Monsieur De Camors

de Camors, Complete, by Octave
Feuillet

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Title: Monsieur de Camors, Complete
Author: Octave Feuillet
Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3946]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Produced by David Widger

MONSIEUR DE CAMORS
By OCTAVE FEUILLET

With a Preface by MAXIME DU CAMP, of the French Academy

OCTAVE FEUILLET
OCTAVE FEUILLET'S works abound with rare qualities, forming a
harmonious ensemble; they also exhibit great observation and
knowledge of humanity, and through all of them runs an incomparable
and distinctive charm. He will always be considered the leader of the
idealistic school in the nineteenth century. It is now fifteen years since
his death, and the judgment of posterity is that he had a great
imagination, linked to great analytical power and insight; that his style
is neat, pure, and fine, and at the same time brilliant and concise. He
unites suppleness with force, he combines grace with vigor.
Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lo (Manche), August 11, 1821, his
father occupying the post of Secretary-General of the Prefecture de la
Manche. Pupil at the Lycee Louis le Grand, he received many prizes,
and was entered for the law. But he became early attracted to literature,
and like many of the writers at that period attached himself to the
"romantic school." He collaborated with Alexander Dumas pere and
with Paul Bocage. It can not now be ascertained what share Feuillet
may have had in any of the countless tales of the elder Dumas. Under
his own name he published the novels 'Onesta' and 'Alix', in 1846, his
first romances. He then commenced writing for the stage. We mention
'Echec et Mat' (Odeon, 1846); 'Palma, ou la Nuit du Vendredi-Saint'
(Porte St. Martin, 1847); 'La Vieillesse de Richelieu' (Theatre Francais,
1848); 'York' (Palais Royal, 1852). Some of them are written in
collaboration with Paul Bocage. They are dramas of the Dumas type,
conventional, not without cleverness, but making no lasting mark.
Realizing this, Feuillet halted, pondered, abruptly changed front, and
began to follow in the footsteps of Alfred de Musset. 'La Grise' (1854),
'Le Village' (1856), 'Dalila' (1857), 'Le Cheveu Blanc', and other plays
obtained great success, partly in the Gymnase, partly in the Comedie
Francaise. In these works Feuillet revealed himself as an analyst of
feminine character, as one who had spied out all their secrets, and could

pour balm on all their wounds. 'Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre'
(Vaudeville, 1858) is probably the best known of all his later dramas; it
was, of course, adapted for the stage from his romance, and is well
known to the American public through Lester Wallack and Pierrepont
Edwards. 'Tentation' was produced in the year 1860, also well known in
this country under the title 'Led Astray'; then followed 'Montjoye'
(1863), etc. The influence of Alfred de Musset is henceforth less
perceptible. Feuillet now became a follower of Dumas fils, especially
so in 'La Belle au Bois Dormant' (Vaudeville, 1865); 'Le Cas de
Conscience (Theatre Francais, 1867); 'Julie' (Theatre Francais 1869).
These met with success, and are still in the repertoire of the Comedie
Francaise.
As a romancer, Feuillet occupies a high place. For thirty years he was
the representative of a noble and tender genre, and was preeminently
the favorite novelist of the brilliant society of the Second Empire.
Women literally devoured him, and his feminine public has always
remained faithful to him. He is the advocate of morality and of the
aristocracy of birth and feeling, though under this disguise he involves
his heroes and heroines in highly romantic complications, whose
outcome is often for a time in doubt. Yet as the accredited painter of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain he contributed an essential element to the
development of realistic fiction. No one has rendered so well as he the
high-strung, neuropathic women of the upper class, who neither
understand themselves nor are wholly comprehensible to others. In
'Monsieur de Camors', crowned by the Academy, he has yielded to the
demands of a stricter realism. Especially after the fall of the Empire had
removed a powerful motive for gilding the vices of aristocratic society,
he painted its hard and selfish qualities as none of his contemporaries
could have done. Octave Feuillet was elected to the Academie
Francaise in 1862 to succeed Scribe. He died December 29, 1890.
MAXIME DU CAMP de l'Acadamie Francaise.

MONSIEUR DE CAMORS

BOOK 1.
CHAPTER I
"THE WAGES OF SIN IS