To those who expressed surprise that the flippant Donnay should collaborate with the truculent Descaves, Donnay himself said: “A young man, I produced at the Chat Noir my piece Pension de Famille, which won me the honour of being called ‘joyous anarchist’ by Jules Lemaître. I remained an anarchist in La Douloureuse. And, without doubt, I have always been an anarchist; more, it is true, for sentimental than for sociological reasons, but also from a point of view exclusively philosophical. He who analyses, he who, without ceasing, unravels the meshes of this complicated network of ideas which constitutes the social order, is more or less of an anarchist necessarily, is he not?”
Other works of unequivocal revolt produced within the last fifteen years are:—
Mais Quelqu’un Troubla la Fête,[120] a one-act piece by Louis Marsolleau. A financier, a politician, a bishop, a general, a judge, a duchess, and a courtesan (so many types of the powerful and privileged of the world) partake hilariously of a sumptuous banquet. Their revels are interrupted by the apparition first of a peasant, then of a city labourer, and are finally put an end to by a mysterious and terrible unknown, who causes a general explosion.
Sur la Foi des Etoiles, by Gabriel Trarieux,—an esoteric symbolistic effort, a groping towards the society of the future: “I say to myself: The stars up yonder, with their fixed, impassive air, the stars which have mounted guard for centuries, are living worlds.... They die and are born. I compare them to the truths which guide us.... For there are several truths,—... some very ancient, almost extinguished, to which we submit by force of habit, and some—oh! just emerging—which will not be true before to-morrow.”
Le Cuivre, by Paul Adam and André Picard, which exposes and explains the tyranny exercised by money over persons and governments; and L’Automne, by Paul Adam and Gabriel Mourey (forbidden by the censorship).
Le Domaine, by Lucien Besnard, which recounts the progress of socialism in the rural districts, and defines the antagonism between the decadent nobility and the rising fourth estate.
La Pâque Socialiste, by Emile Veyrin, which describes a practical experiment in Christian socialism.
La Sape, by Georges Leneven, the hero of which is an anarchist dreamer of a highly intellectual type, Le Détour by Henry Bernstein, and Le Masque by Henri Bataille.
Le Voile du Bonheur, by Georges Clemenceau, which employs Chinese personages and a Chinese setting to explain the manner in which Frenchmen are fooled and ruled by their “mandarins”; and Les Petits Pieds by Henry de Saussine, which employs a similar device to ridicule French education.
Le Ressort: Etude de Révolution, mystic and ominous, by Urbain Gohier; Barbapoux, savagely anti-clerical, by Charles Malato; En Détresse, with a conclusion akin to that of Descaves’ Cage, by Henri Fèvre; L’Ami de l’Ordre, by Georges Darien; La Grève, by Jean Hugues; Conte de Noël and Des Cloches du Cain, by Auguste Linert; Le Chemineau, by Richepin; Jean Ajalbert’s adaptation of De Goncourt’s La Fille Elisa;[121] and the pieces of Hérold, Pierre Valdagne, and Georges Lecomte.