He tried drama, too, inevitable ambition of young French authors; but after the failure of ‘Guillery’ at the Theatre Francaise and ‘Gaetena’ at the Odeon, renounced the theatre.  Indeed, his power is in odd conceptions, in the covert laugh and humorous suggestion of the phrasing, rather than in plot or characterization.  He will always be best known for the tales and novels in that thoroughly French style—­clear, concise, and witty—­which in 1878 elected him president of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and in 1884 won him a seat in the Academy.

About wrote a number of novels, most of them as well known in translation to English and American readers as to his French audience.  The bright stories originally published in the Moniteur, afterward collected with the title ‘Les Mariages de Paris’ had a conspicuous success, and were followed by a companion volume, ’Les Mariages de Province.’  ‘L’Homme a l’Oreille Cassee’ (The Man with the Broken Ear)—­the story of a mummy resuscitated to a world of new conditions after many years of apparent death—­shows his freakish delight in oddity.  So does ‘Le Nez du Notaire’ (The Notary’s Nose), a gruesome tale of the tribulations of a handsome society man, whose nose is struck off in a duel by a revengeful Turk.  The victim buys a bit of living skin from a poor water-carrier, and obtains a new nose by successful grafting.  But he can nevermore get rid of the uncongenial Aquarius, who exercises occult influence over the skin with which he has parted.  When he drinks too much, the Notary’s nose is red; when he starves, it dwindles away; when he loses the arm from which the graft was made, the important feature drops off altogether, and the sufferer must needs buy a silver one.  About’s latest novel, ‘Le Roman d’un Brave Homme’ (The Story of an Honest Man), is in quite another vein, a charming picture of bourgeois virtue in revolutionary days.  ‘Madelon’ and ‘La Vielle Roche’ (The Old School) are also popular.

French critics have not found much to say of this non-evolutionist of letters, who is neither pure realist nor pure romanticist, and who has no new theory of art.  Some, indeed, may have scorned him for the wise taste which refuses to tread the debatable ground common to French fiction.  But the reading public has received him with less conscious analysis, and has delighted in him.  If he sees only what any clever man may see, and is no profound psychologist, yet he tells what he sees and what he imagines with delightful spirit and delightful wit, and tinges the fabric of his fancy with the ever-changing colors of his own versatile personality, fanciful suggestions, homely realism, and bright antithesis.  Above all, he has the great gift of the story-teller.

THE CAPTURE

From ‘The King of the Mountains’

“St!  St!”

I raised my eyes.  Two thickets of mastic-trees and arbutus enclosed the road on the right and left.  From each tuft of trees protruded three or four musket-barrels.  A voice cried out in Greek, “Seat yourselves on the ground!” This operation was the more easy to me, as my legs gave way under me.  But I consoled myself by thinking that Ajax, Agamemnon, and the fiery Achilles, if they had found themselves in the same situation, would not have refused the seat that was offered.