In "A Good
Conscience" the satirical note has a still more serious ring; but the
same admirable self-restraint which, next to the power of thought and
expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow
upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much--from enforcing his lesson
by marginal comments, _a la_ George Eliot. But he must be obtuse indeed
to whom this reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page of
philosophical moralizing.
"Hope's Clad in April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the first
and the last tale in the Norwegian edition) are more untinged with a
moral tendency than any of the foregoing. The former is a mere _jeu
d'esprit_, full of good-natured satire on the calf-love of very young
people, and the amusing over-estimate of our importance to which we are
all, at that age, peculiarly liable.
As an organist with vaguely melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude
the musical _motifs_ which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue,
so Kielland lightly touched in these "Novelettes" the themes which in
his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power.
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