"I beg your pardon," said I. "It was a mistake. And yet—does it not strike you, too, that this scene is not altogether bad?"
"How should you be able to judge?—a mere novice who never wrote a line in your life! Pray what is there in this scene in the least remarkable, or pathetic, or historical?"
"But it is nature itself. I feel that I have seen in the real world just what the author has set on the stage."
"Gaby! simpleton! that is exactly what makes it so bad. Have you not observed that in 'Frederick the Second,' in 'Catharine of Russia,' in 'The Slave of Negroponte,' and other fine works, nothing ever takes place that has the smallest resemblance to real life? Is not everything in those plays strange, startling, exceptional, wonderful, and surprising? That is why they are so good. The poets of to-day do not choose to imitate those of my time, and hence art has fallen to the lowest depths."
"And yet, begging your pardon," I said, "I cannot help thinking—The play is wretched, I quite agree, and when you say so there must be a good reason for it. But the idea here seems to me a good one, since I fancy the author has intended to censure the vicious system of education which young girls get nowadays."...
"And who asks the author to introduce all this philosophy?" said the pedant. "What has the theatre to do with moralizing? In the 'Magician of Astrakhan,' in 'Leon and the Asturias Gave Heraldry to Spain,' and in the 'Triumphs of Don Pelayo'—plays that all the world admires—did you ever find a passage that describes how girls are to be brought up?"
"I have certainly read or heard somewhere that the theatre was to serve the purposes of entertainment and instruction."
"Stuff and nonsense!"
Translation of Clara Bell.