Dumas knew this (if he had lived in America the fact would have been driven home every morning in the newspapers) when he wrote Francillon, especially when he wrote Femme de Claude. Tué-là! was his ferocious advice. So M. Hervieu set himself to preach the contrary. In Les Paroles Restent, his first dramatic essay, even in Les Tenailles, and La Loi de l'Homme, the wordiness becomes most monotonous. In The Enigma, we notice the same long-winded discussions à la Dumas as in Princesse Georges, with the raisonneur in the centre of the stage, —in this case Marquis de Neste,—weighing the merits of the various speeches, spouting many himself, altogether turning the expository act into a debating society. In their revolt against the so-called "well-made play," the newer Parisian dramatists have gone to the other extreme.
However, the plot of The Enigma is distinctly worth the telling. Two brothers, noblemen, De Gourgiran by name, are married to two charming women, Léonore and Giselle. Here is a quartet instead of the eternal duo with the triangle hung over the door like a sinister horseshoe presaging ill luck. To this double family are added the elderly Marquis, who is a cousin to the brothers, and a young man, Vivarce by name. He is the unknown quantity of this well-mixed combination. At first the household seems like most happy ones—without anything worthy of chronicling. The brothers are mighty Nimrods, the wives have children to interest them, Vivarce to amuse them, the Marquis to lecture them. Everything goes on oiled wheels until the gamekeeper of the estate tells his masters that poachers are abroad. The fraternal pair resolve on stealing out before daybreak and surprising the rascals. The respective characters of the brothers do not show much diversity; both live to hunt, and incidentally they love their wives better, much better, than their dogs. About this there must be no mistake. Honest, upright, inflexible, hard-hearted, hard-headed persons, they are absolutely lacking in humour. They bore their wives, and if you would tell them this, they would shrug shoulders philosophically and remark that women, especially good wives, were intended to be bored by husbands.
But note their scowling features if that drawing-room animal, the professional lover, is mentioned! Both empty their choicest vials of objurgation and fury upon the luckless beast's head. In fact, a discussion is started about the treatment a man should accord an erring wife. The one rather would shoot such a wife through the heart, the other brother would slay the lover and keep the wife alive and near at hand so that she might be tortured. This cold-blooded proposition arouses the righteous indignation of Giselle, who protests in the name of her sex, in the name of humanity. She becomes so agitated that the Marquis, whose suspicions have been aroused for some time, suspects the lady of carrying on an intrigue with Vivarce. Earlier in the scene he has privately accused Vivarce of betraying one of his hosts' wives, but which one he cannot say.
Now here is where the puzzle comes in and the psychology evaporates. The Marquis, so he relates, while suffering from insomnia, gets up one fine night and sees Vivarce vanishing in the door of the château, which door was opened by a female hand. Whose? Evidently one of the married women. Which one? Ah, that is the enigma! Vivarce feebly admits his shameful behaviour, though he refuses to give the name of the fair sinner. The old nobleman is perplexed. He advises flight. He talks like an ancient uncle from the country, who does not wish to borrow money from his city relatives—that is, he talks sense, and as it dribbles in one ear and out the other of his moonstruck companion, he realizes the futility of his well-meant sermon. Young men will be fools and lunatics—and he might have added, when they are not, heaven help their wives in later years!
Unknown to the others the brothers resolve on lying in wait for the poachers. After some conjugal bantering they retire. Their wives sit up to talk matters over. The door has been barred; it is very close within; Giselle proposes that they open the house. She essays in vain to lift the heavy oaken bar. Leonore tries. She succeeds. The moonlight is mellow without, and the summer night sends pleasant air and odours into the living room. At last the two women prepare for bed. Novels are selected, and with lamps in hand they are leaving the room without thought of the open door. Giselle remembers it and returns. Leonore bids her not to bother—there are no thieves in the neighbourhood. The curtain falls.
Up to this moment there is no way of recognizing the "guilty" woman. Dishonours are about even. Giselle, to be sure, is passionate in her protestations of contempt for the brutality of husbands who take the law into their own hands. But Leonore unbars the door. Giselle recalls the fact that it should not be open, and Leonore tells her not to worry. Which one is it? And before you rush rashly to a conclusion remember that the dramatist knows more than his audience, and that he contrives pitfalls for the unwary. Both women seem guilty, both may be innocent. One of the brothers comes softly into the room; both have agreed not to worry their wives about the poachers. The door is found unbolted. The first comer surmises that his brother has preceded him, but the gamekeeper tells him the door was open. Then the other brother enters. Surprise! But there is no time for this sentiment, as a man steals through the dimly lighted room. After a brief, fierce struggle he is pinioned. A lantern reveals the features of Vivarce. How did he come there? Why did he come out of the women's apartments at this hour in the morning? Hate and destruction are in the air.
His answers are evasive. He is nervous—wanted a cigarette. The lie is cast back in his teeth. And then a woman, holding a candle, rushes in with pale face. It is Leonore. She has been awakened, so she avers, by the shock of voices. Her husband sternly inquires her whereabouts a few moments before. She has an excuse ready. She swears she is not guilty, and even kneels to Vivarce, beseeching him to clear her. It is too much. Her husband plucks her by the arm, and then, as his brother questions her too closely, the man wavers to the side of his wife. Perhaps, after all, it was Giselle. Yes, where is Giselle? The husband of the absent one is swift to defend her. He goes to her room and finds her fast asleep. Aha! says the other woman, and awakens her. Confused by the lights, the accusation, the clash of words, she is the very picture of a guilty woman as she enters in her white night robe, her hair unbound, her features suffused in tears. Besides, did she not make some very audacious speeches earlier in the evening defending the right to love of a woman wearied of her husband? Free love—ah, odious phrase! It damns her at once.
The trouble with a situation of this kind is that the spectator, carried away by his curiosity, forgets all about the play of character, the problem involved. It is The Lady or the Tiger over again, and not so cleverly handled as that little masterpiece, for, as we shall presently see, Hervieu solves the riddle in a very prosaic fashion. A big interrogation point at the end would be the only excuse for a recrudescence of a play of the Dumas sort. When Richard Strauss composed the enigmatic tonalities at the close of his Tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra, he did so because he could not logically leave us on a full harmonic close. Since Hervieu did not develop his theme broadly and allowed it to degenerate into the theatric device of guessing the girl, he might have followed Frank Stockton and Richard Strauss—withheld the complete dénouement and sent us home wondering. But his artistic conscience began to operate at the close of Act II, and not daring in Act III, he despatches his young lover out to the dewy morn, there to shoot himself. This suicide cuts the tangle. The sister who quails at the news is the guilty one—a Solomon-like judgment, if ever there was one.
The gunshot rouses the women. Leonore it is who shudders and screams; Giselle is only shocked. The complacent face of her husband at this juncture is a study in selfishness. Leonore's husband throttles her and is pulled off just in time. He bids her live—he knows how to torture; and as the curtain falls the Marquis in the centre of the picture invokes the curse of heaven on a social system that tolerates such hideous cruelty.
It may be seen that the intellectual playwright takes advantage of a situation in Pagliacci or in Catulle Mendès's La Femme de Tabarin; when the lover is being killed or is killed, the grief of the "guilty" wife betrays her secret to the world. It is lacking in novelty, yet a sound situation psychologically. The torture motive is not new.