
as cruel as Africa. She betrayed him
and he was sent to the hospital. It was
his first experience, and he had it hard.
When he was well again the loneliness
was worse than ever and he took to the
blacks and the devil. He took a black
slave girl to live with him, a girl with
big eyes and shapely arms and lips like
a red cactuB flower, one of the most
beautiful women of the Senegal. She
was a. little captive from the land of Gal
lam, the land of ivory and gold.
He grew to be a moJel soldier, th
Jean, brave and prompt, and a man of
honor, but his connection with a black
woman forever shut him from allchanca
or promotion. At last one day toward
tho close of his exile, his regiment was
ordered to Algeria, that meant one step
nearer home, freedom from the black
woman and a visit to tho old peasant
father and mother, who, up in their
mountain village, were growing old with
waiting for their boy. But just before
they took boat an old comrade ruBhed
in and begged Jean to let him go in his
place. The black woman begged and
there was a saene, and Jean gave it up.
Africa had done its work, bad wrought
tho fatal destruction that the tropics
always brings upon men from the moun
tains. He was bound to this desert
land that he hated, to this woman he
despised. She had charmed him with
her amulets, thrown a Bpell over him by
her savage chants. This is the climax
of the book, the tragic force, then every
thing clears for the catastrophe, for even
in their novels the French are dra
matic. Things go from bad to worse;
the slave girl sells Jean's old watch that
his father gave him the day he marched
away with the other village boys, sing
ing bravely to keep back the tears. He
drives her away, but she comes back aB
they always do, end ne takes her back, as
they always do, for with her she brings
a little child, half white, that hae Jean's
eyes and that never 6miles.
JuBt before the time of Jean's home
going there is a battle. The night be
fore the encounter be dreams of his
mother and the mountains and of his
betrothed, who has married another
mm. For ho is only a little peasant of
the Cevennes masquerading in a fez and
red uniform, who is living wrongly be
cause France has put him where nature
did not intend him to be. Next day he
was killed, run through the breast, and
dragged himself under the shade of a
tamarind tree to die. "When the 6lave
girl bears that he has "gained paradise,"'
she goes out among the dead and finds
him. She strangles his child by rilling
its mouth with sand, and etretchiug her
self upon his body, takes a poison 6he
had bought of an African priest, and
dies. In his hand the man held a silver
image of the Virgin, his patents had tied
about his neck in far away France; in
her hand the woman held the amulet of
leather her black mother had given her
when she was carried away a captive
from Gallant. "Guard them well, O
precious amulets!"
At night the watchers came, the only
watchers who ever sit by the dead who
fall in the Soudan; first the jackals; then
the vultures, then the winds and the
bleaching sands of the deiert.
That is all there is of the story, all the
rest is description, environment. But
ah, such description! All English de
scription is odious. Careful, accurate,
burdeni d with irrelevant detail, lifele6B.
leaving no picture in the reader's mind.
But with the French it is a different
matter. They write as they paint, to
bring out an effect. All through this
book one can Bmell the aroma of the
tropics, see the palms and the tama
rinds and the old white mosques, and
the burning 6andy water of the Senegal,
hear the 6ound of the tom-tom and the
epic chants of thegirots. The language
is simple, simple as the savage life it
pictures, intense as the savage emotions
it portrays. It is a tragedy of environ-
Style
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