On comprend aisément que Charles Baudelaire ait dédié ses Fleurs du mal à Théophile Gautier en lisant ces récits fantastiques.
L'écriture est très riche, poétique, colorée et sensuelle. La beauté de la femme y est célébrée de bout en bout et la mort toujours liée à l'amour. Beaucoup d'originalité, d'inventivité dans l'écriture où la tragédie côtoie la comédie. À découvrir absolument. ( )

This is perfect lunch break reading. The stories are short enough to be finished in two or three sittings and involve only a handful of characters at best, so no fear of losing the plot. The style is flowery, appropriate for the time and genre, and the minute descriptions of clothes and furnitures require a decent (and probably old) dictionary for non-native French speakers. But since the themes are very similar, one quickly becomes familiar with the vocabulary. The tales themselves have not aged very well. I think I got most benefit from the footnotes naming his sources, there are some promising books I'm going to track down for later reading. ( )