Take Laure de Roine, Chartier’s sister, the good genius of the play—bonhomie, not only personified, but idealised, invested with all the liveliness and fascination that belong to delightful French womanhood. Laure, some years older than her brother, left a widow, also with a quarter of her handsome wedding portion, remaining through the opportune decease, in the very hour when he seemed bent upon ruining her, after himself, of a husband given to gambling on the Stock Exchange.
Take Madame Hélène Briant, the very charming, vivacious wife of M. Lucien Briant, a lady approaching the perilous age—i.e. nearly thirty—reasonably attached to, but not passionately in love with, an amiable but despondent husband, who has become despondent under the authoritative rule of M. Briant père, a superior man, and master of the “correct,” frock-coated attitude towards life. Briant père is the tyrant of the Briant household. Hear the charming Hélène in active revolt against this insupportable father-in-law, and her husband’s despondency, as a result of his filial docility, exposing her own case, half playfully, half seriously, to Laure de Roine, everyone’s good genius:
Hélène. When I try to react against this general depression; when, in spite of them both, I make it my task to find something cheerful, and worth taking pleasure in, I find myself treated by both Father and Son as a frivolous worldling. Add on to that that I have no children, and live in this deadly provincial atmosphere, full of spiteful gossip, scandal, and vanity. And then try, if you can, to imagine my condition of mind—not forgetting that I am an “honest” woman—and that I am beginning to realise it.
Laure. And when a woman begins to realise that she is “honest”——
Hélène. Yes; the case is grave.
All these personages explain themselves to us, and claim us, by reason of their vivid humanity, as intimate acquaintances, in the play. Yet not one of them has his or her exact counterpart in English society, for the simple reason that their choice qualities, and entertaining defects, not only belong to the French temperament but are the result of manners, conventions, prejudices and sentiments that do not enter into our actual experiences, although we are in a position to judge, or at any rate correctly to appreciate them, when we have studied them in this dramatic picture....
And now for the situation of the play. It is also essentially French; what the orthodox English critic would probably describe as “disagreeable” and “painful.” But with that neither M. Capus nor ourselves are concerned. Our playwright, true to the canons of his art, has aimed at no more than selecting an episode from la vie vivante, and revealing it in its most vital and human moments, and the episode he has chosen is one that has its counterpart, year in, year out, in the gay, irresponsible land peopled by the jeunesse of Paris and the provinces. “Nôtre Jeunesse”—that period, in France particularly, of extravagances and follies; “Nôtre Jeunesse”—those years in the Latin Quarter when irregularity of conduct does not appear reprehensible even to the parental eye.
“C’est de leur âge,” says the bourgeois indulgently, thinking, no doubt, of his own jeunesse, when he meets a band of students rejoicing riotously in their corduroy clothes, long, flowing capes and amazing hats. And such wild figures were Chartier and Lucien Briant some twenty years before we meet them. And it is of those days that they are speaking, when M. Capus introduces them to his audience in the Chartier Villa at Trouville. Chartier, of course, is in excellent spirits. But Lucien is nervous and despondent, and becomes still more troubled when his friend reminds him of his liaison with Léontine Gilard, a charming and light-hearted girl, whose pet name Chartier forgets.
Lucien helps his memory; the name was “Loulou.” Let me quote the passage:
Lucien [with emotion]. Loulou.