TRIBOULET.
Le bonhomme est fou, sire.
SAINT-VALLIER, levant le bras.
Soyez maudits tous deux!
(Au roi.)
Sire, ce n'est pas bien:
Sur le lion mourant vous lâchez votre chien!
(A Triboulet.)
Qui que tu sois, valet à langue de vipère,
Que fais risée ainsi de la douleur d'un père,
Sois maudit!
(Au roi.)
J'avais droit d'être par vous traité
Comme une majesté par une majesté.
Vous êtes roi, moi père, et l'âge vaut le trône.
Nous avons tous les deux au front une couronne
Où nul ne doit lever de regards insolents,
Vous de fleurs de lys d'or, et moi de cheveux blancs.
Roi, quand un sacrilège ose insulter la vôtre,
C'est vous qui la vengez;—c'est Dieu qui venge l'autre!"
The critic goes on—
"The Comte de Saint-Vallier finishes his harangue and goes out cursing the king and Triboulet. The king laughs, Triboulet seems thunderstruck. This riot of unedifying conversations, the hall and the character of Comte de Saint-Vallier are in no sort of way connected with the action of the play, and the whole of the first act is taken up in informing us that Triboulet has a mistress and that the gentlemen of the court wish to take her away from him. ..."
Say, monsieur critic, that you personally see no connection between the ball and M. de Saint-Vallier and the action, but forbear from saying they have no connection in any way whatever. You are blind and deaf, monsieur critic; but, luckily, we shall not stop our ears and put out our eyes for the sole satisfaction of being like you. Stay, you shall see why M. de Saint-Vallier is not connected with the action. The author takes the trouble to tell you himself—
"It appears that writers of criticism pretend that their morals are scandalised by Le Roi s'amuse. The play disgusted the modesty of the gendarmes; the Léotaud Brigade was there[1] and thought it obscene; officers of morality hid their faces and M. Vidocq blushed; accordingly, the word of command which the censorship gave the police was stammered out in our midst for some days in these terse words—
"'THE PLAY IS IMMORAL.'"
Halloa! my masters! Silence on this point. Let us explain ourselves, however; not to the police, with whom I, an honest man, decline to discuss such matters, but to the few respectable and conscientious persons who, upon hearsay, or after seeing the performance, allowed themselves to be led away into sharing that opinion, for which, perhaps, the name alone of the guilty poet should have been sufficient refutation. The drama is now printed and, if you were not at the performance, read it; if you were, still read it. Bear in mind that this representation is less a representation than a battle, a sort of battle of Montlhéry (excuse us for this rather ambitious comparison), which the Parisians and the Burgundians both claimed to have won according to Mathieu. The play is immoral. Do you think so? Is it so fundamentally? The groundwork of the play is as follows:—
"Triboulet is deformed, ill, the court buffoon, a threefold wretchedness which makes him evilly disposed. He hates the king because he is king, the lords because they are lords, and men because they have not all got humps on their backs; his only solace is unceasingly to pit the lords against the king, to break the weakest against the strongest. He depraves, corrupts and debases the king, drives him to tyranny, ignorance and vice. He sets him at loggerheads with all the noble families, unceasingly pointing out some wife to seduce, a sister to carry off, a daughter to dishonour.
"The king is like an omnipotent puppet in the hands of Triboulet, he cuts off lives whilst the buffoon plays his jokes: one day at a fête, just when Triboulet is urging the king to carry off M. de Cossé's wife, M. de Saint-Vallier finds his way to the king and openly upbraids him for the dishonour of Diane de Poitiers. The father whose daughter the king has taken is made game of and insulted by Triboulet. He lifts his arm and curses Triboulet. And from this the whole flay springs. The real subject of the drama is M. DE SAINT-VALLIER'S MALEDICTION."
Why did you say then, monsieur critic, that "the unedifying riot of conversations, the hall and the character of Saint-Vallier ARE IN NO WAY CONNECTED WITH THE ACTION." You do not seem to me to understand the author. But let us see what the author says; we will see what you have said afterwards. We will promise you not to compare his prose with yours. Listen to what Victor Hugo says himself. We are at the second act—
"Upon whom does this malediction fall? Upon Triboulet, the king's fool? No, upon Triboulet as man, as a father with a heart, who has a daughter. All lies in the fact of Triboulet possessing a daughter: she is all he has in the world. He conceals her from all eyes in a deserted quarter and a lonely house. The more he circulates the contagion of vice and of debauchery through the town, the more closely he keeps his daughter walled up and isolated. He brings up his child in innocence, faith and modesty. His greatest fear is lest she come to harm; for, wicked as he is, he knows how much suffering it brings. Well, the old man's curse strikes Triboulet through the only thing he loves in the world—his daughter. The very king whom Triboulet urges on to abduction seduces his daughter. The fool is struck by Providence exactly in the same way as M. de Saint-Vallier, and, when his daughter is seduced and lost, he lays a snare for the king to revenge her: but it is his daughter who falls into it. Thus, Triboulet has two pupils, the king and his daughter; the king whom he instructs in vice, his daughter whom he has brought up to virtue. The one destroys the other. He intends to abduct Madame de Cossé for the king, but it is his daughter whom he carries away. He means to assassinate the king to avenge his daughter, but instead assassinates her. The chastisement does not stop half-way; the malediction of Diane's father is fulfilled upon the father of Blanche. Doubtless it is not for us to decide if the conception is dramatic or not; but it is certainly a moral one."