of a prosperous bourgeois couple, stands between two lovers—­one the last relic of a noble Burgundian family; the other a workman with socialist tendencies.  Marguerite Mirion is invested with all the fascination which beauty of face, simplicity of mind, purity of soul, sweetness of disposition and joyousness of spirit can impart.  Yet she is, and feels herself to be, entirely bourgeoise, longing for no ideal heights, worldly or spiritual, ready for all ordinary duties, content with simple and innocent pleasures, rinding in the life, the thoughts, the occupations and enjoyments of her class all that is needed to make the current of her life run smoothly and to satisfy the cravings of her bright but gentle nature.  It is in simple obedience to the will of her parents that she marries Count Roger d’Ornis, and is carried from her happy home at Mon-Plaisir to a dilapidated castle in the Jura, where there are no smiling faces or loving hearts to make her welcome—­where, on the contrary, she meets only with haughty, spiteful or morose looks and a chilling and gloomy atmosphere.  It is from sheer necessity that she accepts the aid of Joseph Noirel, her father’s head-workman, whose ardent spirit, quickened by the consciousness of talent, but rendered morbid by the slights which his birth and position have entailed, has been plunged into blackest night by the loss of the single star that had illumined its firmament.  Count Roger is not wholly devoid of honor and generosity; but he has no true appreciation of his wife, and will sacrifice her without remorse to save his own reputation.  Joseph, on the other hand, is ready to dare all things to protect her from harm; but he cannot forego the reward which entails upon her a deeper misery.  It is Marguerite alone who, in the terrible struggle of fate and of clashing interests and desires, rises to the height of absolute self-abnegation; and this not through any sudden development of qualities or intuitions foreign to her previous modes of thought, but by the simple application of these to the hard and complicated problems which have suddenly confronted her.  Herein lies the novelty of the conception and the lesson which the author has apparently intended to convey.  See, he seems to say, how the bourgeois nature, equally scorned by the classes above and below it as the embodiment of vulgar ease and selfishness, contains precisely the elements of true heroism which are wanting alike in those who set conventional rules above moral laws and in those who revolt against all restrictions.  The book is thus an apology for a class which is no favorite with poets or romancers; but, as we have said, the design is only to be inferred from the story, and may easily pass unnoticed, at least with American readers.  The character of Noirel is powerfully drawn, but it is less original than that of the heroine, belonging, for example, to the same type as the hero of Le Rouge et le Noir—­“ce Robespierre de village,” as Sainte-Beuve, we believe, calls him.