Brigadier Frederick; and, The Dean's Watch

"Brigadier Frederick " by Erckmann-Chatrian is a French romance novel. The story is naughty, the way of telling it, all that breeds atmosphere and innuendo, is everything. In L'Ami Fritz the plot may be told in a sentence: 'tis the wooing and winning of a country lass, daughter of a farmer, by a well-to-do jovial bachelor of middle age in a small town; voilà tout; yet the tale makes not only delicious reading, it leaves a permanent impression of pleasure–one is fain to re-read it. It is rich in human nature, in a comfortable sense of the good things of the earth; food and drink, soft beds, one's seat at the tavern, spring sunlight, and the sound of fiddle-playing dance tunes at the fair: and, on a higher plane, of the genial joys of comradeship and the staunch belief in one's native land.