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Page 132
Jacques Ferrand and restore what he had taken from the weak and helpless, (vii) find his lost daughter, who had fled from the wiles of Sarah MacGregor. Then come various tasks of less moment, though connected with the main ones, such as punishing evil-doers of secondary importance such as Polidori, the Martials, and the young Saint-Rémy; redeeming those who, like La Louve and the good Martial, have started on the downward path; and rescuing a few good people such as the young Germain, the young Fermont, and so on.
The element of reality (Paris and its poor) and the element of fantasy (Rodolphe's solutions) must strike the reader at each step, gripping his attention and torturing his sensibilities. The plot must be so arranged, therefore, so as to present climaxes of disclosure, that is, surprises. Since the reader may identify himself either with the characters and situations of the initial circumstances, that is, before the denouement, or with those present at the end of the book, after the denouement, the features which characterize them must be reiterated so as to make this identification possible. Long stretches of redundant material must therefore be inserted into the plot; in other words, the author must dwell at length on the unexpected in order to render it familiar.
The author must of necessity rely on coups de théâtre to further his task of disclosing information, and the need for repetition leads perforce to the reiteration of these coups de théâtre at regular intervals. It is in this way that Les Mystères is related, not to those narrative works which we may define as showing a constant curve (where the various elements of the plot are woven more and more closely together until a climax of tension is reachedat which point the denouement intervenes to break and resolve this tension), but to those we may describe as of sinusoidal structure: tension, resolution, renewed tension, further resolution, and so on.
In point of fact, Les Mystères abounds in minor dramas, set in motion, partially resolved, and then abandoned so that we may return to the windings of the main narrative. It is as though the story were a large tree whose trunk is Rodolphe's search for his lost daughter, and whose different branches are the story of the Ripper, the story of Saint-Rémy, the relationship of Clémence d'Harville to her husband, and her old father, and to her stepmother, the episode of Germain and Rigolette, and the vicissitudes of the Morels.
It is now time to ask whether this sinusoidal structure corresponds to an explicit narrative program or depends on external circumstances. If we read what was said by the young Sue on the subject of composition, it would appear that the structure is intentional. Early on, when writing of his sea adventure stories (from Kernok to Atar-Gull and La Salamandre), he propounds a theory of the episodic novel: "Instead of keeping strictly to a unity of interest shared out among a chosen number of characters

 
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