Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
and the huckster behind ' lui faisait un peu Veffet
d'etre le Fere eternel ' ? The pathos of the forlorn
sabot laid trustingly by the chimney in expectation
of the Santa Claus that was not, takes us fairly by
the throat; there is nothing in Shakespeare that
touches the heart more nearly. The loves of Cosette
and Marius are very pure and pleasant, and vv^e
cannot refuse our affection to Gavroche, although
we may make a mental reservation of our profound
disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all,
there are few books in the world that can be com-
pared with it. There is as much calm and serenity
as Hugo has ever attained to ; the melodramatic
coarsenesses that disfigured Notre Dame are no
longer present. There is certainly much that is
painfully improbable ; and again, the story itself is a
little too well constructed; it produces on us the
effect of a puzzle, and we grow incredulous as we
find that every character fits again and again into
the plot, and is, like the child's cube, serviceable on
six faces ; things are not so well arranged in life as
all that comes to. Some of the digressions, also,
seem out of place, and do nothing but interrupt and
irritate. But when all is said, the book remains of
masterly conception and of masterly development,
full of pathos, full of truth, full of a high eloquence.
Superstition and social exigency having been thus
dealt with in the first two members of the series, it
remained for Les Travailleurs de la Mer to show
man hand to hand with the elements, the last form
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