Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/246

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FOUR AND TWENTY MINDS

perfection and so many microcosms of black wickedness?

Enough of these questions, to which the poor anonymous necrologist could not possibly reply. Let us mount to better air, to the realm of feeling. No man who has not devoured Accursed Loves, who has not shuddered at Souls of Mire, who has not been stirred by The Miscreant, who has not quivered under The Eternal Chain, who has not sympathized with A Woman’s Heart, who has not wept for The Heart of the Laborer, who has not trembled for Dora, the Assassin’s Daughter, who has not shivered at the Dramas of Infidelity, who has not turned pale before Thieves of Honor, who has not been absorbed in The Crime of the Countess, who has not been terrified by The Kiss of the Dead, who has not been entranced by The Illegitimate Daughter, who has not followed in suspense the fate of The Accursed Woman—no such man has the right to judge Carolina Invernizio. Nor must we forget the hair-raising Memoirs of a Grave Digger, the pathetic Victims of Love, the supremely piteous Orphan of the Ghetto, the atrocious satire of Faithless Husbands, the spectral synthesis of Paradise and Hell, the sentimental epic of Rina, The Angel of the Alps, the terrible fantasy of Satanella, or The Dead Hand.

J’en passe, et des meilleurs. For our Carolina certainly had at least one of the signs of genius: