BLANCHE.
Seule, seule avec vous!
TRIBOULET, aux seigneurs.
Allez-vous-en d'ici!
Et, si le roi François par malheur se hasarde
A passer près d'ici ...
(A M. de Vermandois.)
Vous êtes de sa garde,
Dites-lui de ne pas entrer,—que je suis là!
(Les seigneurs sortent.)"
You can see well enough, monsieur critic, that Triboulet is not alone when his daughter comes and flings herself into his arms, and that if the lords go out, it is not because the king's fool has ordered them out, but because they know how to conduct themselves before the father of Blanche. Instead of being false, as you make out, the scene, on the contrary, is so profoundly wrought that you did not dare to follow it in its deepest wounds; this was an unknown abyss to your comprehension. Oh! monsieur critic, to ply your trade, you must be almost as great as the writer you criticise. Can a Lilliputian analyse a Gulliver?
"At this moment," the critic continues, "the Comte de Saint-Vallier, who is being led to the Bastille, recommences his imprecations against François I., and says—
'Puisque, par votre roi d'outrages abreuvé,
Ma malédiction n'a pas encor trouvé,
Ici-bas ni là-haut, de voix qui me réponde.
Pas une foudre au ciel, pas un bras d'homme au monde,
Je n'espère plus rien.—Ce roi prospérera.
TRIBOULET, relevant la tête.
Comte! vous vous trompez!—Quelqu'un vous vengerai!'"
You see, monsieur critic, you are wrong; M. de Saint-Vallier
does serve an end.
"The third act is revoltingly immoral!" the critic pursues. "The same disgusting features await us in the fourth act. We see the house of the brigand Saltabadil; a sort of pothouse. The king comes there in the middle of the night; he sits down to table and calls for drink: they bring it him."
We will let the author reply to the accusation expressed in such beautiful language. If the work is moral in construction, can it be immoral in execution? The question thus put seems to us to answer itself. But let us see. Probably there is nothing immoral in the first or second act. Is it the situation in the third act which shocks you? Read the third act and tell us if the impression which, in all probability, it produces, is not of profound purity, virtue and rectitude?
"Is it the fourth act? But since when has a king been forbidden to pay court to a public-house servant on the stage? It is no novelty in history, nor in the theatre: history permits us to show you François I. drunk in the kennels of the rue du Pelican. To take a king to a low place is nothing new either: the Greek theatre—the classical one—did it; Shakespeare, who is of the romantic theatre, did it. Very well then, the author of this drama has not done so. He knows all that has been written about the house of Saltabadil; but why make out that he has said what he has not said? Why force him to exceed a limit which is entirely beside the mark, which he has not exceeded? The gipsy Maguelonne so much maligned is surely not bolder than all the Lisettes and Martons of the old-school theatre. Saltabadil's pothouse is a hostelry, a tavern, the tavern de la Pomme de pin, a suspected inn and a cut-throat place may be! but not a brothel; it is a sombre, terrible, horrible, fearful place if you like, but it is not an obscene one. There remain details as to style. Read! the author accepts as judges of the strict severity of his style the same persons who are shocked by Juliet's nurse and Ophelia's father, by Beaumarchais and by Regnard, by the École des femmes and Amphitryon, by Dandin and Sganarelle, and by the great scene in Tartufe. Tartufe was also accused of immorality, in his time. Only, in this case, when it was necessary to be frank, the author had to do it at his own risk and peril, but always with gravity and restraint; he wished his art to be chaste, but not prudish."
Let us return to the criticism.[3]