Excerpt from Captain Fracasse: Translated From the French; With a Critical Introduction by F. C. De Sumichrast, of Harvard University French again in his lighter moods. His wit is essen tially the esprit gaulois which, in recent years, has taken the place of charity as a covering for a multitude of sins. He can scarcely be termed a brilliant wit; rather is he one of those whose perception of the spirituel is some what commonplace; not, however, to the same extent as with a Homais or a Victor Hugo. His wit is not forced; indeed, it often is spontaneous enough, but it is conventional. His jokes and his allusions in the way of pleasantry are exactly of the kind that the genuine bourgeois loves, a fact that would have been most un pleasant to Gautier in his younger and more hot - headed days, though it none the less remains a fact. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.