WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1261, 30 April 1896, Page 12

WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

“ A Friend of the Queen,” by Paul Gaulot (translated from the French by Mrs Cashel Hoey). lleinomann’s Empire Library. (London: William Heineniann.) Count Person, the subject of this interesting and instructive historical record, was a Swedish nobleman who passed many years at the Court of Franco and played no inconsiderable part in the personal history of that foolish but unfortunate woman, Marie Antoinette. His biographer has gone to records and documents owned by the Ferson family for information as to his hero, and the result from those and other sources,is a life like presentment of a most interesting, and in his day, a most important personage. Between Mario Antoinette and Count Ferson there was, it is notorious, a sincere attachment, described at the time of the Revolution as being of a criminal character, but since proved to have boon merely platonic, The Count devoted the best years of his life to protecting the unfortunate queen against her enemies, and on many occasions found herself to bo her worst foe. It was ho who accompanied the royal pair on their ill-conceived flight to Varenncs, so graphically and pitilessly described by Carlyle, it was he who, when his unfortunate love was in prison, remained in Paris, at gieat personal peril, and made strenuous but futile endeavours to move her enemies to pity and mercy. Ho it was, too, who on her death vowed vengeance against the Republic. Forsen himself died a violent death at Stockholm, where his attachment to the old royalty and its powers and privileges finally brought about his assassination in the streets of the Swedish capital at the hands of the mob. He was a handsome, chivalrous, manly nobleman, who wasted a life which might have been of the highest value to his countrymen in his devotion to the French Queen, but wit h all his faults he remains one of the most picturesque, almost lovable, characters in that ugly drama which we call the French Revolution. M. ri-mle.t gives ns picture after picture of the Court, of France, and reading these pages it: is impossible to feel anything save contempt tor the vain, weak, gluttonous, stupid monarch, and a pity (not munixod with grave blame) for his unfortunate wife. This book is a work of great historical value, and is far from being a collection of trivial and scandalous gossip, which such a record might easily have become in the hands of a less careful and honest chronicler.

“Fort Fr.vtne,” by Captain Charles King, U.S.A. (London and Melbourne: Ward, Look and Bowden. Wellington: 11. and J. Baillic.) Captain King, the author of this story, is an officer in the United States Army, and brings to tbe task of describing life at a Western fort not only a ready pen and a fairly good literary style, but an intimate acquaintance with the scenes lie depicts. There is plenty of lighting, of the “ wild west” stamp, in his lively and readable story, and not a little love-making. The villain of the story comes to a highly dramatic, and certainly not undeserved, end, and bravery, virtue and loveliness aro all very properly rewarded. The descriptions of frontier life, especially the horrors of Indian warfare, are well dene, and in the earlier chapters there is a most lovable character, a fine old colonel, rvho.se rascally son is the bad genius of the family. Tin* story is, so a preface informs us, based upon a play of the same name. The getup of the book reflects special credit on the publishers.