The Angelic Avengers

THE author of The Angelic Avengers, Pierre Andrezel. made, I suspect, the following plan. Why not double on everything that the public likes, thereby ensuring that his book be twice as popular. If one pure heroine in distress is a good ingredient, have two heroines twice as pure in really frightful troubles. As a villain must possess a terrible nature, multiply his sins with a couple of other startling characteristics. Of course give the girls two rich, titled, and handsome heroes, have Protestants and Catholics help the unhappy heroines with equal fervor, and just to be sure that everything is covered, have one girl a blonde with long hair, and the other a brunette with short hair.

The tale opens in 1840 with heroine number one, the blonde, Lucan Bedellen, an orphaned governess escaping from her employer, a widower who wishes to seduce her. Lucan joins a rich schoolmate, Zosine, the brunette, who the next day loses her fortune. The two lovely girls go out to make their living together.

They finally find positions with a saintly old British clergyman and his wife in France. In this position they do not work but merely study every day with the Reverend Pennhallow.

The two titled young men conveniently appear and even more conveniently disappear as the Reverend Pcnnhallow’s true purposes are disclosed. The girls do not escape but remain in order to trap the Reverend Pennhallow and avenge the deeds he has perpetrated on other beautiful girls, though they know they will be murdered.

At that moment Olympia, Zosine’s old mammy, shows up, accuses the Reverend Pennhallow of having eaten her little black baby some time before.

Now does Mr. Andrezel write this book with his tongue well placed in his cheek? Is it a satire? Is it a test made by the author, publisher, and book clubs to discover the final limits of the trash that the public can be shoved into buying? And will the public be shoved? And is that a justification for this incredible book?

GRETCHEN FINLETTER