enchaining our interest from the very first paragraph. His crispness of attack, his crystalline clearness of utterance, his directness, his simplicity, his concision, unite to constitute what I can only describe as a charm peculiar to himself. It is perhaps unwise of me to dwell on this charm of manner, since, in the following pages, the reader may possibly look for it in vain. I trust, however, that it has not entirely evaporated; if it has, I must own myself a translator-traitor of the deepest dye. In his conception of the aims and methods of fiction Kielland belongs distinctly to the French school. This is naturally not so apparent in his Novelettes as in his longer novels. In the sketches here translated, the influence of Hans Christian Andersen is at least as marked as that of Daudet, and it is doubtful whether, at the date of their composition, Guy de Maupassant had dawned upon the author's horizon. The novels, on the other hand, recall Daudet more than any other writer, though nothing that can be called imitation is to be laid to Kielland's charge. One characteristic which the reader will not fail to remark in the following tales is no less prominent in the longer novels—I mean the satiric bent of the author's disposition. He is far from accepting the imper-
