René de Charzay- And what is Father Giraud
nowadays?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v09 - Dra to Eme
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
moments when I mourn my loss, as Madame D'Houdetot said when
dying. ” He was at Puys, by the seaside, when he wrote that de-
spairing letter. He returned to Marly, there to die, surrounded by his
family, on November 28th, 1895. , in a house which he loved and
which had been bequeathed to him years before by an intimate
friend.
His loss threw into mourning the world of letters, and the whole
of Paris. People discovered then – for death loosens every tongue
and every pen
– how kind and generous in reality was Dumas, who
had often been accused of avarice by those who contrasted him with
his father; how many services he had discreetly rendered, how open
his hand always was. His constant cheerfulness and good-nature
had finally caused him to be forgiven for his wit, which was sarcastic
and cutting, and for his success, which had thrown so many rivals
into the shade. This witty man, who was always obliging and even
tender-hearted, had no envy, and gave his applause without a shadow
of reserve to the successes of others. Every young author found in
him advice and support; he did not expect gratitude, and therefore
was soured by no disappointment. He was a good man, partly from
nature, partly from determination; for he deemed that, after all, the
best way to live happy in this world is to make happy as many
people as possible.
If in this long essay I have not spoken of Dumas as a moralist, it
is because, in my opinion, in spite of all that has been said, Dumas
was a dramatist a great deal more than a philosopher. In his com-
edies he discussed a great many moral and social questions, without
giving a solution for any; or rather, the solutions that he gave were
due not to any set of fixed principles, but to the conclusion which he
was preparing for this play or that. He said, indifferently, “Kill her >>
or «Forgive her,” according to the requirements of the subject which
he had selected; and he would afterwards write a sensational preface
with a view to demonstrate that the solution this time given by him
was the only legitimate one. These prefaces are very amusing read-
ing; for he wrote them with all the fire of his nature, and he had
the gift of movement. But they were a strange medley of incongru-
ous and contradictory statements. Every idea that he expresses can
be grasped and understood; but it is impossible to see how it agrees
with those that precede and follow. It is a chaos of clear ideas.
Dumas was not a philosopher, but an agitator. He stirred up a
great many questions; he drew upon them our distracted attention;
he compelled us to think of them. Therein he did his duty as a
dramatist.
He gave much thought to the fate of woman in our civilization.
We may say, however, that though loving her much, he still more
## p. 5009 (#177) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5009
feared her, and I shall even add, despised her. All his characters
who have the mission of defending morality and good sense are very
attentive to her, but keep her at arın’s-length. They are affectionate
counselors, not lovers. They hold her to be a frail being, who must
be controlled and guided. Some one has said that there was in
Dumas something of the Catholic priest. It is true. He was to
women a lay director of conscience.
He was a great connoisseur of pictures and a great art lover.
Music, I think, is the only art that did not affect him much. He was
a dazzling talker; his plays teem with bright sayings; his conversa-
tion sparkled with them. I did not know him in his prime, when he
delighted his friends and companions by his unceasing flow of spirits.
I became intimate with him only later. If you knew how to start
him, he simply coruscated. I never knew any one, save Edmond
About, who was as witty, and who, like About, always paid you back
in good sounding coin.
Dumas was a member of the French Academy. He had not
wished for that honor, because it had been denied to his father. He
desired, in his reception speech, to call up the great spirit of this
illustrious father and make it share his academician's chair. He had
this joy; the two Dumas were received on the same day. Their two
names will never perish.
Trommiga larry
[The editors have been compelled, for lack of space, to leave out
that part of M. Sarcey's valuable essay which is a professional anal-
ysis of several of Dumas's plays, and which would be of interest,
chiefly, to special students of the French drama and stage. ]
THE PLAYWRIGHT IS BORN – AND MADE
From the Preface to (A Prodigal Father)
O"
F All the various forms of thought, the stage is that which
nearest approaches the plastic arts — inasmuch as we can.
not work in it unless we know its material processes; but
with this difference: that in the other arts one learns these pro-
cesses, while in play-writing one guesses them; or to speak more
accurately, they are in us to begin with.
One can become a painter, a sculptor, a musician, by sheer
study: one does not become a dramatic author in this fashion. A
IX-314
## p. 5010 (#178) ###########################################
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
the pen.
caprice of nature makes your eye in such a way that you can
see a thing after a particular manner, not absolutely correct, but
which must nevertheless appear, to any other persons that you
wish to have so think, the only correct point of view. The man
really called to write for the stage reveals what is an extremely
rare faculty, in his very first attempts, - say in a farce in school,
or a drawing-room charade. There is a sort of science of optics
and of perspective that enables one to draw a personage, a char-
acter, a passion, an impulse of the soul, with a single stroke of
Dramatic cheating of the eye is so complete that often
the spectator, when he is a mere reader of the play, desiring to
give himself once more the same emotion that he has felt as one
of the audience, not only cannot recapture that emotion in the
written words before him, but often cannot even distinguish the
passage where the emotion lies hid. It was a word, a look, a
silence, a gesture, a purely atmospheric combination, that held
him spellbound. So comes in the genius of the playwright's
trade, if those two words can be associated. One may compare
writing for the stage in relation to other phases of literature, as
we compare ceiling painters with [painters of] pictures for the
wall or the easel. Woe to the painter if he forget that his com-
position is to be looked at from a distance, with a light below it!
A man without merit as a thinker, a moralist, a philosopher,
an author, may turn out to be a dramatic author of the first
class; that is to say, in the work of setting in motion before you
the purely external movements of mankind; and on the other
hand, to become in the theatre the thinker, the moralist, the
philosopher, or the author to whom one listens, one must indis-
pensably be furnished with the particular and natural qualities of
a man of much lower grade. In short, to be a master in the art
of writing for the stage, you must be a poor hand in the superior
art.
That dramatic author who shall know mankind like Balzac,
and who shall know the theatre like Scribe, will be the greatest
dramatic author that has ever existed.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,) by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
## p. 5011 (#179) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5011
AN ARMED TRUCE
From (A Friend of the Sex)
[The following conversation in the first act of the play takes place in the
pleasant morning-room of a country-house near Paris, the home of M. and
Madame Leverdet. M. Leverdet is asleep in his chair. The speakers are
Madame Leverdet, a coquettish, sprightly lady approaching middle age, and
young M. De Ryons, a friend and neighbor. Madame Leverdet is determined
to marry off De Ryons advantageously, and as soon as possible. Unfortunately
he is a confirmed bachelor, not to say woman-hater, whose cynicism is the
result of severely disappointing experiences. Under that cynicism there is
however genuine respect and even chivalry as to the right sort of woman,-
the superior and sincere type, which he does not happen often to encounter. )
M
ADAME LEVERDET Let us come to serious topics while we
are alone, my friend.
De Ryons — And apropos of them ?
Madame Leverdet — Are you willing to be married off yet ?
De Ryons [with a start of terror]— Pardon me, my dear lady!
At what hour can I take the first train for Paris ?
Madame Lever det Now listen to me, at least.
De Ryons - What! Here it is two years since I have called
on you; I come to make you a little visit of a morning, in all
good friendship, with the thermometer forty, centigrade; I am
totally unsuspecting; all I ask is to have a little lively chat with
a clever woman — and see how you receive me.
Madame Leverdet [continuing]— A simple, charming young
girl -
De Ryons [interrupting her, and in the same tone] – - musi-
cal, speaks English, draws nicely, sings agreeably, a society
woman, a domestic woman,-all at the choice of the applicant.
Madame Leverdet [laughing] — Yes, and pretty and graceful
and rich; and, by-the-by, one who finds you a charming fellow.
De Ryons — She is quite right there. I shall make a charm.
ing husband - I shall; I know it. Only thirty-two years old;
all my teeth, all my hair (no such very common detail, the way
young men are nowadays); lively, sixty thousand livres income
as a landed proprietor -oh, I am an excellent match: only un-
fortunately I am not a marrying man.
Madame Leverdet - And why not, if you please ?
De Ryons (smiling] – It would interfere severely with my
studies.
## p. 5012 (#180) ###########################################
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
Madame Leverdet What sort of studies ?
De Ryons — My studies of woman.
Madame Lever det — Really! I don't understand you.
De Ryons — What! Do you not know that I am making
women my particular, my incessant study, and that I am reckon-
ing on leaving some new and very interesting documents dealing
with that branch of natural history ? - a branch very little under
stood just at present, in spite of all that has been written on
the topic. My friend, I cannot sacrifice the species to the indi-
vidual; I belong to science. It is quite impossible for me to
give myself wholly and completely - as one certainly should do
when he marries — to one of those charming and terrible little
carnivora for whose sake men dishonor themselves, ruin them-
selves, kill themselves; whose sole preoccupation, in the midst
of the universal carnage that they make, is to dress themselves
now like umbrellas and now like table bells.
Madame Leverdet (scornfully) - So you really think you under-
stand women, do you ?
De Ryons — I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this
instant, at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can
tell you to what class a woman belongs,— whether to the middle
class, to women of rank, artists, or whatever you please; what
are her tastes, her characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her
heart, — in a word, everything that concerns my special science.
Madame Leverdet - Really! Will you have a glass of water?
De Ryons — Not yet, thank you.
Madame Leverdet - I suppose, then, you are under the impres-
sion that you know me too.
De Ryons - As if I did not!
Madame Lever det - Well, and I am -- what?
De Ryons — Oh, you are a clever woman. It is for that rea-
son that I call on you [aside: every two years).
Madame Lever det – Will you kindly give me the sum of your
observations in general ? You can tell me so much, since I am
a clever woman.
De Ryons — The true, the true, the true sum ?
Madame Leverdet - Yes.
De Ryons - Simply that woman of our day is an illogical, sub-
ordinate, and mischief-making creature. [In saying this De Ryons
draws back and crouches down as if expecting to be struck. )
Madame Leverdet - So then, you detest women ?
## p. 5013 (#181) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5013
De Ryons-I? I detest women? On the contrary, I adore
them; but I hold myself in such a position toward them that
they cannot bite me. I keep on the outside of the cage.
Madame Leverdet - Meaning by that — what?
De Ryons — Meaning by that, that I am a friend of the sex;
for I have long perceived that just as truly as women are dan-
gerous in love, just so much are they adorable in friendship,
with men; - that is to say, with no obligations, and therefore
no treasons; no rights, and in consequence no tyrannies. One
assists, too, as a spectator, often as a collaborator, in the com-
edy of love. A man under such conditions sees before his nose
the stage tricks, the machinery, the changes of scenes, all that
stage mounting so dazzling at a distance and so simple when
one is near by. As a friend of the sex and on a basis of friend-
ship, one estimates the causes, the contradictions, the incoher-
ences, of that phantasmagoric changeableness that belongs to the
heart of a woman. So you have something that is interesting
and instructive. Under such circumstances a man is the con-
soler, and gives his advice; he wipes away tears; he brings quar-
relsome lovers together; he asks for the letters that must be
returned; he hands back the photographs (for you know that in
love affairs photographs are taken only in order to be returned,
and it is nearly always the same photograph that serves as many
times as may be necessary. I know one photograph that I have
had handed back by three different men, and it ended its useful-
ness by being given for good and all to a fourth one, who was —
not single). . . . In short, you see, my dear madam, I am above
all the friend of those women who have known what it is to
be in love. And moreover inasmuch, just as Rochefoucauld says,
as women do not think a great deal of their first experience,-
why, one fine day or another --
Madame Leverdet — You prove to be the second one.
De Ryons — No, no; I have no number, I! A well-brought-up
woman never goes from one experience of the heart to another
one, without a decent interval of time, more or less long. Two
railroad accidents never come together on the same railway.
During the intervals a woman really needs a friend, a good con-
fidant; and it is then that I turn up. I let her tell me all the
melancholy affairs in question; I see the unhappy victim in tears
after the traitor has called; I lament with her, I weep with
her, I make her laugh with me: and little by little I replace the
delinquent without her seeing that I am doing so. But then I
## p. 5014 (#182) ###########################################
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
1
know very well that I am without importance, that I am a mere
politician of the moment, a cabinet minister without a portfolio,
a sentimental distraction without any consequences; and some fine
day, after having been the confidential friend as to past events,
I become the confidential friend as to future ones,— for the lady
falls in love for the second time with somebody who knows noth-
ing of the first experience, who will never know anything about
it, and who of course must be made to suppose he represents the
first one.
Then I go away for a little time and leave them to
themselves, and then I come back like a new friend to the fam-
ily. By-and-by, when the dear creature is reckoning up the
balance-sheet of her past, when her conscience pours into her
ear the names that she would rather not remember, and
my
name comes with the others, she reflects an instant,- and then
she says resolutely and sincerely to herself, “Oh, he does not
count! ” My friend, I am always the one that does not count,
and I like it extremely.
Madame Leverdet [indignantly] — You are simply a monster!
De Ryons — Oh no, oh no, oh no, I am not !
Madame Leverdet - According to your own account, you have
no faith in women.
Wretch! Ungrateful creature! And
yet it is woman who inspires all the great things in this life.
» De Ryons — But somehow forbids us to accomplish them.
Madame Leverdet — Go out from here, my dear De Ryons, and
never let me see you again.
De Ryons [rising promptly and making a mocking bow] - My
dear lady —
Madame Leverdet — No, I will not shake hands with you.
De Ryons - Then I shall die of chagrin — that's all about it.
Madame Lever det -- Do you know how you will end, you in-
corrigible creature? When you are fifty years old you will have
rheumatism.
De Ryons — Yes, or sciatica. But I shall find some one who
will embroider me warm slippers.
Madame Leverdet - Indeed you will not! You will marry your
cook.
De Ryons - That depends on how well she cooks. Again fare-
well, dear madam.
Madame Leverdet -- No, stay one moment.
De Ryons — It is you who are keeping me; so look out.
Madame Leverdet — Let me have really your last word on the
whole matter.
## p. 5015 (#183) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5015
I am
a
De Ryons - It is very easily given. There are just two kinds
of women: those who are good women, and those who are not.
Madame Leverdet — Without fine distinctions ?
De Ryons — Without fine distinctions.
Madame Leverdet – What is one to do in the case of those
who are not - good women ?
De Ryons — They must be consoled.
Madame Leverdet - And those who are ?
De Ryons — They must be guaranteed against being anything
else; and as to that process of guarantee I have taken a patent.
Madame Leverdet - Come now, if you are playing in parlor
theatricals, say so. What are you trying to be, - Lovelace or
Don Quixote ?
De Ryons — I am neither the one nor the other.
man who, having nothing else to do, took to studying women
just as another man studies beetles and minerals, only I am
under the impression that my scientific study is more interesting
and more useful than that of the other savant — because we meet
your sex everywhere. We meet the mother, the sister, the
daughter, the wife, the woman who is in love; and it is import-
ant to be well informed upon such an eternal associate in our
lives. Now I am a man of my time, exercised over one theory
or another, hardly knowing what he must believe, good or bad,
but inclined to believe in good when occasion presents itself. I
respect women who respect themselves. . . . It is not I who
created the world; I take it as I find it. . . . And as to mar-
riage, the day when I shall find a young girl with the four
qualities of goodness of heart, sound health, thorough self-respect,
and cheerfulness,— the squaring of the conjugal hypothenuse,
then I count for nothing all my long term of waiting; like the
great Doctor Faust, I become young again, and such as I am,
I give myself to her. My friend, if this same young girl of
whom you have been speaking and by the way, I know her
just as well as you do) really unites these conditions - I do not
believe she does so, though I shall see very soon,- why then, I
will marry her to-morrow — I will marry her to-night. But in
the mean time, as I have positively nothing to do, - if you hap-
pen to know a self-respecting woman who needs to be kept from
a bit of folly . . . why, I am wholly at your service.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
TWO VIEWS OF MONEY
From «The Money Question
>
[The following passage occurs in the first act of Dumas's play. The char-
acters include the young parvenu Jean Giraud, the aristocratic M. De Cayolle,
and several others, all guests in the drawing-room of the country-house of
Madame Durieu. In course of the conversation Giraud refers to his father, at
one time a gardener on the estate of M. De Charzay. )
JEANS
EAN GIRAUD — Oh, yes, yes, I have got along in the world,
as people say. There are people who blush for their fathers;
I make a brag of mine — that's the difference.
René de Charzay- And what is Father Giraud nowadays?
Oh, I beg your pardon-
Jean-Don't be embarrassed — we keep on calling him Father
Giraud all the same. He is a gardener still, only he gardens on
his own account. He owns the house that your father was
obliged to sell a while ago. My father has never had but one
idea, - our Father Giraud,- and that is to be a land owner; I
bought that piece of property for him, and so he is as happy as
a fish in the water. If you like, we will go and take breakfast
with him to-morrow morning. He will be delighted to see you.
How things change, eh? There, where a while ago we were the
servants, now we are the masters; though we are not so very
proud, for all that.
Countess Savelli [aside]— He has passed the Rubicon of par-
venus! He has confessed his father! Now nothing can stop his
way!
Jean [to De Charzay]—I have wanted to see you for a long
time, but I have not been sure how you would meet me.
René — I would have met you with pleasure, as my uncle
would have met you. One cannot utter reproaches to a man who
has made his own fortune, except when he has made it by dis-
honest means; a man who owes it to his intelligence and his
probity, who uses it worthily, everybody is ready to meet kindly,
as you are met here.
Jean — Sir, it is not necessary that a man should use his for.
tune nobly, provided it is made - that is the main thing!
Madame Durieu-Oh, oh, M. Giraud! there you spoil every-
thing that you have said.
## p. 5017 (#185) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5017
Jean – I don't say that of my own case, madam, but I say
just what I say,— money is money, whatever may be the kind of
hands where it sticks. It is the sole power that one never dis-
putes. You may dispute virtue, beauty, courage, genius; but you
can't dispute money.
There is not one civilized being, rising in
the morning, who does not recognize the sovereignty of money,
without which he would have neither the roof which shelters
him, nor the bed in which he sleeps, nor the bread that he eats.
Whither are bound these masses of people crowding in the
streets ? — from the employé sweating under his too heavy bur-
den, to the millionaire hurrying down to the Bourse behind his
two trotters ? The one is running after fifteen sous, the other
after one hundred thousand francs. Why do we all have these
shops, these railroads, these factories, these theatres, these muse-
ums, these lawsuits between brothers and sisters, between fathers
and sons, these revelations, these divisions in families, these
murders ? All for pieces, more or less numerous, of that white
or yellow metal which people call silver or gold. And pray who
will be the most thought of at the end of this grand race after
money? The man who brings back the most of it. Ah, nowa-
days a man has no business to have more than one object in
life- and that is to become as rich as possible! For my part, ,
that has always been my idea; I have carried it out: I congratu-
late myself on it. Once upon a time everybody found me
homely, stupid, a bore; to-day everybody finds me handsome,
witty, amiable,- and the Lord knows if I am witty, amiable,
handsome! On the day when I might be stupid enough to let
myself be ruined, to become plain Jean” as before, there would
not be enough stones in the Montmartre quarries to throw at my
head. But there, that day is a good way off, and meantime
many of my business acquaintances have been ruined for the
sake of keeping me from ruin. The last word, too, the greatest
praise that I could give to wealth, certainly is, that such a circle
as I find myself in at present has had the patience to listen so
long to the son of a gardener, who has no other right to their
attention than the poor little millions that he has made.
Durieu [aside] - It is all absolutely true, every word that he
has been saying - gardener's son that he is! He sees our epoch
just as it really is.
Madame Durieu — Come now, my dear M. De Cayolle, what
do you think of what M. Giraud has been telling us ?
## p. 5018 (#186) ###########################################
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
1
1
1
2
it
a
Cayolle — I think, madam, that the theories of M. Giraud are
sound, but sound only as to that society in which M. Giraud has
lived until now: a world of speculation, whose one object natu-
rally ought to be to make money. As to wealth itself, it brings
about infamous things, but it also brings about great and noble
things. In that respect it is like human speech: a bad thing for
some people, a good thing for others, according to the use they
make of it. This obligation of our state of society that makes a
man wake up each morning with taking thought of the neces-
sary sum for his personal wants, lest he take what does not
belong to him, has created the finest intelligence of all the ages!
It is simply to this need of money every day that we owe Frank-
lin, who began the world by being a printer's apprentice; Shake-
speare, who used to hold horses at the door of the theatre which
later he was going to immortalize; Machiavelli, who was secretary
to the Florentine republic at fifteen crowns a month; Raphael,
the son of a mere dauber; Jean Jacques Rousseau, a notary's
clerk and an engraver,- one who did not have a dinner every
day; Fulton, once upon a time a mechanic, who gave us steam:
and so many others. Had these same people been born with an
income of half a million livres apiece, there would have been a
good many chances that not one of them would ever have be-
come what he did become. [To M. Giraud. ] This race after
wealth, of which you speak, M. Giraud, has good in it: even if
it enriches some silly people or some rascals, if it procures for
them the consideration of those in a humble station of life, - of
the lower classes, of those who have cash relations with society,
on the other hand there is a great deal of good in the spur
given to faculties which would otherwise remain stationary;
enough good to pardon some errors in the distribution of wealth.
Just in proportion as you enter into the true world of society-
a world which is almost unknown to you, M. Giraud
find that a man who is received there is received only in pro-
portion to his personal value. Look around here where we are,
without taking the trouble to go any further, and you will see
that money has not the influence you ascribe to it. For proof,
here is Countess Savelli, with half a million francs income, who
in place of dining out with millionaires besieging her house
every day, comes quietly here to dine with our friends the Du-
rieus, people without title, poor people measured by her fortune;
and she comes here for the pleasure of meeting M. De Charzay,
-you will
## p. 5019 (#187) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5019
who has not more than a thousand crowns income, but who,
for all the millionaires in the world, would never do a thing
a man ought not to do; and she meets here M. De Roncourt,
who has a business of fifteen hundred francs because he gave
up his fortune to creditors who were not his own creditors.
There is Mademoiselle De Roncourt, who sacrificed her dowry
to the same sentiment of honor; yonder is Mademoiselle Durieu,
who would never be willing to become the wife of any other
than an honest man, even if he had for his rivals all the Cree-
suses present and to come; and last of ali, one meets me here,-
a man who has for money in the acceptation that you give the
word) the most profound contempt. Now, M. Giraud, if we lis-
tened to you for so long a time, it is because we are well-bred
people, and besides, you talk very well; but there has been no
flattery for your millions in our attention, and the proof is that
everybody has been listening to me a longer time than to you,-
listening to me, who have not like you a thousand-franc note
to put along with every one of my phrases!
Jean - Who is that gentleman who has just been speaking ?
Durieu - That is M. De Cayolle.
Jean - The railway director ?
Durieu - Yes.
Jean [going to M. De Cayolle] — M. De Cayolle, I hope you
will believe that I am very glad to meet you.
Cayolle- I dare say you are, monsieur. [M. De Cayolle as he
utters the words turns his back upon Giraud and steps aside. ]
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
M. DE RÉMONIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF MARRIAGE
From L'Étrangère
M
ADAME DE RUMIÈRES — See here, now, Rémonin, you who
claim to explain everything as a learned man - can you
solve this proposition? Why is it that with all the quan-
tity of love in this world, there are so many unhappy marriages ?
M. Rémonin - I could give you a perfect explanation, my
dear lady, if you were not a woman.
Madame de Rumières - You mean that the explanation is not
decent ?
## p. 5020 (#188) ###########################################
5020
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
M. Rémonin — No, I mean that it is a matter based on the
abstract.
It is this. The reason why marriages are
rarely happy, in spite of the quantity of love ” in question, is
because love and marriage, scientifically considered, have no rela-
tionship. They belong to two sorts of things, completely differ-
ing. Love is of the physical. Marriage is a matter of chemistry.
Madame de Rumières - Explain yourself.
Rémonin - Certainly. Love is an element of the natural evolu-
tion of our being; it comes to us of itself in course of our life,
at one time or another, independent of all our will, and even
without a definite object. The human creature can wish to be
in love before really loving any one!
But marriage is a
social combination, an adjustment, that refers itself to chemistry,
as I have said; since chemistry concerns itself with the action of
one element on another and the phenomena resulting:
to the end of bringing about family life, morality, and labor,
and in consequence the welfare of man, as involved in all three.
Now, so often as you really can conform to the theory of such a
blending of things, so long as you happen to have effected in
marriage such a combination of the physical and chemical, all
goes well; the experiment is happy, it results well. But if you
are ignorant or maladroit enough to seek and to make a com-
bination of two refractory chemical forces in the matrimonial
experiment, then in the place of a fusion you will find you have
only inert forces; and the two elements remain there, together
but unfused, eternally opposed to each other, never able to be
united!
Or else there is not merely inertia — there are
shocks, explosions, catastrophes, accidents, dramas.
Madame de Rumières — Have you ever been in love ?
M. Rémonin –I? My dear marquise, I am a scientist - I
have never had time! And you ?
Madame de Rumières — I have loved my children. M. de
Rumières was a charming man all his life; but he didn't expect
me really to love him. My son tells me his affairs of the heart;
. . my daughter has already made me a grandmother.
I have little to reproach myself as to my past life, and now I
look on at the lives of others, sometimes much interested.
like the subscribers to the Opéra, who know the whole repertory
by heart, but who can always hear some passages with pleasure
and who encourage the débutants.
Condensed and translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
E. Irenæus Stevenson.
I am
## p. 5021 (#189) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5021
REFORMING A FATHER
From (A Prodigal Father)
[The ensuing dialogue occurs in the first act of the play. The Count de
Ravonnières and his son André reside together in their comfortable bachelor's
establishment in Paris, and are devotedly attached to one another. The count,
unfortunately, has only grown more careless of money, more a gay man of the
world, as he has grown older; and blessed with a youthfulness of physique and
temperament that nothing impairs, he is as thriftless as he is fascinating. His
son, accordingly, has had to be the economist of their resources, which are at
a dangerous ebb. As the scene opens, the count is preparing to take luncheon,
with Joseph, the confidential servant of the house, in attendance. ]
OSEPH
Jose
Monsieur is served.
Count de Ravonnières-Very well. You will please go
to my florist Lemoine, the Opera florist, — you know who I
mean, - and tell him to send, to-day, with my card, - he has a
lot of cards of mine in advance,– to Mademoiselle Albertine de
la Borde, 26 or 28 Rue de la Paix - I don't exactly remember
the number that the lady gave me
Joseph - No. 26.
Count - Ah! You know her address, do you?
Joseph — Yes, sir.
Count — To send her a bouquet of white lilacs and roses.
And I don't need you any more: go at once. [Joseph bows, and
hands the Count a large envelope. ] What's all this?
Joseph - Some law papers that have come in your absence, sir,
which I did not think ought to be forwarded to Dieppe.
Count (without taking the papers] - Quite right. Has my son
seen them?
Joseph — No, sir.
Count —Very well; don't let him see them. Put them away
with the others.
Joseph — May I beg monsieur to say a good word for me to
his son ?
Count — As to what, Joseph ?
Joseph-Your son, sir, has just told me to look out for another
situation; and I am so attached to the family -
Count - Oh, I will straighten all that out; if my son sends
you away I will take you into our service again. . Come now,
get off to my florist; be quick about it.
## p. 5022 (#190) ###########################################
5022
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
As Joseph goes out, André enters. He does not at first perceive his
father, but on turning toward the table discovers him.
André — Ah! you are here, are you ?
Count —Yes, I have been here during an hour; and moreover,
a very agreeable person has been doing the honors of your estab-
lishment on my behalf.
André — It is a fine time to talk about agreeable persons!
You are a very agreeable person –
Count What in the world is the matter with you ?
André - I am perfectly furious.
Count -- Against whom ?
André — Against you.
Count — Why? What have I been doing ?
André - You have drawn on me at sight this draft here.
Count - Oh yes, I know very well what that means. It comes
from London; it is to pay for the boat, you know.
André — Oh yes, it comes from London, and it is to pay for
the boat! That is no excuse for it. And what about the boat,
if you please?
Count – But my dear fellow, they had no business to present
it until the 15th.
André - Well?
Count - Why, to-day is the 15th !
André — You ought to know it.
Count – I thought that to-day was only the 14th! Have you
paid it ?
André — Of course.
Count — Ah! then I owe you six thousand francs. That's all
there is to the matter.
André — Yes, that's all! But you never said a word to me
about it; I had no money in the house: I had to send to our
man of business. May I beg of you in the future to be so good
as to-
Count — Poor boy! poor boy! Really, between ourselves, you
would have done a great deal better (as it is a month since you
have seen me, and since you are really very fond of me) to em-
brace me in meeting me again, rather than to say all these
things to me that you have been saying !
André [embracing his father heartily] -Oh, of course they
make no difference, when it comes to that!
## p. 5023 (#191) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5023
Count - Your second impulse is a very good one; but you
ought to have begun with it. All the same, I do not in the less
ask pardon for the inconvenience that I have caused you, my boy.
[Takes some bank-notes from his pocket. ] Here are your six thou-
sand francs, and (holding out the remainder of the notes to André]
since you need money, help yourself.
André — Where in the world does that money come from?
Count — Oh, it is some money that I have received.
André — There was none coming to you from anywhere!
Count - There is always something to come to one, if he looks
around carefully. And now let us speak of serious things.
André - Yes, by all means. Father, are you not disposed to
settle down ?
Count — What do you mean by “settle down”?
André — To save money, for one thing.
Count — Save money! I should be charmed to do so; but I
really do not see how we can do it. We certainly live as inod-
estly as possible. This house belongs to us; we have only four
saddle horses, four carriage horses, a couple of extra horses for
evening service (we could not get along with less), two coach-
men, two valets, two grooms, one cook. Why, we haven't even
a housekeeper.
André — No, we only want that!
Count — We never receive any except masculine society; we
certainly are not extravagant as to the table. Look at me here:
I am breakfasting this minute on two eggs and a glass of water.
It seems to me that with our fortune -
André — Our fortune ?
5008
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
moments when I mourn my loss, as Madame D'Houdetot said when
dying. ” He was at Puys, by the seaside, when he wrote that de-
spairing letter. He returned to Marly, there to die, surrounded by his
family, on November 28th, 1895. , in a house which he loved and
which had been bequeathed to him years before by an intimate
friend.
His loss threw into mourning the world of letters, and the whole
of Paris. People discovered then – for death loosens every tongue
and every pen
– how kind and generous in reality was Dumas, who
had often been accused of avarice by those who contrasted him with
his father; how many services he had discreetly rendered, how open
his hand always was. His constant cheerfulness and good-nature
had finally caused him to be forgiven for his wit, which was sarcastic
and cutting, and for his success, which had thrown so many rivals
into the shade. This witty man, who was always obliging and even
tender-hearted, had no envy, and gave his applause without a shadow
of reserve to the successes of others. Every young author found in
him advice and support; he did not expect gratitude, and therefore
was soured by no disappointment. He was a good man, partly from
nature, partly from determination; for he deemed that, after all, the
best way to live happy in this world is to make happy as many
people as possible.
If in this long essay I have not spoken of Dumas as a moralist, it
is because, in my opinion, in spite of all that has been said, Dumas
was a dramatist a great deal more than a philosopher. In his com-
edies he discussed a great many moral and social questions, without
giving a solution for any; or rather, the solutions that he gave were
due not to any set of fixed principles, but to the conclusion which he
was preparing for this play or that. He said, indifferently, “Kill her >>
or «Forgive her,” according to the requirements of the subject which
he had selected; and he would afterwards write a sensational preface
with a view to demonstrate that the solution this time given by him
was the only legitimate one. These prefaces are very amusing read-
ing; for he wrote them with all the fire of his nature, and he had
the gift of movement. But they were a strange medley of incongru-
ous and contradictory statements. Every idea that he expresses can
be grasped and understood; but it is impossible to see how it agrees
with those that precede and follow. It is a chaos of clear ideas.
Dumas was not a philosopher, but an agitator. He stirred up a
great many questions; he drew upon them our distracted attention;
he compelled us to think of them. Therein he did his duty as a
dramatist.
He gave much thought to the fate of woman in our civilization.
We may say, however, that though loving her much, he still more
## p. 5009 (#177) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5009
feared her, and I shall even add, despised her. All his characters
who have the mission of defending morality and good sense are very
attentive to her, but keep her at arın’s-length. They are affectionate
counselors, not lovers. They hold her to be a frail being, who must
be controlled and guided. Some one has said that there was in
Dumas something of the Catholic priest. It is true. He was to
women a lay director of conscience.
He was a great connoisseur of pictures and a great art lover.
Music, I think, is the only art that did not affect him much. He was
a dazzling talker; his plays teem with bright sayings; his conversa-
tion sparkled with them. I did not know him in his prime, when he
delighted his friends and companions by his unceasing flow of spirits.
I became intimate with him only later. If you knew how to start
him, he simply coruscated. I never knew any one, save Edmond
About, who was as witty, and who, like About, always paid you back
in good sounding coin.
Dumas was a member of the French Academy. He had not
wished for that honor, because it had been denied to his father. He
desired, in his reception speech, to call up the great spirit of this
illustrious father and make it share his academician's chair. He had
this joy; the two Dumas were received on the same day. Their two
names will never perish.
Trommiga larry
[The editors have been compelled, for lack of space, to leave out
that part of M. Sarcey's valuable essay which is a professional anal-
ysis of several of Dumas's plays, and which would be of interest,
chiefly, to special students of the French drama and stage. ]
THE PLAYWRIGHT IS BORN – AND MADE
From the Preface to (A Prodigal Father)
O"
F All the various forms of thought, the stage is that which
nearest approaches the plastic arts — inasmuch as we can.
not work in it unless we know its material processes; but
with this difference: that in the other arts one learns these pro-
cesses, while in play-writing one guesses them; or to speak more
accurately, they are in us to begin with.
One can become a painter, a sculptor, a musician, by sheer
study: one does not become a dramatic author in this fashion. A
IX-314
## p. 5010 (#178) ###########################################
5010
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
the pen.
caprice of nature makes your eye in such a way that you can
see a thing after a particular manner, not absolutely correct, but
which must nevertheless appear, to any other persons that you
wish to have so think, the only correct point of view. The man
really called to write for the stage reveals what is an extremely
rare faculty, in his very first attempts, - say in a farce in school,
or a drawing-room charade. There is a sort of science of optics
and of perspective that enables one to draw a personage, a char-
acter, a passion, an impulse of the soul, with a single stroke of
Dramatic cheating of the eye is so complete that often
the spectator, when he is a mere reader of the play, desiring to
give himself once more the same emotion that he has felt as one
of the audience, not only cannot recapture that emotion in the
written words before him, but often cannot even distinguish the
passage where the emotion lies hid. It was a word, a look, a
silence, a gesture, a purely atmospheric combination, that held
him spellbound. So comes in the genius of the playwright's
trade, if those two words can be associated. One may compare
writing for the stage in relation to other phases of literature, as
we compare ceiling painters with [painters of] pictures for the
wall or the easel. Woe to the painter if he forget that his com-
position is to be looked at from a distance, with a light below it!
A man without merit as a thinker, a moralist, a philosopher,
an author, may turn out to be a dramatic author of the first
class; that is to say, in the work of setting in motion before you
the purely external movements of mankind; and on the other
hand, to become in the theatre the thinker, the moralist, the
philosopher, or the author to whom one listens, one must indis-
pensably be furnished with the particular and natural qualities of
a man of much lower grade. In short, to be a master in the art
of writing for the stage, you must be a poor hand in the superior
art.
That dramatic author who shall know mankind like Balzac,
and who shall know the theatre like Scribe, will be the greatest
dramatic author that has ever existed.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,) by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
## p. 5011 (#179) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5011
AN ARMED TRUCE
From (A Friend of the Sex)
[The following conversation in the first act of the play takes place in the
pleasant morning-room of a country-house near Paris, the home of M. and
Madame Leverdet. M. Leverdet is asleep in his chair. The speakers are
Madame Leverdet, a coquettish, sprightly lady approaching middle age, and
young M. De Ryons, a friend and neighbor. Madame Leverdet is determined
to marry off De Ryons advantageously, and as soon as possible. Unfortunately
he is a confirmed bachelor, not to say woman-hater, whose cynicism is the
result of severely disappointing experiences. Under that cynicism there is
however genuine respect and even chivalry as to the right sort of woman,-
the superior and sincere type, which he does not happen often to encounter. )
M
ADAME LEVERDET Let us come to serious topics while we
are alone, my friend.
De Ryons — And apropos of them ?
Madame Leverdet — Are you willing to be married off yet ?
De Ryons [with a start of terror]— Pardon me, my dear lady!
At what hour can I take the first train for Paris ?
Madame Lever det Now listen to me, at least.
De Ryons - What! Here it is two years since I have called
on you; I come to make you a little visit of a morning, in all
good friendship, with the thermometer forty, centigrade; I am
totally unsuspecting; all I ask is to have a little lively chat with
a clever woman — and see how you receive me.
Madame Leverdet [continuing]— A simple, charming young
girl -
De Ryons [interrupting her, and in the same tone] – - musi-
cal, speaks English, draws nicely, sings agreeably, a society
woman, a domestic woman,-all at the choice of the applicant.
Madame Leverdet [laughing] — Yes, and pretty and graceful
and rich; and, by-the-by, one who finds you a charming fellow.
De Ryons — She is quite right there. I shall make a charm.
ing husband - I shall; I know it. Only thirty-two years old;
all my teeth, all my hair (no such very common detail, the way
young men are nowadays); lively, sixty thousand livres income
as a landed proprietor -oh, I am an excellent match: only un-
fortunately I am not a marrying man.
Madame Leverdet - And why not, if you please ?
De Ryons (smiling] – It would interfere severely with my
studies.
## p. 5012 (#180) ###########################################
5012
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
Madame Leverdet What sort of studies ?
De Ryons — My studies of woman.
Madame Lever det — Really! I don't understand you.
De Ryons — What! Do you not know that I am making
women my particular, my incessant study, and that I am reckon-
ing on leaving some new and very interesting documents dealing
with that branch of natural history ? - a branch very little under
stood just at present, in spite of all that has been written on
the topic. My friend, I cannot sacrifice the species to the indi-
vidual; I belong to science. It is quite impossible for me to
give myself wholly and completely - as one certainly should do
when he marries — to one of those charming and terrible little
carnivora for whose sake men dishonor themselves, ruin them-
selves, kill themselves; whose sole preoccupation, in the midst
of the universal carnage that they make, is to dress themselves
now like umbrellas and now like table bells.
Madame Leverdet (scornfully) - So you really think you under-
stand women, do you ?
De Ryons — I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this
instant, at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can
tell you to what class a woman belongs,— whether to the middle
class, to women of rank, artists, or whatever you please; what
are her tastes, her characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her
heart, — in a word, everything that concerns my special science.
Madame Leverdet - Really! Will you have a glass of water?
De Ryons — Not yet, thank you.
Madame Leverdet - I suppose, then, you are under the impres-
sion that you know me too.
De Ryons - As if I did not!
Madame Lever det - Well, and I am -- what?
De Ryons — Oh, you are a clever woman. It is for that rea-
son that I call on you [aside: every two years).
Madame Lever det – Will you kindly give me the sum of your
observations in general ? You can tell me so much, since I am
a clever woman.
De Ryons — The true, the true, the true sum ?
Madame Leverdet - Yes.
De Ryons - Simply that woman of our day is an illogical, sub-
ordinate, and mischief-making creature. [In saying this De Ryons
draws back and crouches down as if expecting to be struck. )
Madame Leverdet - So then, you detest women ?
## p. 5013 (#181) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5013
De Ryons-I? I detest women? On the contrary, I adore
them; but I hold myself in such a position toward them that
they cannot bite me. I keep on the outside of the cage.
Madame Leverdet - Meaning by that — what?
De Ryons — Meaning by that, that I am a friend of the sex;
for I have long perceived that just as truly as women are dan-
gerous in love, just so much are they adorable in friendship,
with men; - that is to say, with no obligations, and therefore
no treasons; no rights, and in consequence no tyrannies. One
assists, too, as a spectator, often as a collaborator, in the com-
edy of love. A man under such conditions sees before his nose
the stage tricks, the machinery, the changes of scenes, all that
stage mounting so dazzling at a distance and so simple when
one is near by. As a friend of the sex and on a basis of friend-
ship, one estimates the causes, the contradictions, the incoher-
ences, of that phantasmagoric changeableness that belongs to the
heart of a woman. So you have something that is interesting
and instructive. Under such circumstances a man is the con-
soler, and gives his advice; he wipes away tears; he brings quar-
relsome lovers together; he asks for the letters that must be
returned; he hands back the photographs (for you know that in
love affairs photographs are taken only in order to be returned,
and it is nearly always the same photograph that serves as many
times as may be necessary. I know one photograph that I have
had handed back by three different men, and it ended its useful-
ness by being given for good and all to a fourth one, who was —
not single). . . . In short, you see, my dear madam, I am above
all the friend of those women who have known what it is to
be in love. And moreover inasmuch, just as Rochefoucauld says,
as women do not think a great deal of their first experience,-
why, one fine day or another --
Madame Leverdet — You prove to be the second one.
De Ryons — No, no; I have no number, I! A well-brought-up
woman never goes from one experience of the heart to another
one, without a decent interval of time, more or less long. Two
railroad accidents never come together on the same railway.
During the intervals a woman really needs a friend, a good con-
fidant; and it is then that I turn up. I let her tell me all the
melancholy affairs in question; I see the unhappy victim in tears
after the traitor has called; I lament with her, I weep with
her, I make her laugh with me: and little by little I replace the
delinquent without her seeing that I am doing so. But then I
## p. 5014 (#182) ###########################################
5014
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
1
know very well that I am without importance, that I am a mere
politician of the moment, a cabinet minister without a portfolio,
a sentimental distraction without any consequences; and some fine
day, after having been the confidential friend as to past events,
I become the confidential friend as to future ones,— for the lady
falls in love for the second time with somebody who knows noth-
ing of the first experience, who will never know anything about
it, and who of course must be made to suppose he represents the
first one.
Then I go away for a little time and leave them to
themselves, and then I come back like a new friend to the fam-
ily. By-and-by, when the dear creature is reckoning up the
balance-sheet of her past, when her conscience pours into her
ear the names that she would rather not remember, and
my
name comes with the others, she reflects an instant,- and then
she says resolutely and sincerely to herself, “Oh, he does not
count! ” My friend, I am always the one that does not count,
and I like it extremely.
Madame Leverdet [indignantly] — You are simply a monster!
De Ryons — Oh no, oh no, oh no, I am not !
Madame Leverdet - According to your own account, you have
no faith in women.
Wretch! Ungrateful creature! And
yet it is woman who inspires all the great things in this life.
» De Ryons — But somehow forbids us to accomplish them.
Madame Leverdet — Go out from here, my dear De Ryons, and
never let me see you again.
De Ryons [rising promptly and making a mocking bow] - My
dear lady —
Madame Leverdet — No, I will not shake hands with you.
De Ryons - Then I shall die of chagrin — that's all about it.
Madame Lever det -- Do you know how you will end, you in-
corrigible creature? When you are fifty years old you will have
rheumatism.
De Ryons — Yes, or sciatica. But I shall find some one who
will embroider me warm slippers.
Madame Leverdet - Indeed you will not! You will marry your
cook.
De Ryons - That depends on how well she cooks. Again fare-
well, dear madam.
Madame Leverdet -- No, stay one moment.
De Ryons — It is you who are keeping me; so look out.
Madame Leverdet — Let me have really your last word on the
whole matter.
## p. 5015 (#183) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5015
I am
a
De Ryons - It is very easily given. There are just two kinds
of women: those who are good women, and those who are not.
Madame Leverdet — Without fine distinctions ?
De Ryons — Without fine distinctions.
Madame Leverdet – What is one to do in the case of those
who are not - good women ?
De Ryons — They must be consoled.
Madame Leverdet - And those who are ?
De Ryons — They must be guaranteed against being anything
else; and as to that process of guarantee I have taken a patent.
Madame Leverdet - Come now, if you are playing in parlor
theatricals, say so. What are you trying to be, - Lovelace or
Don Quixote ?
De Ryons — I am neither the one nor the other.
man who, having nothing else to do, took to studying women
just as another man studies beetles and minerals, only I am
under the impression that my scientific study is more interesting
and more useful than that of the other savant — because we meet
your sex everywhere. We meet the mother, the sister, the
daughter, the wife, the woman who is in love; and it is import-
ant to be well informed upon such an eternal associate in our
lives. Now I am a man of my time, exercised over one theory
or another, hardly knowing what he must believe, good or bad,
but inclined to believe in good when occasion presents itself. I
respect women who respect themselves. . . . It is not I who
created the world; I take it as I find it. . . . And as to mar-
riage, the day when I shall find a young girl with the four
qualities of goodness of heart, sound health, thorough self-respect,
and cheerfulness,— the squaring of the conjugal hypothenuse,
then I count for nothing all my long term of waiting; like the
great Doctor Faust, I become young again, and such as I am,
I give myself to her. My friend, if this same young girl of
whom you have been speaking and by the way, I know her
just as well as you do) really unites these conditions - I do not
believe she does so, though I shall see very soon,- why then, I
will marry her to-morrow — I will marry her to-night. But in
the mean time, as I have positively nothing to do, - if you hap-
pen to know a self-respecting woman who needs to be kept from
a bit of folly . . . why, I am wholly at your service.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
## p. 5016 (#184) ###########################################
5016
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
TWO VIEWS OF MONEY
From «The Money Question
>
[The following passage occurs in the first act of Dumas's play. The char-
acters include the young parvenu Jean Giraud, the aristocratic M. De Cayolle,
and several others, all guests in the drawing-room of the country-house of
Madame Durieu. In course of the conversation Giraud refers to his father, at
one time a gardener on the estate of M. De Charzay. )
JEANS
EAN GIRAUD — Oh, yes, yes, I have got along in the world,
as people say. There are people who blush for their fathers;
I make a brag of mine — that's the difference.
René de Charzay- And what is Father Giraud nowadays?
Oh, I beg your pardon-
Jean-Don't be embarrassed — we keep on calling him Father
Giraud all the same. He is a gardener still, only he gardens on
his own account. He owns the house that your father was
obliged to sell a while ago. My father has never had but one
idea, - our Father Giraud,- and that is to be a land owner; I
bought that piece of property for him, and so he is as happy as
a fish in the water. If you like, we will go and take breakfast
with him to-morrow morning. He will be delighted to see you.
How things change, eh? There, where a while ago we were the
servants, now we are the masters; though we are not so very
proud, for all that.
Countess Savelli [aside]— He has passed the Rubicon of par-
venus! He has confessed his father! Now nothing can stop his
way!
Jean [to De Charzay]—I have wanted to see you for a long
time, but I have not been sure how you would meet me.
René — I would have met you with pleasure, as my uncle
would have met you. One cannot utter reproaches to a man who
has made his own fortune, except when he has made it by dis-
honest means; a man who owes it to his intelligence and his
probity, who uses it worthily, everybody is ready to meet kindly,
as you are met here.
Jean — Sir, it is not necessary that a man should use his for.
tune nobly, provided it is made - that is the main thing!
Madame Durieu-Oh, oh, M. Giraud! there you spoil every-
thing that you have said.
## p. 5017 (#185) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5017
Jean – I don't say that of my own case, madam, but I say
just what I say,— money is money, whatever may be the kind of
hands where it sticks. It is the sole power that one never dis-
putes. You may dispute virtue, beauty, courage, genius; but you
can't dispute money.
There is not one civilized being, rising in
the morning, who does not recognize the sovereignty of money,
without which he would have neither the roof which shelters
him, nor the bed in which he sleeps, nor the bread that he eats.
Whither are bound these masses of people crowding in the
streets ? — from the employé sweating under his too heavy bur-
den, to the millionaire hurrying down to the Bourse behind his
two trotters ? The one is running after fifteen sous, the other
after one hundred thousand francs. Why do we all have these
shops, these railroads, these factories, these theatres, these muse-
ums, these lawsuits between brothers and sisters, between fathers
and sons, these revelations, these divisions in families, these
murders ? All for pieces, more or less numerous, of that white
or yellow metal which people call silver or gold. And pray who
will be the most thought of at the end of this grand race after
money? The man who brings back the most of it. Ah, nowa-
days a man has no business to have more than one object in
life- and that is to become as rich as possible! For my part, ,
that has always been my idea; I have carried it out: I congratu-
late myself on it. Once upon a time everybody found me
homely, stupid, a bore; to-day everybody finds me handsome,
witty, amiable,- and the Lord knows if I am witty, amiable,
handsome! On the day when I might be stupid enough to let
myself be ruined, to become plain Jean” as before, there would
not be enough stones in the Montmartre quarries to throw at my
head. But there, that day is a good way off, and meantime
many of my business acquaintances have been ruined for the
sake of keeping me from ruin. The last word, too, the greatest
praise that I could give to wealth, certainly is, that such a circle
as I find myself in at present has had the patience to listen so
long to the son of a gardener, who has no other right to their
attention than the poor little millions that he has made.
Durieu [aside] - It is all absolutely true, every word that he
has been saying - gardener's son that he is! He sees our epoch
just as it really is.
Madame Durieu — Come now, my dear M. De Cayolle, what
do you think of what M. Giraud has been telling us ?
## p. 5018 (#186) ###########################################
5018
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
1
1
1
2
it
a
Cayolle — I think, madam, that the theories of M. Giraud are
sound, but sound only as to that society in which M. Giraud has
lived until now: a world of speculation, whose one object natu-
rally ought to be to make money. As to wealth itself, it brings
about infamous things, but it also brings about great and noble
things. In that respect it is like human speech: a bad thing for
some people, a good thing for others, according to the use they
make of it. This obligation of our state of society that makes a
man wake up each morning with taking thought of the neces-
sary sum for his personal wants, lest he take what does not
belong to him, has created the finest intelligence of all the ages!
It is simply to this need of money every day that we owe Frank-
lin, who began the world by being a printer's apprentice; Shake-
speare, who used to hold horses at the door of the theatre which
later he was going to immortalize; Machiavelli, who was secretary
to the Florentine republic at fifteen crowns a month; Raphael,
the son of a mere dauber; Jean Jacques Rousseau, a notary's
clerk and an engraver,- one who did not have a dinner every
day; Fulton, once upon a time a mechanic, who gave us steam:
and so many others. Had these same people been born with an
income of half a million livres apiece, there would have been a
good many chances that not one of them would ever have be-
come what he did become. [To M. Giraud. ] This race after
wealth, of which you speak, M. Giraud, has good in it: even if
it enriches some silly people or some rascals, if it procures for
them the consideration of those in a humble station of life, - of
the lower classes, of those who have cash relations with society,
on the other hand there is a great deal of good in the spur
given to faculties which would otherwise remain stationary;
enough good to pardon some errors in the distribution of wealth.
Just in proportion as you enter into the true world of society-
a world which is almost unknown to you, M. Giraud
find that a man who is received there is received only in pro-
portion to his personal value. Look around here where we are,
without taking the trouble to go any further, and you will see
that money has not the influence you ascribe to it. For proof,
here is Countess Savelli, with half a million francs income, who
in place of dining out with millionaires besieging her house
every day, comes quietly here to dine with our friends the Du-
rieus, people without title, poor people measured by her fortune;
and she comes here for the pleasure of meeting M. De Charzay,
-you will
## p. 5019 (#187) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5019
who has not more than a thousand crowns income, but who,
for all the millionaires in the world, would never do a thing
a man ought not to do; and she meets here M. De Roncourt,
who has a business of fifteen hundred francs because he gave
up his fortune to creditors who were not his own creditors.
There is Mademoiselle De Roncourt, who sacrificed her dowry
to the same sentiment of honor; yonder is Mademoiselle Durieu,
who would never be willing to become the wife of any other
than an honest man, even if he had for his rivals all the Cree-
suses present and to come; and last of ali, one meets me here,-
a man who has for money in the acceptation that you give the
word) the most profound contempt. Now, M. Giraud, if we lis-
tened to you for so long a time, it is because we are well-bred
people, and besides, you talk very well; but there has been no
flattery for your millions in our attention, and the proof is that
everybody has been listening to me a longer time than to you,-
listening to me, who have not like you a thousand-franc note
to put along with every one of my phrases!
Jean - Who is that gentleman who has just been speaking ?
Durieu - That is M. De Cayolle.
Jean - The railway director ?
Durieu - Yes.
Jean [going to M. De Cayolle] — M. De Cayolle, I hope you
will believe that I am very glad to meet you.
Cayolle- I dare say you are, monsieur. [M. De Cayolle as he
utters the words turns his back upon Giraud and steps aside. ]
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
M. DE RÉMONIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF MARRIAGE
From L'Étrangère
M
ADAME DE RUMIÈRES — See here, now, Rémonin, you who
claim to explain everything as a learned man - can you
solve this proposition? Why is it that with all the quan-
tity of love in this world, there are so many unhappy marriages ?
M. Rémonin - I could give you a perfect explanation, my
dear lady, if you were not a woman.
Madame de Rumières - You mean that the explanation is not
decent ?
## p. 5020 (#188) ###########################################
5020
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
M. Rémonin — No, I mean that it is a matter based on the
abstract.
It is this. The reason why marriages are
rarely happy, in spite of the quantity of love ” in question, is
because love and marriage, scientifically considered, have no rela-
tionship. They belong to two sorts of things, completely differ-
ing. Love is of the physical. Marriage is a matter of chemistry.
Madame de Rumières - Explain yourself.
Rémonin - Certainly. Love is an element of the natural evolu-
tion of our being; it comes to us of itself in course of our life,
at one time or another, independent of all our will, and even
without a definite object. The human creature can wish to be
in love before really loving any one!
But marriage is a
social combination, an adjustment, that refers itself to chemistry,
as I have said; since chemistry concerns itself with the action of
one element on another and the phenomena resulting:
to the end of bringing about family life, morality, and labor,
and in consequence the welfare of man, as involved in all three.
Now, so often as you really can conform to the theory of such a
blending of things, so long as you happen to have effected in
marriage such a combination of the physical and chemical, all
goes well; the experiment is happy, it results well. But if you
are ignorant or maladroit enough to seek and to make a com-
bination of two refractory chemical forces in the matrimonial
experiment, then in the place of a fusion you will find you have
only inert forces; and the two elements remain there, together
but unfused, eternally opposed to each other, never able to be
united!
Or else there is not merely inertia — there are
shocks, explosions, catastrophes, accidents, dramas.
Madame de Rumières — Have you ever been in love ?
M. Rémonin –I? My dear marquise, I am a scientist - I
have never had time! And you ?
Madame de Rumières — I have loved my children. M. de
Rumières was a charming man all his life; but he didn't expect
me really to love him. My son tells me his affairs of the heart;
. . my daughter has already made me a grandmother.
I have little to reproach myself as to my past life, and now I
look on at the lives of others, sometimes much interested.
like the subscribers to the Opéra, who know the whole repertory
by heart, but who can always hear some passages with pleasure
and who encourage the débutants.
Condensed and translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
E. Irenæus Stevenson.
I am
## p. 5021 (#189) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5021
REFORMING A FATHER
From (A Prodigal Father)
[The ensuing dialogue occurs in the first act of the play. The Count de
Ravonnières and his son André reside together in their comfortable bachelor's
establishment in Paris, and are devotedly attached to one another. The count,
unfortunately, has only grown more careless of money, more a gay man of the
world, as he has grown older; and blessed with a youthfulness of physique and
temperament that nothing impairs, he is as thriftless as he is fascinating. His
son, accordingly, has had to be the economist of their resources, which are at
a dangerous ebb. As the scene opens, the count is preparing to take luncheon,
with Joseph, the confidential servant of the house, in attendance. ]
OSEPH
Jose
Monsieur is served.
Count de Ravonnières-Very well. You will please go
to my florist Lemoine, the Opera florist, — you know who I
mean, - and tell him to send, to-day, with my card, - he has a
lot of cards of mine in advance,– to Mademoiselle Albertine de
la Borde, 26 or 28 Rue de la Paix - I don't exactly remember
the number that the lady gave me
Joseph - No. 26.
Count - Ah! You know her address, do you?
Joseph — Yes, sir.
Count — To send her a bouquet of white lilacs and roses.
And I don't need you any more: go at once. [Joseph bows, and
hands the Count a large envelope. ] What's all this?
Joseph - Some law papers that have come in your absence, sir,
which I did not think ought to be forwarded to Dieppe.
Count (without taking the papers] - Quite right. Has my son
seen them?
Joseph — No, sir.
Count —Very well; don't let him see them. Put them away
with the others.
Joseph — May I beg monsieur to say a good word for me to
his son ?
Count — As to what, Joseph ?
Joseph-Your son, sir, has just told me to look out for another
situation; and I am so attached to the family -
Count - Oh, I will straighten all that out; if my son sends
you away I will take you into our service again. . Come now,
get off to my florist; be quick about it.
## p. 5022 (#190) ###########################################
5022
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
As Joseph goes out, André enters. He does not at first perceive his
father, but on turning toward the table discovers him.
André — Ah! you are here, are you ?
Count —Yes, I have been here during an hour; and moreover,
a very agreeable person has been doing the honors of your estab-
lishment on my behalf.
André — It is a fine time to talk about agreeable persons!
You are a very agreeable person –
Count What in the world is the matter with you ?
André - I am perfectly furious.
Count -- Against whom ?
André — Against you.
Count — Why? What have I been doing ?
André - You have drawn on me at sight this draft here.
Count - Oh yes, I know very well what that means. It comes
from London; it is to pay for the boat, you know.
André — Oh yes, it comes from London, and it is to pay for
the boat! That is no excuse for it. And what about the boat,
if you please?
Count – But my dear fellow, they had no business to present
it until the 15th.
André - Well?
Count - Why, to-day is the 15th !
André — You ought to know it.
Count – I thought that to-day was only the 14th! Have you
paid it ?
André — Of course.
Count — Ah! then I owe you six thousand francs. That's all
there is to the matter.
André — Yes, that's all! But you never said a word to me
about it; I had no money in the house: I had to send to our
man of business. May I beg of you in the future to be so good
as to-
Count — Poor boy! poor boy! Really, between ourselves, you
would have done a great deal better (as it is a month since you
have seen me, and since you are really very fond of me) to em-
brace me in meeting me again, rather than to say all these
things to me that you have been saying !
André [embracing his father heartily] -Oh, of course they
make no difference, when it comes to that!
## p. 5023 (#191) ###########################################
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
5023
Count - Your second impulse is a very good one; but you
ought to have begun with it. All the same, I do not in the less
ask pardon for the inconvenience that I have caused you, my boy.
[Takes some bank-notes from his pocket. ] Here are your six thou-
sand francs, and (holding out the remainder of the notes to André]
since you need money, help yourself.
André — Where in the world does that money come from?
Count — Oh, it is some money that I have received.
André — There was none coming to you from anywhere!
Count - There is always something to come to one, if he looks
around carefully. And now let us speak of serious things.
André - Yes, by all means. Father, are you not disposed to
settle down ?
Count — What do you mean by “settle down”?
André — To save money, for one thing.
Count — Save money! I should be charmed to do so; but I
really do not see how we can do it. We certainly live as inod-
estly as possible. This house belongs to us; we have only four
saddle horses, four carriage horses, a couple of extra horses for
evening service (we could not get along with less), two coach-
men, two valets, two grooms, one cook. Why, we haven't even
a housekeeper.
André — No, we only want that!
Count — We never receive any except masculine society; we
certainly are not extravagant as to the table. Look at me here:
I am breakfasting this minute on two eggs and a glass of water.
It seems to me that with our fortune -
André — Our fortune ?
