Monsieur Sylvestre
A Novel. By . Translated from the French by FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
IT is owing, no doubt, to a greater difference in the constitution of society in France that, judged by the rules regulating our social life, many French books written with a manifest moral purpose are immoral to us, because the improper is made so very conspicuous when absent. In situations where the Anglo-Saxon would not suspect, Lamartine, for instance, in his most impossible Platonic stories, is sure to tell with gratuitous solemnity that everything was perfectly correct. If “Monsieur Sylvestre,” therefore, is not free from this species of negative impurity, it would appear to be not so much the fault of Madame Dudevant as of her nation and its literature. And it is due her to say that her seeming honesty, even in her errors, has placed George Sand, at her worst, on a moral plane far above that of the abandoned English female novelists of the period.
The book “Monsieur Sylvestre ” is exceedingly philosophical ; a fact which accounts, it may be, for the somewhat slow movement of the story itself, and the philosophy varies in quality.
The characters of the story are made to form a sort of exploration party after happiness. Monsieur Sylvestre the hermit, divides the command of the expedition with M. Pierre Sorède, a young gentleman who is dissatisfied with the matrimonial scheme of his worldly uncle. A young physician is the next important person, in a philosophical point of view, and Mademoiselle Vallier,. the heroine, the most important one of all in point of story-telling interest. Before Pierre married the heroine, and just before his duel with a pretender to her hand, he states the results of his search after happiness as follows : “Happiness has never been defined and cannot be ; each man forms an idea of it which is peculiar to himself, and even this varies according to the state of his mind ; nothing is happiness, properly speaking, and everything is happiness to a fully living soul; therefore the question is, not to seek after happiness, but to develop life which gives it to us, humble or magnificent, ardent or calm, ecstatic or sweet, as it gives us talent or genius, according to the organization which we possess. And I may well add that, for youth, the true and the best employment of life is love ! ”
As Pierre does not afterward state definitely any other opinion concerning happiness, we may take that to be his last one on the subject. This, however, gives no idea of the beauty and breadth of some of the sentiments of “Monsieur Sylvestre.” It is a work entirely of George Sand’s latest manner, and the traces of a master are almost everywhere apparent. As a story it is not quite so attractive as “Antonia,” or even “Mauprat,” the two others of her works which have preceded this in the series of translations. “Mauprat” has more of the writer’s early fire in it, and of her early crudeness. “ Antonia” is a charming lovestory, in which Madame Dudevant approaches what she seems to us to have reached in “ Le Marquis de Villemer,” namely, her greatest purity, though not her greatest strength. Mr. Shaw has given us an admirable translation, notwithstanding an occasional difficulty with his pronouns, and the use of too much translatable French everywhere in the volume.