Chapter XXXVIII (3)

Growing anxious for the women I had left in the Rue Neuve de Berri, I returned home by side-streets. A crowd had collected on the Champs Élysées about thirty yards from the corner of our street, and was forming a barricade. All were shouting, all gesticulating. Citadines at full speed were driving out of reach of requisition; horses were going off disencumbered of their vehicles; the driver of a remise was seated astride his animal, the long flaps of his driving-coat covering it from neck to tail; a noble elm was being hewn down by hatchets and even common knives. An omnibus, the remise, a few barrels and dining-tables, a dozen yards of _pave_ torn up by eager hands, a sentry-box, some benches and the tree, formed the barricade. _Gamins_ and _blouses_ worked at it. The respectables looked on and did not trouble the workers. Suddenly there was a general stampede among them. A squadron of about fifty dragoons charged up the Champs Élysées. One old peasant-woman in a scanty yellow-and-black skirt, which she twitched above her knees, led the retreat. But soon they stopped and turned again, while the dragoons rode slowly back, breathing their horses. Nobody was angry, for nobody had been hurt, but they were frightened enough.

At this moment, stealing from a porte-cochère where she had taken refuge during the fright and _sauve gui peut_, came a figure wrapped in dark drapery. Could it be possible? Hermione Leare! In a moment I was at her side. She was very pale and breathless, and she was glad to take my arm. "What brings you here?" I whispered.

"Our servants have all run away: they think mamma is compromised. Victor, our chasseur, broke open mamma's secretary and took his wages. She is almost beside herself. She wanted to send a letter to the post, and as it is steamer-day I thought papa had better know that thus far nothing has happened to us. There was nobody to take the letter: I said I would put it in the box in the Rue Ponthieu."

"And did you post it?"

"No: I could not get to the Rue Ponthieu. They were firing down the street, and now I dare not."

"Trust it to me, Miss Leare, and promise me to send for me if you have any more such errands. You must never run such risks again."

"I have to be the man of the family," she answered, almost with an apologetic air.

"Do not say that again. I shall come over three times a day while this thing lasts to see if you have any commissions."

She smiled and pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochère. Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair.

The remainder of that day passed with very little fighting. Up to that time it had been a riot apropos of a change of ministry, but in the night the secret societies met and flung aside the previous question.

When we awoke on Wednesday morning, February 23d, we were struck by the strange quiet of the streets. No provisions entered Paris through the barrier, no vehicles nor venders of small wares. The absolute silence, save when "Mourir pour la Patrie" sounded hoarsely in the distance, was as strange as it was unexpected. I had always connected an insurrection with noise. It was rumored that Guizot the Unpopular had been dismissed, and that Count Mole, a man of half measures, had been called to the king's councils. The affair looked to me as if it were going to die out for want of fuel. But I was mistaken: the blouses, who had not had one gun to a hundred the day before, had been all night arming themselves by domiciliary requisitions. The national guard was not believed to be firm.

The night before, an hour after I had parted with Miss Hermione, I had made an attempt to see her and Mrs. Leare, without any success. Not even bribery would induce the concierge to let me in. His orders were peremptory: "_Pas un seul, monsieur, personne_"--madame received nobody.

Early on Wednesday morning I again presented myself: the ladies were not visible. Later in the day I called again, and was again refused. But several times Amy had seen Hermione at a window, and they had made signs across the street to one another. I began to understand that Mrs. Leare was overwhelmed by the responsibility she had incurred in opening her salon to men whom she now perceived to have been conspirators, and that she was obstinately determined not to compromise herself further by giving admittance to any one.

Our bonne had been able to ascertain from the concierge of the Leare house that madame was hysterical, and could hardly be controlled by mademoiselle.

I was in the streets till five o'clock on Wednesday, when, concluding all was over, I came home, intending to make another effort to see the Leares, and if possible to take Miss Hermione, with Ellen and Lætitia, to view the debris of the two days' fight--to let them get their first glimpse of real war in the Place de la Concorde, where a regiment was littering down its horses for the night, and a peep into the closed gardens of the Tuileries.

When I got up to our rooms I found my sisters at a window overlooking the courtyard of Mrs. Leare's hotel, and they all cried out with one voice, "Mrs. Leare's carriage is just ready to drive away."

I looked. A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion--who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy--was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to an elegant travelling-carriage.

Hermione herself, Claribel her little sister, Mrs. Leare and the old colored nurse got quickly in. Mrs. Leare was in tears, with her head muffled in a yard or two of green _barège_, then the distinctive mark of a travelling American woman. The child's-nurse had long gold ear-drops and a head-dress of red bandanna. There was not a man of any kind with them except the postilion. The concierge opened the gates of the courtyard.

"Stop! stop!" I cried, and rushed down our own staircase and out of our front door.

As I ran past their entrance a woman put a paper into my hand. I had no time to glance at it, for the carriage had already turned into the Rue Ponthieu. For some distance I ran after it, encountering at every step excited groups of people, some of whom seemed to me in search of mischief, while some had apparently come out to gather news. There were no other carriages in the streets, and that alone enabled me to track the one I was in chase of, for everybody I met had noticed which way it had turned. It wound its way most deviously through by-streets to avoid those in which paving-stones had been torn up or barricades been formed, and the postilion made all possible speed, fearing the carriage might be seized and detached from his horses. But the day's work was finished and the disorders of the night were not begun.

Forced at last to slacken my speed and to take breath, I glanced at the paper that I still held in my hand. It contained a few words from Hermione: "Thank you for all the kindness you have tried to show us, dear sir. My mother has heard that all the English in Paris are to be massacred at midnight by the mob, and directs me to give you notice, which is the reason I address this note to you and not to Amy. Mamma is afraid of being mistaken for an Englishwoman. We have secured post-horses and are setting out for Argenteuil, where we shall take the railway. Again, thank you: your kindness will not be forgotten by H. LEARE."

This note reassured me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage, but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody could tell me anything and all were ravenous for news. I secured, however, without losing too much time, a seat with a stout young country-man who drove a little country cart with a powerful gray horse, and was going in the direction I wanted to travel.

"What will be the result of this affair?" I said to him when he had got his beast into a steady trot.

He shrugged his shoulders. A French workingman has a far larger vocabulary at his command than the English laborer. "Bon Dieu!" he exclaimed: "who knows what will come of it? A land without a master is no civilized land. We shall fall back into barbarism. What there is certain is, that we shall all be ruined."

At length, to my great relief, we saw a carriage before us; and we drove into the railway-station at the same moment as the Leares.

Before the ladies could alight I was beside the window of their carriage.

"You here, Mr. Farquhar?" cried Hermione. "How good of you! You cannot guess the relief. Help me to get them out, these helpless ones."

We lifted Mrs. Leare on to the platform of the railway, weeping and trembling. The old colored nurse could not speak French, and seemed to think her only duty was to hold the hand of little Claribel and to stand where her young mistress placed her. All looked to Hermione. She carried a canvas bag of five-franc pieces and paid right and left. I tried to interfere, as she was giving the postilion an exorbitant sum.

"No, hush!" she whispered: "we can afford to pay, but in our situation we cannot afford to dispute."

She then deputed me to see after the "baggage," as she called the luggage of the party, and went with her mother into the glass cage that the French call a _salle d'attente_ at a railway-station.

We had come from the seat of war, and every one crowded around us asking for news. I had little to tell, but replied that I believed the affair was nearly over. I did not foresee that two hours later a procession roaring "Mourir pour la Patrie" under the windows of the Hôtel des Affaires Étrangères would be fired into by accident, and that the _émeute_ of February, 1848, would be converted into a revolution.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. The lamps were lighted in the station. The night was cloudy, but far off on the horizon we could see a gleam of radiance, marking the locality of the great city.

After an hour of very anxious waiting, during which Mrs. Leare was beside herself with nervous agitation, the locked doors of our prison were flung open and we were permitted to seat ourselves in a railway-carriage.

Hermione's tender devotion to her mother, the old servant and the child was beautiful to witness. Now that Mrs. Leare was helpless on her daughter's hands, they seemed to have found their natural relations. Hermione said few words to me, but a glance now and then thanked me for being with them. The train started. For about three miles all went on well, although we travelled cautiously, fearing obstructions. Suddenly the speed of our train was checked, and there was a cry of consternation as we rounded a sharp curve. The bridge over the Seine at its third bend was ablaze before us!

All the men upon the train sprang out upon the track as soon as the carriage-doors were opened, and in a few moments we were surrounded by ruffians refusing to let us go on.

"Back the train!" cried the railroad official in charge.

No, they were not willing to let us go back to Paris. Conspirators against the people might be making their escape. They had set fire to the bridge, they said, to prevent the train from passing over. It must remain where it was. If we passengers desired to return to Paris, we must walk there.

"Walk?" I exclaimed: "it is ten miles! Women--delicate ladies--children!"

My remonstrance was drowned in the confusion. Suddenly the party of women under my charge stood at my elbow: Mrs. Leare was leaning on Hermione's arm; Mammy Christine and Claribel cowered close and held her by her drapery.

"Make no remonstrances," she said in a low voice: "let us not excite attention. An Englishman never knows when not to complain: an American accepts his fate more quietly. These people mean to sack the train. We had better get away as soon as possible."

"But how?" I cried.

"I can walk. We must find some means of transporting mamma, Mammy Chris and Clary."

As Hermione said this she turned to an official and questioned him upon the subject. He thought that there was a little cart and horse which might be hired at a neighboring cottage.

"Let us go and see about it, Mr. Farquhar," said Hermione.

"I will."

"No: I put greater trust in my own powers of persuasion.--Mammy dear, take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her _we_ was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for _home_. But the conclusion that the man of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false: no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse, they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.

"Let me look at it," said Hermione. At this they led us into an outhouse, where she assisted me to make a careful inspection. I might have rejected the old trap at once, but she offered a few suggestions, which she told me in an aside were the fruit of her experiences in Maryland and Virginia, and the cart was pronounced safe enough to be driven slowly with a light load.

A half-grown son of the house was put in charge of it. Hermione suggested he should bring the family clothes-line in case of a breakdown, and prevailed upon the farmer's wife to put in plenty of fresh straw, a blanket and a pillow. She made a bargain, less extravagant than I expected, with the peasant proprietor, promising, however, a very handsome _pourboire_ to his son in the event of our good fortune. The farmer stipulated, in his turn, that cart, horse and lad were not to pass the barrier, that the boy should walk at the horse's head, and that the cart was to contain only two women and little Claribel.

It was harnessed up immediately. Hermione and I followed it on foot back to the little band of travellers waiting beside the railway.

"Can we not get some of your trunks out?" I said to her.

"No," she answered: "leave them to their fate. I dare not overload the cart, and I doubt whether those men with hungry eyes would let us take them. Mamma," she whispered, "has her diamonds."

"You will get into the cart, Miss Leare?" I said as I saw her motioning to the old colored woman to take the place beside her mother.

"No indeed," she replied: "our contract stipulated only for mamma, Mammy and Clary: Mammy is crippled with rheumatism. If you have no objection I will walk with you."

"Objection? No. But it is ten miles."

"A long stretch," she said with a half sigh, "but I am young, strong, and excitement counts for something: besides, there is no remedy. We must consider them."

There had been about fifteen other persons on the train. A dozen of these, finding we were going to walk back to Paris, proposed to join us. The night was growing dark, and we pushed on. There was no woman afoot but Hermione. "Madame" they called her, evidently taking her for my wife, but by no word or smile did she notice the blunder. After a while she accepted my arm, drawing up her skirts by means of loops or pins. We had one lantern among us, and from time to time its glare permitted me to see her dainty feet growing heavy with mud and travel.

It was not what could be called a lovers' walk, tramping in the dark through mud and water, on a French country road, at a cart's tail, and hardly a word was exchanged between us; yet had it not been for fears about her safety it would have been the most delightful expedition I had ever known.

From time to time Mrs. Leare and the old nurse in the cart complained of their bones. Hermione was always ready with encouragement, but she said little else to any one. She appeared to be reserving all her energies to assist her physical endurance and to strengthen her for her task of taking care of the others.

I had always seen my sisters and other girls protected, sheltered, cared for: it gave me a sharp pang to see this beautiful and dainty creature totally unthought of by those dependent on her. Nor did Mrs. Leare seem to feel any anxiety about my comradeship with her daughter. I could fully appreciate Hermione's remark about her chaperonage being very unsatisfactory.

Every now and then we passed through villages along whose straggling streets the population was aswarm, eager for news and wondering at our muddy procession. In one of the villages I suggested stopping, but Mrs. Leare was now as frantic to get home again as she had been to get away. She said, and truly, that it had been a wild plan to start from Paris--that if she had seen me and had heard that I thought the émeute was at an end and that the report about the English was untrue, she should never have left her apartment. She had been frightened out of her senses by some men _en blouse_ who had made their way into her rooms and had carried off her pistol and a little Turkish dagger. Victor's theft of his own wages had upset her. She had insisted upon setting out. Hermione had got post-horses somehow: Hermione ought never to have let her come away.

About three in the morning we reached a larger village than we had hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Étrangères, and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets, old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a much more athletic man than the French soldier. I own to a sensation of deadly terror for a moment when I saw the ladies in the midst of a lawless rabble whose brawny arms were bared as if prepared for butchery of any kind. Far off, too, a low rattle of distant musketry warned us that the tumult in Paris was renewed.

"Mourir pour la Patrie" appeared to come from every throat, and many of the crowd were the worse for liquor. Indeed, these patriots had rendezvoused at a cabaret at the entrance of the village, and swarmed from its tables to intercept us. The ladies, they insisted, must alight and be examined. Mammy Chris was drawn out of the cart, looking as if her face had been rubbed in ashes: Mrs. Leare was nervously excited, Hermione went up to her, supported her and drew her bag of diamonds out of her hand. I took Claribel in my arms.

"Vos passeports," they demanded.

"Here are our American passports," said Hermione: "we are Americans."

"Yes, Americans, republicans!" cried Mrs. Leare: "we fraternize with all republicans in France."

"Aristos," said a man between his teeth, glancing at her dress and at that of Hermione.

"What does he say?" cried Mrs. Leare, who did not catch the word.

"Hush, mother!" said Hermione.

"But what did he say?" she shrieked. "Tell me at once: do not keep it from me."

Hermione replied (unwilling to use the word "aristocrat") by an American idiom: "He said we belonged to the Upper Ten."

"But we don't! Oh, Hermie, your father belongs to a good family in Maryland, but _my_ grandfather made shoes. I was quite poor when he married me. I was only sixteen."

"What you say?" said a railroad-hand who knew a little English. "You say you are not some aristos?"

"No, sir," said I: "these ladies claim to be Americans and republicans."

"Vive la République!" cried the man.

"Vive la République!" quickly echoed Hermione.

"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her blanched and beautiful face.

"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your protection."

Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican, refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."

I started and was about to knock the rascal down with the bag of diamonds.

But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country, messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face, she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.

For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la République!"

"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen: Vive la République des États Unis!"

They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has--or at least in those days it used to have--_sentiments_, to which it was possible with a little tact to appeal successfully.

The opposition to our progress came to an end. Mrs. Leare and old Mammy were helped back into the cart, and a man offered them some wine. They brought some also to Hermione. I pressed her to drink it, which she did to their good health, and giving back the glass placed in it a napoleon. "Do me the favor, messieurs," she said, "to drink your next toast to our American republic."

Cheers rose for her. There was no longer any talk of detaining us: the old horse was urged forward. Hermione took my arm. We marched on, escorted by the rabble. At the end of the village-street they all gave us an unsteady cheer and turned back to their wine-tables. Hermione proceeded in silence a little farther. Then I felt her slipping from my arm, and was just in time to catch her.

Without compunction I requested Mammy Chris to get out of the cart and put her young lady in her place, pillowing her head as carefully as I could on my own coat, and proceeding in my shirtsleeves.

We were then not half a mile from the Banlieu, which we passed without adventure, much to my surprise, its inhabitants having taken advantage of the confusion to pour into Paris and infest its richer quarters.

The ladies were obliged to get out at the barrier and to send back the cart to its proprietor. Again I had the happiness of supporting Hermione while I carried little Claribel, and Mrs. Leare and Mammy walked on ahead.

"I feel humiliated," I said, "that the whole burden of those dreadful moments should have fallen upon you."

"And to avoid that feeling you were ready to knock down a drunken blouse in English style?" she said, smiling. "No, Mr. Farquhar, nothing but the power that a woman finds in her own womanhood could have brought us through safely. Those men had all had mothers, and each man had some sort of womanly ideal. I could not have managed a crowd of _poissardes_, but, thank Heaven, there is yet a chord that a woman may strike in the hearts of men."

The dawn of Thursday, February 24, 1848, was breaking at the eastward when I arrived with Mrs. Leare, Hermione, the nurse and child at their own apartment. I went up stairs with them. All was cold and cheerless in the rooms. There were no servants. Mrs. Leare sat down; the old nurse bemoaned her rheumatism and her aching bones; Hermione, with the assistance of the concierge's wife, lighted a fire, made some tea and waited on her mother.

For several days afterward she was very ill. She knew nothing of passing events--of the king's flight, of the triumphal and victorious processions that passed up the Champs Élysées, of the sudden impossibility of procuring supplies of change, and of the consequent difficulty of paying household bills with _billets de mille francs_ without gold or silver.

Each day I went several times to make inquiries, and twice I saw Mrs. Leare in bed, but Hermione was invisible.

My father, an honorable British officer of the old school, perceived how things were with me. "My son," he said one clay, "there are two courses open to you. You have nothing but your profession. Your education and the premium on your admittance to the office of the great man for whom you work have been my provision for you: the little property I have to leave must support your sisters. You cannot under such circumstances address Miss Leare. You must either go back at once to your work in England and forget this episode, or you may go out to America and see her father. You can tell him you have nothing on which to support his daughter, and ask if he will give you leave to address the young lady. No son of mine, situated like yourself, shall offer himself in any other way to an heiress whose father is three thousand miles away, and who is supposed to have two millions of francs for her dowry."

I saw he was right, but, forlorn as the hope was of any appeal to Mr. Leare, I would not relinquish it. I resolved to go out to America and see him, and wrote to England to secure letters of introduction to the chief engineers in the United States and Canada. Meantime, my father proposed that we should go together and call upon Mrs. and Miss Leare.

Hermione received us in the boudoir, looking like a bruised lily: her mother came in afterward.

"We are going right straight home," she said, "the moment we can get money to get away. I have written to Mr. Leare that he must find some means to send me some."

"I am glad to hear you say this, madame," said my father. "My son has just made up his mind to go out to America and seek employment on one of your railways."

Hermione looked up with a question in her eyes: so did her mother.

"Why, Mr. Farquhar, that will suit us exactly," cried Mrs. Leare.--"Hermione, won't it be lovely if Mr. Farquhar takes care of us on the voyage?--You will engage your passage--won't you?--in the same steamer as we do?--No one was ever so good a squire of dames as your son, Captain Farquhar. Hermione and I shall never forget our obligations to him."

"No, madame," said my father; and he got up and walked to the fireplace, where in his embarrassment he laid his hand upon the ornamented box which held the cigarettes of the fast lady.

She rose up too and went hastily toward him, anxious he should not surprise her little frailty.

"The truth is, madame," whispered my father, who never could restrain his tongue from any kindly indiscretion, "the poor fellow is suffering too much from the attractions of Miss Leare. He has nothing but his profession, and I tell him he must not dare to address her in her father's absence."

"My dear captain, what does that matter? And I believe Hermione would have him too," said her mother.

"Disparity of means--" began my father.

"Oh, no matter," interrupted Mrs. Leare: "her father always told her just to please herself. Mr. Farquhar is an Englishman and of good family. He has his profession to keep him out of mischief, and Hermie will more than pay her own expenses. Indeed, I dare not go home without a gentleman to look after us on the passage: my nerves have been too shattered, and I never again shall trust a courier. Do let your son go back with us," she implored persuasively; and added, as she saw that he still hesitated, "Besides, what rich man in America knows how long he may be rich? 'Spend your money and enjoy yourself' has always been my motto."

Thus urged, what could my father do but suppose that Mrs. Leare knew Mr. Leare's views better than he did? He no longer held out on the point of honor.

In twenty-four hours Hermione and I were engaged to be married.

During the voyage to New York I learned to understand her father's character, and when he met us on the wharf I was no longer afraid of him.

Hermione's choice in marriage seemed to be wholly left to herself. Mr. Leare told me, when I had that formidable talk with him dreaded by all aspirants to the hand of a man's daughter, that Hermione had too much good sense, self-respect and womanliness to give herself away to a man unworthy of her. "That she can love you, sir," he said, "is sufficient recommendation."

That it might be sufficient in my case I hoped with all my soul, but felt, as Hermione had expressed it early in our acquaintance, that society in America must be founded upon very different opinions than our own in regard to the relations of men and women.

E.W. LATIMER.

THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

No doubt it will surprise some theatre-goers who are not special students of the stage to be told that the authors of _Froufrou_ are the authors also of the _Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein_ and of _La Belle Hélène_, of _Carmen_ and of _Le Petit Duc_. There are a few, I know, who think that _Froufrou_ was written by the fertile and ingenious M. Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach with the composition of the words as well as the music of the _Grande Duchesse_; and as for _Carmen_, is it not an _Italian_ opera, and is not the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter of fact, all these plays, unlike as they are to each other, and not only these, but many more--not a few of them fairly well known to the American play-goer--are due to the collaboration of M. Henri Meilhac and M. Ludovic Halévy.

Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Émile Zola, dealt in books before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and contributed with pen and pencil to the comic _Journal pour Rire_. He began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was his next, likewise in two acts. But in 1856 the _Sarabande du Cardinal_, a delightful little comedy in one act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In 1859, M. Meilhac made his first attempt at a comedy in five acts, but the _Petit fils de Mascarille_ had not the good fortune of his ancestor. In 1860, for the first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halévy, and in the twenty years since then their names have been linked together on the title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds--drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet. M. Meilhac's new partner was the nephew of the Halévy who is best known out of France as the composer of the _Jewess_, and he was the son of M. Léon Halévy, poet, philosopher and playwright. Two years younger than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic Halévy held a place in the French civil service until 1858, when he resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare time, to the theatre. As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer, he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary to M. Offenbach, for whom he wrote _Ba-ta-clan_ in 1855, and later the _Chanson de Fortunio_, the _Pont des Soupirs_ and _Orphée aux Enfers_. The first very successful play which MM. Meilhac and Halévy wrote together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership. Before the triumph of the _Belle Hélène_ in 1864 the collaboration had been tentative, as it were: after that it was as though the articles had been definitely ratified--not that either of the parties has not now and then indulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone or with an outsider, but this was without prejudice to the permanent partnership.

This kind of literary union, the long-continued conjunction of two kindred spirits, is better understood amongst us than the indiscriminate collaboration which marks the dramatic career of M. Eugène Labiche, for instance. Both kinds were usual enough on the English stage in the days of Elizabeth, but we can recall the ever-memorable example of Beaumont and Fletcher, while we forget the chance associations of Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary literature we have before us the French tales of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian and the English novels of Messrs. Besant and Rice. The fact that such a union endures is proof that it is advantageous. A long-lasting collaboration like this of MM. Meilhac and Halévy must needs be the result of a strong sympathy and a sharp contrast of character, as well as of the possession by one of literary qualities which supplement those of the other.

One of the first things noticed by an American student of French dramatic literature is that the chief Parisian critics generally refer to the joint work of these two writers as the plays of M. Meilhac, leaving M. Halévy altogether in the shade. At first this seems a curious injustice, but the reason is not far to seek. It is not that M. Halévy is some two years the junior of M. Meilhac: it lies in the quality of their respective abilities. M. Meilhac has the more masculine style, and so the literary progeny of the couple bear rather his name than his associate's. M. Meilhac has the strength of marked individuality, he has a style of his own, one can tell his touch; while M. Halévy is merely a clever French dramatist of the more conventional pattern. This we detect by considering the plays which each has put forth alone and unaided by the other. In reading one of M. Meilhac's works we should feel no doubt as to the author, while M. Halévy's clever pictures of Parisian society, wanting in personal distinctiveness, would impress us simply as a product of the "Modern French School."

Before finally joining with M. Halévy, M. Meilhac wrote two comedies in five acts of high aim and skilful execution, and two other five-act pieces have been written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy together. The _Vertu de Célimène_ and the _Petit fils de Mascarille_ are by the elder partner--_Fanny Lear_ and _Froufrou_ are the work of the firm. Yet in these last two it is difficult to see any trace of M. Halévy's handiwork. Allowing for the growth of M. Meilhac's intellect during the eight or ten years which intervened between the work alone and the work with his associate, and allowing for the improvement in the mechanism of play-making, I see no reason why M. Meilhac might not have written _Fanny Lear_ and _Froufrou_ substantially as they are had he never met M. Halévy. But it is inconceivable that M. Halévy alone could have attained so high an elevation or have gained so full a comic force. Perhaps, however, M. Halévy deserves credit for the better technical construction of the later plays: merely in their mechanism the first three acts of _Froufrou_ are marvellously skilful. And perhaps, also, his is a certain softening humor, which is the cause that the two later plays, written by both partners, are not so hard in their brilliance as the two earlier comedies, the work of M. Meilhac alone.

It may seem something like a discussion of infinitesimals, but I think M. Halévy's co-operation has given M. Meilhac's plays a fuller ethical richness. To the younger writer is due a simple but direct irony, as well as a lightsome and laughing desire to point a moral when occasion serves. Certainly, I shall not hold up a play written to please the public of the Palais Royal, or even of the Gymnase, as a model of all the virtues. Nor need it be, on the other hand, an embodiment of all the cardinal sins. The frequenters of the Palais Royal Theatre are not babes; young people of either sex are not taken there; only the emancipated gain admittance; and to the seasoned sinners who haunt theatres of this type these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halévy are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halévy, it seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff. He raises a warning voice now and then--in _Fanny Lear_, for instance, the moral is pointed explicitly--and even where there is no moral tagged to the fable, he who has eyes to see and ears to hear can find "a terrible example" in almost any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it was delivered there is a sermon in _Toto chez Tata_, perhaps the piece in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and _égrillarde_. That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little comedy where Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negligently turns over her basket of visiting-cards and sees "names which he knew because he had learnt them by heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this truth and morality, I do not advise the reading of _Toto chez Tata_ in young ladies' seminaries. Young ladies in Paris do not go to hear Madame Chaumont, for whom _Toto_ was written, nor is the Variétés, where it was played, a place where a girl can take her mother.

It was at the Variétés in December, 1864, that the _Belle Hélène_ was produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief among these are _Barbe-bleue_, the _Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein_, the _Brigands_ and _Périchole_. When we recall the fact that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halévy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the _Belle Hélène_ or the _Grande Duchesse_. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halévy have ceased writing for M. Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq--the _Petit Duc_ and the _Grande Demoiselle_. These are rather light comic operas than true _opéras-bouffes_, but if there is an elevation in the style of the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the _Grande Duchesse_ to the _Petit Duc_ is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained--the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story--akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama _Clancarty_--is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Périchole so touching, or of the true comic force which projected Général Bourn. _Carmen_, which, like _Périchole_, owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Mérimée, is little more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-makers: it was sufficient for its purpose, no more and no less.

Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and Halévy, that one is easily first and foremost which has for its heroine the Helen of Troy whom Marlowe's Faustus declared

Fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

In the _Belle Hélène_ we see the higher wit of M. Meilhac. M. Halévy had been at the same college with him, and they had pored together over the same legends of old time, but working without M. Meilhac on _Orphée aux Enfers_, M. Halévy showed his inferiority, for _Orphée_ is the old-fashioned anachronistic skit on antiquity--funny if you will, but with a fun often labored, not to say forced--the fun of physical incongruity and exaggeration. But in the _Belle Hélène_ the fun, easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit--so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce. Planché's _Golden Fleece_ is in the same vein, but the ore is not as rich. Frere's _Loves of the Triangles_ and some of his _Anti-Jacobin_ writing are perhaps as good in quality, but the subjects are inferior and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques and the cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-makers are not to be mentioned in the same breath with this scholarly fooling. There is something in the French genius akin to the Greek, and here was a Gallic wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and wring the uttermost drop of fun from it without recourse to the devices of the booth at the fair, the false nose and the simulation of needless ugliness. The French play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or epilepsy, and it was not so lacking in grace that we could not recall the original story without a shudder. There is no shattering of an ideal, and one cannot reproach the authors of the _Belle Hélène_ with what Theophrastus Such calls "debasing the moral currency, lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition."

Surpassed only by the _Belle Hélène_ is the _Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein_. It is nearly fifteen years since all the world went to Paris to see an Exposition Universelle and to gaze at the "sabre de mon père," and since a Russian emperor, going to hear the operetta, said to have been suggested by the freak of a Russian empress, sat incognito in one stage-box of the little Variétés Theatre, and glancing up saw a Russian grand duke in the other. It is nearly fifteen years since the tiny army of Her Grand-ducal Highness took New York by storm, and since American audience after audience hummed its love for the military and walked from the French Theatre along Fourteenth street to Delmonico's to supper, sabring the waiters there with the venerated weapon of her sire. The French Theatre is no more, and Delmonico's is no longer at that Fourteenth-street corner, and Her Highness Mademoiselle Tostée is dead, and M. Offenbach's sprightly tunes have had the fate of all over-popular airs, and are forgotten now. _Où sont les neiges d'antan?_

It has been said that the authors regretted having written the _Grande Duchesse_, because the irony of history soon made a joke on Teutonic powers and principalities seem like unpatriotic satire. Certainly, they had no reason to be ashamed of the literary quality of their work: in its class it yields only to its predecessor. There is no single figure as fine as Calchas--Général Boum is a coarser outline--but how humorous and how firm is the drawing of Prince Paul and Baron Grog! And Her Highness herself may be thought a cleverer sketch of youthful femininity than even the Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now. Custom has worn its freshness and made it too familiar: we know it too well to criticise it clearly. Besides, the actors have now overlaid the action with over-much "business." But in spite of these difficulties the merits of the piece are sufficiently obvious: its constructive skill can be remarked; the first act, for example, is one of the best bits of exposition on the modern French stage.

Besides these plays for music, and besides the more important five-act comedies to be considered later, MM. Meilhac and Halévy are the authors of thirty or forty comic dramas--as they are called on the English stage--or farce-comedies in one, two, three, four, and even five acts, ranging in aim from the gentle satire of sentimentality in _La Veuve_ to the outspoken farce of the _Réveillon_. Among the best of the longer of these comic plays are _Tricoche et Cacolet_ and _La Boule_. Both were written for the Palais Royal, and they are models of the new dramatic species which came into existence at that theatre about twenty years ago, as M. Francisquc Sarcey recently reminded us in his interesting article on the Palais Royal in _The Nineteenth Century_. This new style of comic play may be termed realistic farce--realistic, because it starts from every-day life and the most matter-of-fact conditions; and farce, because it uses its exact facts only to further its fantasy and extravagance. Consider _La Boule_. Its first act is a model of accurate observation; it is a transcript from life; it is an inside view of a commonplace French household which incompatibility of temper has made unsupportable. And then take the following acts, and see how on this foundation of fact, and screened by an outward semblance of realism, there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Théâtre Français, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Variétés whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la vérité la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of _La Boule_: its most humorous inventions have their roots in the truth.

Better even than _La Boule_ is _Tricoche et Cacolet_, which is the name of a firm of private detectives whose exploits and devices surpass those imagined by Poe in America, by Wilkie Collins in England, and by Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and impersonations of the two partners when seeking to outwit each other are as well-motived and as fertile in comic effect as any of the attempts of Crispin or of some other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is not even the _Légataire Universel_, Regnard's masterpiece, overrated? To me it is neither higher comedy nor more provocative of laughter than either _La Boule_ or _Tricoche et Cacolet_; and the modern plays, as I have said, are based on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in comic power to that in the final act of the _Réveillon_--a situation Molière would have been glad to treat.

Especially to be commended in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ is the satire of the hysterical sentimentality and of the forced emotions born of luxury and idleness. The parody of the amorous intrigue which is the staple of so many French plays is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method of Meilhac and Halévy in sketching this couple is not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ and _The Pirates of Penzance_. Especially to be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft--in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ at the swapping of children in the cradle, and in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ at the "portrait de ma mère" which has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halévy, having made one success, did not further attempt the same kind of pleasantry--wiser in this than Mr. Gilbert, who seems to find it hard to write anything else.

As in the _Château à Toto_ MM. Meilhac and Halévy had made a modern perversion of _Dame Blanche_, so in _La Cigale_ did they dress up afresh the story of the _Fille du R'egiment_. As the poet asks--

Ah, World of ours, are you so gray,
And weary, World, of spinning,
That you repeat the tales to-day
You told at the beginning?
For lo! the same old myths that made
The early stage-successes
Still hold the boards, and still are played
With new effects and dresses.

I have cited _La Cigale_, not because it is a very good play--for it is not--but because it shows the present carelessness of French dramatists in regard to dramatic construction. _La Cigale_ is a very clever bit of work, but it has the slightest of plots, and this made out of old cloth; and the situations, in so far as there are any, follow each other as best they may. It is not really a play: it is a mere sketch touched up with Parisianisms, "local hits" and the wit of the moment. This substitution of an off-hand sketch for a full-sized picture can better be borne in a little one-act play than in a more ambitious work in three or four acts.