text:  The Frenchman never descends from holding the wires of the puppets to be a puppet himself or even to delude spectators with the idea that they are any thing but puppets; he never forfeits his superiority over the personages of the story by allowing the reader to lose sight of the author; no he piques himself on being the great showman and would scarcely take it as a compliment if you entered into the interest of the tale unless as an exhibition of the narrator's talent