“Je ne connais pas des idées généreuses,” he has announced. “Je ne connais que des idées vraies ou fausses, et il ne vaudrait pas la peine d’écrire si ce n’était pas pour énoncer les idées que l’on croit et que l’on sait vraies.” And in the press, in conferences, in prefaces, the “eminent Academician” (as the clerical Gaulois monotonously designates M. Bourget) has furthermore declared that Un Divorce and La Barricade were written in a rigorously impartial spirit. But other critics maintain that the controversies that have raged around M. Bourget’s dramatic efforts (started with no little pretentiousness by the author himself) establish nothing. The plays speak for themselves.
M. Bourget’s observations have persuaded him that the rebellious spirit prevailing amongst the working classes is a menace to his country:
“C’est cette sensation du danger présent que j’aurais voulu donner dans La Barricade sûr, si j’avais pu y réussir, d’avoir servi utilement ma classe, et par conséquent mon pays.”
But according to M. Pataud, the notorious ex-Secretary of the Syndicate of Electricians, M. Bourget carried away with him a totally false impression of the men and places he professes so closely, and also so impartially, to have studied.
A word about M. Pataud. It was shortly after he had ordered the Electricians’ strike that plunged Paris almost into darkness for two hours,[2] and at the zenith of his fame, that the “Roi de la Lumière” attended a performance of La Barricade at the Vaudeville Theatre. It had been reported that he had served M. Bourget as a model for the character of Thubeuf, the professional agitator in the play. This, M. Bourget emphatically denied. “Let me see for myself,” said M. Pataud. And he requested M. Bourget to send him a ticket of admission to the theatre, and humorously offered to return the compliment by placing a seat in the Bourse du Travail at the dramatist’s disposal.
Well, M. Bourget granted the request: but ignored the invitation to the Labour Exchange. And one night “King Pataud” seated himself, amidst le Tout Paris in the most fashionable of the boulevard theatres. He himself, in spite of his pink shirt, red tie, and “bowler” hat, belonged in a sense to le Tout Paris. Was he not “Le Roi de la Lumière”? There were columns about him in the newspapers; he was “impersonated” in every music-hall revue, and his picture post cards sold by the thousand. Then, pressing (and sentimental) requests for his autograph; invitations out to dinner and gifts of cigarettes and cigars; and what a stir, what excited cries of “There goes Pataud,” when the great man swaggered down the boulevards with a fine Havana stuck in a corner of his mouth, and the “bowler” hat tilted rakishly over the right eye!
Nor in the Vaudeville Theatre was his triumph less complete. The interest of the brilliant audience was centred on “Fauteuil No. 159”; not on the stage. There sat the man who had but to give the signal and—out would go the lights! So was every opera-glass levelled at him, and so—at the end of the performance—were all the reporters in Paris eager to obtain “King” Pataud’s impressions of the play. “Not bad,” he was reported to have said. “But M. Bourget’s conception of how strikes are conducted is ridiculous. And his strikers are equally absurd.”
I fancy M. Bourget must have regretted that gift of “Fauteuil No. 159” at the time. But to-day he has his revenge—for it was the free seat in the Vaudeville Theatre that led to “King” Pataud’s downfall! After the agitator’s visit to La Barricade it became the fashion amongst the managers to invite the “Roi de la Lumière” to their theatres. Behold him, actually, at the first performance of Chantecler—and at the Gymnase, the Variétés, the Palais Royal. But if the public rejoiced over “King” Pataud’s presence at the theatre, his colleagues in the labour world were to be heard grumbling. Pataud (and it was true) was “getting his head turned.” Pataud was neglecting the Bourse du Travail for theatres and brilliant restaurants. But the “Roi de la Lumière” paid no heed to these reproofs, nor to complaints and warnings vigorously expressed. And the crisis came, the storm burst, when “King” Pataud and an electrician came to blows on the boulevards, and were marched off to the police station on a charge of breaking the peace. At the station, the “Roi de la Lumière” was searched. “Ah, you do yourself well, you enjoy life, you have a gay time of it,” grinned the police commissaire, after examining the agitator’s pocket-book. It contained bank-notes for a large sum, receipted bills from luxurious restaurants and hotels, and (what of course, particularly delighted the Parisian) the autographed photograph of a certain very blonde and very lively actress. So, indignation and disgust of the Syndicate of Electricians, who had contributed to their secretary’s support. He was called upon to resign. And to-day M. Pataud is an agent for a champagne firm; and the street gamins who once cheered him, now—O supreme insult—apostrophise him as “sale bourgeois.”
Two questions remain for those whose opinion in the Amazing City counts. The first is: Does an Eminent Academician, who, whether he writes in a frock coat or no, professes the conviction that it would not be worth while to produce plays only to reveal the influence and power of men’s emotions, passions and ideals in the shaping of life, unless one had some ulterior clerical, social or political object to serve, stand in the hopeful ways of thought that distinguish the first order of Dramatists? The answer to the question is delivered with an emphatic decision. “Mais—Non”—“Mais,”—a pause and a gesture by an emphatic falling hand—“Non.” Second question: Is a social agitator, who displays himself in a pink shirt and bowler hat in the best seats of fashionable theatres, and who enjoys himself at fashionable restaurants with worldlings—whom he affects to terrorise—a satisfactory Democrat? Same answer, but the “Non” and the confirmatory gesture is more emphatic. “Mais—Non.”