Riwere or me Tewere. By Lenotre (translated by Frederic Lees}. Heinemann. 15s. net.
M. Lenétre is a master of history in his own style: un petit maitre, some might call him, because he deals so much in detail and treats only the history of a person or of an incident, and yet a great master also, because, through the detail, as he treats it, the depths of the wells of history become luminous, until we see, or fancy that we see, almost, if not quite, to the very bottom.
The method of Lenétre is that of great criminal lawyer, with style added. His patience is infinite: his acumen penetrating: he follows every tangled: thread of an intricate story until he reaches either the broken filaments or the object to which it is attached, and the reader finds an intellectual delight in sharing the ardour of his search and the certitude of his conclusions—that either the truth is or cannot Here in this book we have the reatest triumph of this master and) is method. He takes the fate of Louis XVII. as his theme, and shows that the tragedy of the truth is more poignant, more terrible, more mysterious than the legends and romances with which it has so long been shrouded.
It is generally supposed that the Dauphin died in the Temple, or possibly was murdered there, after suffering terrible cruelties at the hands of his gaolers. He was immured, it is said, in a single cell after the execution of his parents: none but his gaoler was allowed to see him, not even his sister, im-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.