The New York herald., 1922-01-22
French Mystery and Satire

L'OMBRE. BY Maurice Level
PAROISSE GALANTE. BY Hugues La
paire. Paris: Ernest Flammarion.
<AURICE LEVELS latest
MI book, "The Shadow" is
\ = shining example-the ap-
parent paradox is inevitable-of char
acteristically French creative consis-
tency. Here is the story's plot:
Monsieur de Marbois decides to put
under restraint his stepson Claude, Who
has been driven half out Of his mind
by the mystery of his parentage. Be-
fore he can be sent away, however,
the young man finds that De Marbois
has killed his father and terrified his
mother into marriage by persuading
her that she was an accomplice of the
crime, which was committed in her
presence. She died few years later
of grief and fear.
Claude confronts the murderer with
the facts and offers him choice be-
tween arrest for murder or simula-
ton of insanity-and the asylum for
life! De Marbois, after the first
shock, recovered himself and defied
his victim to convince the courts of
the truth. Seeing his hope of ven-
geance dissolve, Claude executed sum-
mary justice upon the murderer with
his own hand. Then realizing that
explanation would involve his mothers
character, he finally decided to plead
insanity after all
Except for the turn at the end, the
story has more than a hint of Ham
let" And Level has written moro
than one page whose imaginative
power saves the comparison from dis
credit. One is the picture of the old
home before the young man had dis
covered the tragic solution of the mys-
terry that maddened him.
Claude set himself to recreate in
imagination the scene as it must have
looked when these apartments were
inhabited. In what chair sat his
mother. dreaming under the lamplight,
through the winter evenings? For she
had lived there? How things
keep their secrets!"
Other children who have lost their
mothers know them by repeated
stories told in the family circle. He
had only his own memories, and
since she died when he was only he
had kept simply the consciousness of
her embrace and faint image of her
in the deep well of his eyes. He be-
: held her silent, ill., troubled"
He inquired wherever he could for
information of his mother. The search
brought Claude to the village chemist,
NJ. Coutelet.
"He was an old man with a repu-
tation for great wisdom. The people
OF that region consulted him before
going TO doctor-and after going
proved"
The chemist had lived at Saint Full
gent forty-seven years. You are as
tonished," he remarked, that one
could vegetate in such hole when ac-
tive life in Paris offers itself. -. One
does not give orders to Fate, one serves
her When I finished my course of
studies came here to wait. And the
waiting has lasted nigh half a CEN
tury. But after adj, whai
does it matter where one lives, here
or there---if one lives? With old
books, microscope and my memories
I have every good that lies within my
range of possibilities
you are philosopher" remarked
Claude.
philosophy Is the tip life iedres
1ou as he Is about to CO."
The old chemist told Claude enough
about his mother to intensity his emo
tional state. The author brings to-
gether all possible suggestion of an
guish from half hidden sources. Mys-
terry flies like a bat around the house,
among TIE old pieces of furniture
hints of sinister nights. disturbing
manifestations of an atavistic her.
itage, a creeping madness, sometimes
an intuitive sense of the supernatural,
sometimes a violent crisis, an at
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