Mark Twain in the late 1800's felt obliged to rebut some of Bourget's prejudice: "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us." D.W.] The mixture of blood would there have dissolved the admirable Anglo-Saxon energy which the struggle against a nature at once very rich and very mutinous has exalted to such surprising splendor.

It is not necessary to ask those who are the victims of such an instinct to comprehend the legal injustice.

They only feel its ferocity.

Napoleon Chapron, rejected in several offers of marriage, thwarted in his plans, humiliated under twenty trifling circumstances by the Colonel's former companions, became a species of misanthrope.

He lived, sustained by a twofold desire, on the one hand to increase his fortune, and on the other to wed a white woman.