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Madame d'Aunet, however, returned to Paris in safety, and satisfied with her experiences of the Polar world, attempted no second expedition. According to M. Cortambert, to whom I owe this sketch, she afterwards resided in Paris, and edited several journals intended for women's reading. She also produced some works of no inconsiderable merit.
And Madame d'Aunet is always most charming when she is most natural that is, when she is herself; when she writes spontaneously, and fully possessed by her subject, without casting anxious glances at the reader to see if he admires this polished period or catches that apt allusion.
In Norway, Madame d'Aunet visited Christiania, Drontheim, and other localities; but it is Man rather than Nature that interests her. Nor did she penetrate far enough inland to gain a satisfactory conception of the character of the Norwegian scenery.
Gainvard's expedition quitted Hammerfest, the northernmost town in Scandinavia, and after a voyage of some weeks in duration, approached the gloomy coast of ice-bound Spitzbergen. The ice-fields and the icebergs inspired Madame d'Aunet with profound emotion, and, in describing them, she breaks out into what may be called a lyrical cry.
In speaking of Belgium and Holland, Madame d'Aunet lets drop some felicitous expressions, some pregnant and rememberable phrases, which give the reader an exact idea of the manners of the inhabitants and of the land they dwell in. The touch is delicate, but always firm and true. As to the Hollanders, she says: "These people have not the love of cleanliness, but its cultus."
Among the crowd of lady travellers to whom this nineteenth century has given birth, the able and accomplished Frenchwoman, so widely known by her pseudonym of Madame Léonie d'Aunet, merits a passing allusion.
Persons and situations he knows how to group in the most effective manner; incidents assume their most dramatic form; scenes are worked up so as to produce a definite impression on the reader's mind. Madame d'Aunet, as a popular novelist, knows when writing that she can count upon her thousands of readers. But this is a fact which we wish she could have forgotten or ignored.
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