![]() ![]() There have been, the novelist shows us, four aristocracies: the aristocracy of birth, as personified by the Due de Senlis the military aristocracy, as personified by Napoleon the aristocracy of art, which Chopin represents and the aristocracy of culture, as it existed in Germany before the war. Inwardly and subtly the story pictures the decline of aristocracy, of which this coronet is a symbol. Outwardly the novel follows the fortunes of a Renaissance coronet, a jewel which tends constantly to bring evil out of goodness we follow it in its passage from the original owner, the Due de Senlis, down the ages until restored to one of his descendants in 1920. Wilder’s diverse stories one a coronet does the same for Mr. And fortunately the novel is saved from kaleidoscopic confusion by a device as simple as that employed by Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey. ![]() ![]() It begins in Florence in 1600 and ends in Chicago in 1920 the story dwells for long in the France of Napoleon, Chopin, and Balzac, and in Russia from the time of ‘the Great Retreat’ to the 1917 Revolution. Beyond most novels I have read, this novel is spectacular. ![]()
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