How fragmentary the latter part of the
_Satyricon_ is you will see if you turn to the edition published last
year in the Loeb Classical Library. The reading of fragments has a
fascination for the curious mind: you also, I think, must have
devoured those casual sheets of forgotten masterpieces in which
book-sellers envelop their parcels, and have dignified the whole with
an importance which it can never when in circulation have enjoyed.
Balzac, you remember, plays on this weakness, which he must have
shared, in _La Muse du D?©partement_, where the great Lousteau
exasperates a provincial audience, assembled to hear him talk, by
reading to them the inconsequent pages of _Olympia, ou les Vengeances
romaines;_ it is rich comedy, but the fragment carries us away, and at
the beginning of page 209: "robe fr??la dans le silence. Tout ?
coup le cardinal Borborigano parut aux yeux de la duchesse--------" we
exclaim, don't we, with Bianchon: "Le cardinal Borborigano! Par les
clefs du pape, si vous ne m'accordez pas qu'il se trouve une
magnifique cr?©ation seulement dans le nom, si vous ne voyez pas
? ces mots: _robe fr??la dans le silence!_ toute la po?«sie du
r??le de _Schedomi_ invent?© par madame Radcliffe dans _le
Confessional des P?©nitents noirs_, vous ??tes indigne de lire des
romans . . ." And these are fragments that have been deliberately
chosen for preservation.
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