"THÉÂTRE DE LA PORTE-SAINT-MARTIN
Le Fils de l'Émigré
Drama by MM. ANICET BOURGEOIS and ALEXANDRE DUMAS"
"Le Comte Édouard de Bray, a French émigré, takes refuge in Switzerland; there he has taken service in the Austrian Army, which attempts to invade France from that quarter. The count has chosen his allies badly: beaten with them (since our brave armies do beat their enemies utterly), he takes to his legs and shelters in an armourer's shop at Brientz. The armourer, Grégoire Humbert, a man of honour and of humanity, takes in the fugitive, whom he desires to save from the pursuit of the Republicans. Humbert is the more zealous and devoted because he knew Comte Édouard: the comte is several months at Brientz, and even leaves Grégoire Humbert under the table after an orgy, Humbert's virtue and sobriety having gone somewhat astray on that day. The worthy armourer has not forgotten this memorable escapade of drunkenness; so he helps Comte Édouard to escape out of the window, whilst the French soldiers' rifles are beating at his door.
"Comte Édouard de Bray thus saved, you would imagine that he would feel the very liveliest gratitude for the brave man who saved him from being shot or hung. Oh! nothing of the kind! Our real, our great drama, it is said, is not so juvenile as to accustom us to such natural and middle-class sentiments; it must, of course, have something quite different—something detestable, ignoble and ridiculous forsooth!
"This is what the Comte de Bray does in conformity with the triple requirements of great drama. Scarcely out of danger, he writes to Grégoire Humbert: 'You think yourself a happy father and husband; you are deceived, Humbert. During the night of the orgy I spent with you, your wife was waiting for you in her bed: I slipped into your place; the son she is to present you with is not yours.'
"If you ask for an explanation of the Comte de Bray's infamy, you will learn that he has sworn implacable hatred to the people, and that he begins to put it into operation upon his benefactor. It is out of such subjects as these that writers have the presumption to make plays nowadays, and drama which is to move and interest people!
"The comte's letter throws Humbert into despair; he takes a dagger and wants to kill his wife.... At this moment, the back of the stage reveals the scene of an accouchement, which follows upon the dagger scene; 'I have the honour of announcing to you the birth of the émigré's son.' The priest blesses the newly born infant; mother and child are doing well. This spectacle disarms Humbert, who sheathes his dagger; but he must kill some one, so, instead of Madame Humbert and her dubious offspring, he means to kill Édouard. Unfortunately, he is too late, Édouard is far away. The armourer does not give up his revenge on that account; he will beget a second son by his wife, a son who shall be his to kill the father of the first son, with the responsibility of whom he is obliged to saddle himself, 'Is pater est quem nuptiæ demonstrant.' Humbert, certainly, understood revenge as well as anybody possibly could; to beget a child by Madame Humbert solely to avenge himself is the supremest kind of cleverness. These lovely things I have just laid before you form what is nowadays called a prologue; it was formerly simply called the first act.
"Twenty years pass over. Humbert died ruined, pursuing Édouard, whom he has never been able to meet with; for twenty years he had been unlucky in his search! Otherwise, his project of vengeance had succeeded to perfection: the second son was born, grew up and, in place of the dead Humbert, Pietro, his faithful servant, teaches the son to handle a sword, in readiness for the moment when Comte Édouard shall be encountered, and when he shall kill him. There is a family of armourers for you, and they could give points on matters of revenge to the ancient Greek families, whose fury our tragic authors have put before us for some time past. Humbert and his faithful Pietro had not found Édouard. I, who had nothing to do with him, found him in Paris, where he was exercising the noble profession of spy: as a count and secret agent of the Superior Police. The drama preserves and maintains to us something of interest and elevation. Besides his pleasures as a spy, Édouard continues to cultivate his hatred against the people: he has seduced a young girl, with whom he has been living for two years; item, he has carried away a young man called Georges Burns from his artisan work and made him his secretary; his object is to corrupt Georges, as he has corrupted Thérèse, out of hatred to the people. We could not have believed in such madness, if we had not seen and heard it. But we are not at the end, there is yet another story.
"This Georges Burns is none other than the son of Édouard and of Madame Humbert. Georges changed his name after his putative father had died bankrupt. Georges is proud and does not wish to resume the name of his supposed father until after he has paid all his debts. Édouard, who does not know the clue to this enigma, looks upon the youth as merely Georges Burns. From this juncture, we enter upon an incredible chaos of ignominy and absurdities; we are at first tempted to laugh at the crude combination of style, incoherence of scenes and pell-mell of persons and to take it for a parody. I frankly thought it was meant as a parody.
"These two clever people, I said, want to make fun of the monstrosities which degrade our theatres, and to avenge good feeling and taste and language by a good satire.... As caricature and satire exaggerate the absurdities or the vices of those at whom they want to strike, our satirists have piled up in their parody crudity upon crudity, mountain upon mountain, crime upon crime, filth upon filth, to bring the more shame upon our licentious dramatists. But I have been assured that Le Fils de l'Émigré was written seriously as a great drama.
"Then, no longer being able to laugh, I have no resource left but ennui and disgust—an ennui and disgust with which I do not desire to oppress my readers by dragging them step by step through that den of slavery, murder and prostitution: I might just as well invite them! to spend a day at Poissy, at the Madelonnettes, at la Conciergerie, the place de Grève or the private cabinet of M. Vidocq, with the executioner's minions; for there is nothing else in this ignoble play. Comte Édouard de Bray, whom you know to be a spy, blunders unpardonably and breaks burglariously into houses.
"Thérèse, the young girl he has carried off, becomes a prostitute very quickly and goes from man to man with wonderful facility. Georges Burns, or, rather, Georges Humbert, steals from his mother 30,000 francs meant for the payment of her husband's debts, and assassinates Thérèse, whom he had lived with after Comte Édouard had done with her.
"To crown these lovely performances, you have a condemnation to the galleys and a sentence of death. Édouard is sent to the galleys for forgery; Burns to the scaffold for murder. In the prison, between the branding and the guillotine, father and son recognise one another, and Georges learns the secret of his birth. You would think the authors would stop short there, and have some pity on us. Poor folk! who think that people will respect you more than the general opinion, and everything which has hitherto been respected in good and healthy literature! No, you have not had enough of this hideous spectacle: you must see the galley-slave bound to his chains, the condemned with his hands tied behind his back and head shaved, marching to ... Here the public rose in a body and would not see or hear any more; they turned sick with disgust; the women rose or turned their eyes away to hide the sight of the head about to be cut off; they hooted, they shouted down these shameful doings, and justice was done. Criticism of such plays as these is impossible; one leaves them as quickly as one can, as one kicks aside a repulsive object. What have we come to, when a talented man puts his name to this drama as to a sign-post? It is true that the author has, this time, found his punishment in the very offence itself; his talent seems to be completely dead."
So I was assassinated by Le Constitutionnel, exactly on the same spot where the Emperor Albert had been assassinated by his nephew. Unfortunately, I doubt whether that assassination was as valuable to the future as the fine scene one can read in the fifth act of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, which takes place between the murderer of Gessler and the assassin of the emperor.
I returned to Paris towards the beginning of October. All the newspapers had copied the example of Le Constitutionnel; they had gone for me tooth and nail, the kill was complete; they did not leave a shred of flesh on my bones. I met Véron, who delivered me a lecture on my immorality which I shall never forget. He had asked me for something for La Revue de Paris, of which he was editor; but, after Le Fils de l'Émigré, he had no room for my name among the company of decent people. I also came across several theatrical managers who had become short-sighted during my absence and did not recognise me. I have had these falls two or three times during my life—not reckoning others still awaiting me—I have always risen above them, thank God! and I hope that, if it happens again, God will extend the same grace to me. My private motto is "J'ayme qui m'ayme," and I could perfectly well add, "Je ne hais pas qui me hait"; but our family motto is "Deus dédit, Deus dabit" ("God has given, God will give").
So I gave up the theatre for a time. Besides, I had begun my book on Gaule et France, and I wanted to finish it. The execution of this book was a singular thing. I sought learning myself in order to teach others; but I had a great advantage: in going thus by chance through history, it happened to me as it happens to a man who does not know his way and gets lost in a forest; he is lost, it is true, but discovers things unknown, abysses where no man has descended, heights none have scaled.
Gaule et France is a historical book full of mistakes; but it ends by the strangest prophecy which has ever been printed sixteen years beforehand. We will see what it was in due time and place.
Towards the end of September, we heard in France of the death of Walter Scott. That death made a certain impression on me; not that I had the honour of knowing the author of Ivanhoe and of Waverley, but the reading of Walter Scott, it will be recollected, had a great influence on my early literary life. Beginning by preferring Pigault-Lebrun to Walter Scott, and Voltaire to Shakespeare, a twofold heresy from which my well-loved Lassagne had redeemed me—Lassagne who, since I talked of him to you, has gone where half my friends have gone,—having, I say, preferred Pigault-Lebrun to Walter Scott, I had come to saner views, and, not only had I read all the Scottish author's romances, but I had tried to make two plays out of his works: the first, we know, with Frédéric Soulié; the second by myself. Neither was played, and neither was suited to the stage.
Walter Scott's qualities are not at all dramatic; admirable as a painter of manners, costumes and characters, Walter Scott is completely incapable of painting the passions. With manners and characters one can concoct comedies, but there must be passion to make dramas. Scott's only impassioned romance is Kenilworth Castle; so it is the sole one which provided a really successful drama, and yet three-quarters of the success was due to the dénoûment, which was put on the stage, and which brutally flung in the eyes of the public the terrible spectacle of Amy Robsart's fall over the precipice. But my work on Scott had not been useless, although it had remained fruitless; one only understands the structure of a man by dissecting dead bodies; so one only understands the genius of an author by analysing it. The analysis of Walter Scott had made me understand the novel from another point of view than that of our country. A similar fidelity to manners, costumes and characters, with more lively dialogue and more natural passions, seemed to me to be what we needed. Such was my conviction, but I was far enough yet from suspecting that I should attempt to do for France what Scott had done for Scotland. I had only then published my historic scenes, Le Chevalier de Bois-Bourdon, Isabel le Bavière and Périnet Leclerc, and, as we shall see, the thing had succeeded badly enough, or was but a very poor success. One has such luck at times.
I published my Scènes historiques in La Revue des Deux Mondes; so no one read them. In my absence, Anicet Bourgeois and Lockroy conceived the notion of putting these scenes together and composing a drama under the title of Périnet Leclerc. It was, indeed, an honour which they paid to these scraps of history, unostentatiously scattered through a review. The play was a great success. Although I had done at least as much of it as of Le Fils de l'Émigré, they were most careful not to utter my name. Le Constitutionnel, which had torn from my face, in the first work, the veil of incognito, obliterated it this time with all its strength, and praised the drama highly. Listen: M. Lesur, in his Annuaire had said, apropos of Le Fils de l'Émigré—