the seriousness of Augier as they lay bare the results to moral character of the restless grasping for pleasure that marked the social life of the declining Empire, and show how it corrodes heart and conscience. Toward the close the sternness of satire yields to melodramatic emotion and an elegiac note predominates in the final scene, where the poor crushed butterfly FrouFron, racked by consumption, returns to her husband, embraces her child, and dies on the stage, a concession, like those of Sardou, to the demands of the great actress Bernhardt. Other ventures of these dioscuri of realistic or farcical satire are "Fanny Lear," "Tricoche et Cacolet," and "La Boule;" but these reflect rather the violent sensational method of "La Dame aux camélias" than the individuality of Meilhac and Halévy, that best shows its sparkling effervescence and genuine dramatic force in such little one-act plays as "Reveillon" or the unsavory but clever "Toto chez Tata."

In more recent years a novel turn has been given to social satire by Pailleron's "Monde où l'on s'ennuie" (1881), one of the best comedies of the last twenty years and one of the historical successes of the Théâtre Français, though it is the only important work of its author.1 "The World of Boredom" is that of Molière's "Femmes savantes" as they appear in our day, with their affectation of learning, their scholarly and aesthetic pretensions, masking an active intrigue for government promotions and official distinctions. It added to the vogue of the play that the characters were more photographic than

1 Pailleron (b. 1834) has published several volumes of poetry and dramatic trifles. "Les Cabotins," his more recent play (1894), is of a higher order, and a single scene of "Le Monde où l'on s'amuse (1868) is often cited as a masterpiece of stage-craft in the management of numbers on the stage.

typical. The triteness of the plot was readily forgiven for the satiric verve of the dialogue and the piquant delicacy of delineations that all Paris recognized in spite of the faint denials of the author.

Thus far we have spoken of men who were pre-eminently dramatists. A word must be said of those who have achieved greater distinction in other fields, and, finally, of the effort to apply to the stage the pseudoNaturalistic theory of the "human document," or, as these would-be dramatists say, to present "slices of life." Among the novelists George Sand, Ohnet, and Daudet have essayed the legitimate drama, as have the poets Banville, Coppée, and the critic Lemaître, of whose work it is more convenient to speak elsewhere.1 There is one novelist, however, Octave Feuillet, whose best dramatic work synchronizing with that of Augier has a peculiar individuality. Feuillet began life as a collaborator of the elder Dumas, but he presently deserted the Romantic banner, and set up his own establishment as the "Family Musset," the purveyor of novels and plays that should make the concession to prejudice rather than morals of avoiding those extramarital relations so common in the work of Dumas fils, Augier, and Sardou. Beneath this varnish of morality, however, we have a maximum of ethical perversion; for, as Shakspere knew, "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." Indeed his plays are so fundamentally unhealthy, such hot-house growths, that one feels that Feuillet survived himself when he survived the Empire and the patronage of Eugénie.2

1 See chapters xi., xii., xiii., and ix.

2 I name only Cheveu blanc, 1856; Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (dramatized 1858); La Tentation, La Belle au bois dormant, Montjoie, all before 1863. For a more favorable view of Feuillet's ethics, see Loti's Discours at his reception into the French Academy, and Doumic, op. cit.

In all the work that has been noticed thus far the conventions of the stage as Scribe and the Romanticists had left it had been observed; but with the rise of dogmatic Naturalism a determined effort was made to conquer the drama for the theories that had been so rapidly propagated in the field of fiction. "The theatre will be Naturalistic or it will cease to be," said the ever positive Zola, to whom the conservatism of the stage had long been a thorn in the flesh. Like the Romanticists of 1830, he and his fellows felt that the battle must be won on this field. The result of the struggle is instructive, for experience has corroborated theory in fixing the demarcation of the drama and fiction.

Zola's "Naturalisme au théâtre" was to be the new school's "Preface to Cromwell," and his "Renée" was to be the naturalistic "Hernani."1 The former did not convince, and the latter was emphatically rejected both by the critics and the public. In the next year he returned to the charge in "Germinal," only to find those as dissatisfied and these more impatient. His piece was pronounced, with an allusion to his own. vocabulary, to be both crevante and assommante. And yet the same critics and the same public would have agreed that the novels from which these plays were taken 2 were all good and one of them a masterpiece; and that the fundamental situation of the former was essentially dramatic is attested by the success of Racine's "Phèdre." Where, then, lies the secret of their failure, if not in this, that Naturalism is opposed

1 "Renée" dates from 1887. Zola had already produced the strong but gloomy dramatized novel 'Thérèse Raquin," 1873, and Busnach had successfully dramatized "L'Assommoir" in 1879.

2 The novelistic sources are, for "Renée," "Nantas" and "La Curée;" for "Germinal," the novel of like name.

to dramatic development, which then will appear to be different in its requirements from prose fiction? By sacrificing in their mistaken zeal for realistic effect the conventions essential to the dramatic genre, they stretched a snare in their own path. But they failed to notice an even more fundamental distinction. The modern pseudo-scientific novel is essentially necessitarian, it regards men as the products of birth and environment, while it is a fundamental condition of the drama to show will in action.1 Hence the skilful playwright who dramatizes "Nana" or "L'Assommoir" subjects them to fundamental changes, without which no Naturalistic novel has ever succeeded on the stage.2

It is natural, however, that the artificiality of Scribe, of which the dramatists that have occupied us in this chapter retained perhaps too much, should have provoked a reaction toward greater realism in dramatic construction. A moderate representative of these reforming tendencies is Becque, a realist with remarkable keenness of observation and irony. More radical than he is Hennique, once the peculiar star of the Théâtre Libre, which proposed to give the freest scope to dramatic experiment and reform. The tendency of his work is to break up the connected drama into a series of isolated scenes, and so to increase the illusion of the spectator, who in real life is obliged to imagine the connection between the disjointed parts of any prolonged action that would come to an individual's

1 See Brunetière, Littérature contemporaine, p. 241 sqq.

2 The most noteworthy failures have been the dramatizations of the Goncourts' "Renée Mauperin," "Germinie Lacertaux," and "La Fille Eliza," all backed by a most enthusiastic cabal.

8 Born 1837. Characteristic dramas are "Le Corbeau” and “La Parisienne."

4 E. g., in La Mort du duc d'Enghien, 1888.

notice. That such a radical change in dramatic methods will or should succeed is hardly to be expected or perhaps desired, and the interest that was at first manifested even in the wild vagaries of the Théâtre Libre seems to be waning. But this is only one of the signs that the old dramatic forms are felt to be outworn, that men feel the need of new bottles for their new wine. The only play of Maupassant 1 fell naturally into the new lines, and the distinguished dramatic critic Lemaître has himself somewhat overstepped the bounds of the conventional drama.2 But whether this marks the fruitful beginning of a new era or the sterile flowering of an old one, it is as yet impossible to determine.

1 Musette, 1891.

2 Révoltée, 1889; Député Leveau, 1891; Les Rois, 1893; Le Pardon, 1895.