The deftest and finest touch of an artist is seen in the working
out of this pathetic story.
_Madame Delphine_, now included in the volume _Old Creole Days_, is equally
the product of a refined art. Here is shown the anguish of a quadroon
mother who turns frantically from one to another for help to save her
beautiful child, the ivory-tinted daughter of the South. When every one
fails, the mother heart makes one grand sacrifice by which the end is
gained, and she dies at the foot of the altar in an agony of remorse and
love. The beautiful land of flowers, the jasmine-scented night of the
South, the poetic chivalry of a proud, high-souled race are painted vividly
in this idyllic story. Its people are not mortals, its beauty is not of
earth, but, like the carved characters on Keats's Grecian urn, they have
immortal youth and cannot change. Keats could have said to the lovers in
_Madame Delphine_, as to his own upon the vase:--
"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"
Cable's best long works are _The Grandissimes_ (1880), _Dr. Sevier_ (1884),
and _Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana_ (1888). Of these
three, _The Grandissimes_ is easily first in merit.
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