Chapter V: Part 5

Now it would seem that one of the most important questions to be settled in this country is how to cheapen food. If, by the construction of these canals to give access to the St. Lawrence, grain can be laid down in New York ten cents a bushel cheaper than it now is done, the saving on the present shipments of breadstuffs from the Lakes would be ten millions of dollars annually. It is probable, however, that the saving in freight would be much greater than this, if the canals were built of sufficient capacity to admit the largest class of Lake vessels. This direct trade between the Upper Lakes and Europe was commenced a few years before the breaking out of the Rebellion, and was beginning to assume important proportions, when the war put a stop to it, as it has to so much of our foreign commerce.

While the present article was in preparation, the bill for the construction of these canals passed the House of Representatives, as also one for the deepening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, concerning which the report of the Hon. Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois, chairman of the committee of the House on the defence of lakes and rivers, thus remarks:--"The realization of the grand idea of a ship-canal from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, for military and commercial purposes, is the great work of the age. In effect, commercially, it turns the Mississippi into Lake Michigan, and makes an outlet for the Great Lakes at New Orleans, and of the Mississippi at New York. It brings together the two great systems of water communication of our country,--the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and the canals connecting the Lakes with the ocean on the east, and the Mississippi and Missouri, with all their tributaries, on the west and south. This communication, so vast, can be effected at small expense, and with no long delay. It is but carrying out the plan of Nature. A great river, rivalling the St. Lawrence in volume, at no distant day was discharged from Lake Michigan, by the Illinois, into the Mississippi. Its banks, its currents, its islands, and deposits can still be easily traced, and it only needs a deepening of the present channel for a few miles, to reopen a magnificent river from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi."

It is a very important point, in considering this question of the enlargement of existing canals and the construction of new ones, that they have, under the new conditions of naval warfare, come to be an important element in the harbor defences of the Lakes. We have the testimony of Captain Ericsson himself, whose Monitor vessels have already done so much for the country, as to this availability. He writes,--"An impregnable war-vessel, twenty-five feet wide and two hundred feet long, with a shot-proof turret, carrying a gun of fifteen inch calibre, with a ball of four hundred and fifty pounds, and capable of destroying any hostile vessel that can be put on the Lakes, will draw, without ammunition, coal, or stores, but six feet and six inches water, and consequently will need only a canal wide and deep enough to float a vessel of those dimensions, with locks of sufficient size to pass it."

Great Britain has already secured to herself the means of access to the Lakes by her system of Canadian canals, and the Military Committee of the House express the opinion, that, in case of a war with that power, "a small fleet of light-draught, heavily armed, iron-clad gunboats, could, in one short month, in despite of any opposition that could be made by extemporized batteries, pass up the St. Lawrence, and shell every city and village from Ogdensburg to Chicago. At one blow it could sweep our commerce from that entire chain of lakes. Such a fleet would have it in its power to inflict a loss to be reckoned only by hundreds of millions, so vast is the wealth thus exposed to the depredations of a maritime enemy." We were saved from such a blow, a few months ago, only by the failure of the Rebel agents in Canada to procure, either by purchase or piracy, a swift armed steamer.

Ever since the War of 1812, England has been preparing, in the event of another war, to strike at this, our vital point. In 1814 the Duke of Wellington declared "that a naval superiority on the Lakes is a _sine qua non_ of success in war on the frontier of Canada." Years before, William Hall, Governor of the Northwestern Territory, made the same declaration to our Government, and the capture of Detroit by the British in 1812 was due to their failure to respond to his appeal for a naval force. In 1817 the Lakes were put on a peace establishment of one gun on each side, which was a good bargain for England, she having at that time larger interests on the Lakes than the United States. Now ours exceed hers in the ratio of four to one.

What said the London "Times" in January, 1862, in reference to the Trent excitement? "As soon as the St. Lawrence opens again there will be an end of our difficulty. We can then pour into the Lakes such a fleet of gunboats, and other craft, as will give us the complete and immediate command of those waters. Directly the navigation is clear, we can send up vessel after vessel without any restriction, except such as are imposed by the size of the canals. The Americans would have no such resource. They would have no access to the Lakes from the sea, and it is impossible that they could construct vessels of any considerable power in the interval that would elapse before the ice broke up. With the opening of spring the Lakes would be ours."

This is just what the English did in the War of 1812. They secured the command of the Lakes at the beginning of the war, and kept it and that of all the adjacent country, till Perry built a fleet on Lake Erie, with which he wrested their supremacy from them by hard fighting. Let us not be caught in that way a second time.

There is a party in the country opposed to the enlargement of these canals. It is represented in Congress by able men. Their principal arguments are the following: First, that there is no military necessity for the enlargement; that materials for building gunboats can be accumulated at various points on the Lakes, to be used in the event of war. Secondly, that by sending a strong force to destroy the Canadian canals, the enemy's gunboats can be prevented from entering the Lakes. A third argument is, that it is useless to attempt to contend with England, the greatest naval power in the world; that we shall never have vessels enough to afford a fleet on the coast and one on the Lakes; that England would never allow us to equal her in that respect, and that it would be changing the entire policy of the nation to attempt it. A fourth argument which we have seen gravely stated against the canal enlargements is, that the mouth of the St. Lawrence is the place to defend the Lakes, and that, if that hole were stopped, the rats could not enter.

In reply to the first of these arguments, the above quotation from the London "Times" shows that the British Government well know the importance of striking the first blow, and that long before our gunboats could be launched that blow would have been delivered.

As to the second, we may be sure that the Canadian canals would be defended with all the power and skill of England; and we know, by the experience of the last four years, the difference between offensive and defensive warfare, both sides being equally matched in fighting qualities.

The third argument is the same used by Jefferson and his party before the War of 1812. He thought that to build war vessels was only to build them for the British, as they would be sure to take them. As to changing the policy of the nation, by increasing our navy, let us hope that it is already changed, and forever. Its policy has heretofore been a Southern policy, a slaveholders' policy; it has discouraged the navy, and kept it down to the smallest possible dimensions, because a navy is essentially a Northern institution. You cannot man a navy with slaves or mean whites; it must have a commercial marine behind it, and that the South never had. Our navy ought never again to be inferior in fighting strength to that of England. In that way we shall always avoid war.

As to the plan of defending the Lakes at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, we would ask this question: If the blockade of Wilmington was a task beyond the power of our navy, how would it be able to blockade an estuary from fifty to a hundred miles in width?

With these enlarged canals, by which gunboats and monitors could be moved from the Atlantic and the Mississippi to the Lakes, and _vice versa_, and by the system of shore defences recommended some years ago by General Totten, namely, strong fortifications at Mackinaw, perfectly commanding those straits, and serving as a refuge to war steamers, works at the lower end of Lake Huron, at Detroit, and at the entrance of Niagara River, these waters will be protected from all foreign enemies. Lake Ontario will also need a system of works to protect our important canals and railroads, which in many places approach so near the shore as to be in danger from an enterprising enemy. It is recommended by the Military Committee, that a naval depot should be established at Erie, as the most safe and suitable harbor on the lake of that name.

If, as is probable, a naval station and depot should be thought necessary on the Upper Lakes, the city of Milwaukee has strong claims to be chosen for its site. There is the best and safest harbor on Lake Michigan, so situated as to be easily defended, in the midst of a heavily timbered country, accessible to the iron and copper of Lake Superior and the coal of Illinois. Milwaukee enjoys one of the cheapest markets for food, together with a very healthy climate. Finally, she is connected by rail with the great Western centres of population, so that all the necessary troops for her defence could be gathered about her at twenty-four hours' notice.

It may be well here to remark, that as yet the Northwest has had little assistance from the General Government. Large sums of money have annually been laid out in the defences of the seaboard, both North and South, while this immense Lake region has had the annual appropriation of one eighteen pounder! Every small river and petty inlet on the Southern coast, whence a bale of cotton or a barrel of turpentine could be shipped, has had its fort; while the important post of Mackinaw, the Gibraltar of the Lakes, is garrisoned by an invalid sergeant, who sits solitary on its ruinous walls.

The result at which we arrive is, that these canal enlargements would at once be valuable, both as commercial and military works. They have a national importance, in that they will assist in feeding and defending the nation. The States interested in them have a population of ten millions, they have seventy-one representatives in Congress, and they have furnished fully one half the fighting-men who have gone to defend our flag and protect our nationality in the field. How that work has been done, let the victorious campaigns of Grant and Sherman attest. Those great leaders are Western men, and their invincible columns, who, from Belmont to Savannah, have, like Cromwell's Ironsides, "never met an enemy whom they have not broken in pieces," are men of Western birth or training.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] See Nos. for February and March, 1861,--Vol. VII. pp. 226, 313.

TO CAROLINA CORONADO.

A lily anchored by the Spanish main,
Swaying and shining in the surge of youth,
Yet holding in thy breast the gold of truth,--

Such didst thou seem above the waves of pain,
And through the stormy turbulence of war,
Until we heard thy patriot voice afar!

Now, Sister, with the burning heart of Spain,
We speak to thee from this New England strand,
And grasp and hold thee with a firm right hand!

For thou hast touched our people with thy word,--
Only a gentle woman's word, but one
With the great work our Nation has begun.

By Liberty thy earnest soul was stirred,
And waked and urged Estremadura's men
To pour the heroic wine of life again.

As in the dawn of Summer flits a bird
From his low nest and springs into the air,
Hurrying a double concert and a prayer,--

So Liberty, with thy sweet voice allied,
Walks in thy footsteps, with her laurel strows
Thy footway, with thy trustful spirit glows.

Esteem her friendship with unwavering pride!
Teach thou thy children what the years have brought,
Wisdom and love superior to thy thought!

Once thou hast said, "All men may win her side,
But women never!" Sister, do not fear,
Recall thy words, since Love has made truth clear.

For Love is master, and we know no other,
Save self-compelling service to the right,
Which is but Love in the seraphic sight.

Teach this thy sons and to each man thy brother,--
A secret learned in silent joys of home,
A secret whence the lights of being come.

So guided by this lamp, O wife and mother,
Turn thine eyes hither to the Western shore,
Where red streams run and iron thunders roar!

We watch the star of Freedom slowly rise
And glimmer through the changes of the time,
While errors beat their low retreating chime.

We ask for nought, we need not to be wise,
We find both men and women at their post,
Equal and different in one mighty host.

Divided suffering, unity of cries,--
Divided labor, unity of life,--
Divided struggle, one reward for strife.

As autumn winds sweep over tossing seas
And reach the happy shore, and fling the flowers
And lower each gorgeous head by their rude powers,--

So sweep the winds of war through quiet leas
And bend our budding treasures in the dust,
Yet Freedom's cause shall neither mar nor rust.

The seed shall spring where none can thirst or freeze,
Shall bear a floweret fairer than the old,
As lilies shine before all blossoms told:

A liberty for woman in her home,
Bound by the only chains which give her peace,--
Immortal chains which death may not release:

A liberty where Justice wide may roam,
And Reverence sit the chief at every feast,
With Love as master, and Contempt as least:

A liberty where the oppressed may come,
The black and white, the woman and the man,
And recognize themselves in Heaven's wide plan

Then while the morning odors of the sea
Blow from the westward and caress thy brow,
Remember where thy loving sisters bow:

Perchance beneath the hand of Victory,
Which leaves a tear and then a silentness,
While crowds move by forgetful of one less;

Or where a burst of gracious ecstasy
Rising shall fill the eastward flitting air,
And with thy spirit mount the hills of prayer.

REGNARD.

Since, in modern literature, there are so few really good comedies that we may count them all upon our fingers, a man who has written two must be worth knowing. We ask permission to introduce Jean Francois Regnard to those who do not know him.

He comes recommended by the great critic Boileau, who liked him, quarrelled with him, and made up again. Forty years later, Voltaire wrote that the man who did not enjoy Regnard was not capable of appreciating Moliere. Then came M. de La Harpe, the authority in such matters for two generations: he devotes a chapter to Regnard, and calls him the worthy successor of Moliere. And Beranger, in his charming autobiography, an epilogue worthy of the noble part he had played upon the stage of the world, speaks of the unflagging gayety and abundant wit of Regnard's dialogue, and of his lively and graceful style. "In my opinion," he adds, "Regnard would be the first of modern comedians, if Moliere had not been given to us."

In spite of the idle complainings into which authors are betrayed by the pleasure human nature takes in talking about self to attentive listeners, all who are familiar with the history of the brethren of the quill know, that, as a class, they have had a large share of the good things of the earth,--cheerful occupation, respected position, comfortable subsistence, and long life. France, in particular, has been the _Pays de Cocagne_ of book-makers for the last two hundred years. Neither praise, pay, nor rank has been wanting to those who deserved them. But in the long line of _litterateurs_ who have flourished since Cardinal Richelieu founded the Academy, few were so fortunate as Regnard. He entered upon his career with wealth, health, and a jovial temperament: three supreme blessings he kept through life.

He was born in Paris in 1655, three years before Moliere brought his company from the provinces to the Hotel de Bourbon, and opened the new theatre with the "Precieuses Ridicules." Regnard's father, a citizen of Paris and a shopkeeper, died when his son was a lad, leaving him one hundred and twenty thousand livres,--a fortune for a man of the middle class at that period. Like most independent young fellows, Regnard made use of his money to travel. He went to Italy, and spent a year in the famous cities of the Peninsula,--but returned home with thirty thousand additional livres in his pocket, won at play. He soon went back to the land of pleasure and of luck. At Bologna he fell in love with a lady from the South of France, whom he calls Elvire. The lady was married, the husband was with her; they were travellers like himself. Regnard joined the party, and sailed with them from Civita Vecchia in an English ship bound for Toulon. The vessel was captured, off Nice, by a Barbary corsair, and brought into Algiers; the crew and passengers were sold to the highest bidder. One Achmet Talem paid fifteen hundred livres for Regnard, and one thousand for the lady. This low price might lead us to imagine that the Moorish taste in beauty differed from that of Regnard; but the Algerine market may have been overstocked with women on the day of sale. Achmet took his new chattels to Constantinople. Perceiving Regnard's talent for _ragouts_ and sauces, he made a cook of him. What became of Elvire history has omitted, perhaps discreetly, to relate. After two years of toil and ill-treatment, Regnard received money from home to buy his freedom. He paid twelve thousand livres for himself and the fair Provencale. Achmet more than quadrupled his investment, and no doubt thought slavery a divine institution.

In Paris once more, Regnard hung his chains in his library and was preparing to lead a comfortable life with Elvire, when the superfluous husband, whose death had been reported, most unseasonably reappeared. He had been ransomed by the Mathurins, a religious order, who believed it to be the duty of Christians to deliver their fellow-men from bondage,--Abolitionists of the seventeenth century, who, strange as some of us may think it, were honored by their countrymen and the Christian world. Regnard yielded gracefully the right he had acquired by purchase to the prior claim of the husband, and made preparations for another journey. With two compatriots, De Fercourt and De Corberon, he traversed the Low Countries and Denmark and crossed over to Stockholm. The King of Sweden received the travellers graciously and proposed a visit to Lapland. Furnished with the royal letters of recommendation, they sailed up the Gulf of Bothnia to Torneo, and thence pushed north by land until they came to Lake Tornoetrask. Eighteen miles from the lower end of the lake they ascended a high mountain which they named Metavara, "from the Latin word _meta_ and the Finlandic word _vara_, which means rock: that is to say, the rock of limits." "We were four hours in climbing to the top by paths which no mortal had as yet known. When we reached it, we perceived the whole extent of Lapland, and the Icy Ocean as far as the North Cape, on the side it turns to the west. This may, indeed, be called arriving at the end of the world and jostling the axle of the pole (_se frotter a l'essieu du pole_)." Here they set up a tablet of stone they had brought with their luggage,--_monument eternel_, Regnard says. "It shall make known to posterity that three Frenchmen did not cease to travel northward until the earth failed them; that, in spite of the difficulties they encountered, which would have turned back most others, they reached the end of the world and planted their column; the ground was wanting, but not the courage to press on." These sounding verses were cut upon the eternal monument:--

"Gallia nos genuit; vidit nos Africa; Gangem
Hausimus, Europamque oculis lustravimus omnem;
Casibus et variis acti terraque marique,
Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis.
De Fercourt, De Corberon, Regnard.
Anno 1681, die 22 Augusti."

"The inscription will never be read, except by the bears," Regnard adds. A melancholy thought to the French mind! If nobody saw it or talked about it, half the pleasure of the exploit was gone. The Frenchmen had foreseen this difficulty, and had taken their precautions. Four days' journey to the southward stood an ancient church, near which the Lapps held their annual fair. In this church, in a conspicuous position, they had already deposited the same verses, carved upon a board. In 1718, thirty-six years after, another French traveller, La Motraye, read the lines upon the stone tablet,--too late to gratify Regnard.

"Travellers' stories,"--"_A beau mentir qui vient de loin_,"--these proverbs date from the seventeenth century. It was not expected of such adventurous gentlemen that they should tell the simple truth, any more than we expect veracity from sportsmen. We listen without surprise and disbelieve without a smile. Some exaggeration, too, was pardonable to help out the verse; but "_nobis ubi defuit orbis_" goes beyond a reasonable license. The mountain _Metavara_ is in Lat. 68 deg. 30'; the North Cape in 71 deg. 10'. There were still one hundred and fifty miles of solid _orbis_ before Regnard and his friends; and they had need of optics sharp to see the Cape from the spot they stood upon.

The 27th of September found the three Arctic explorers back again in Stockholm. Thence they took boat for Dantzic, travelled in Poland, Hungary, and Austria, and left Vienna for Paris a few months before the famous siege, when Sobieski, the "man sent from God whose name was John," routed the Turks and delivered Christendom forever from the fear of the Ottoman arms.

Before this time Regnard must have heard that Duquesne had avenged his African sufferings. In the autumn of 1681 the Huguenot Admiral shelled Algiers from bomb-ketches, then used for the first time. The Dey was forced to surrender. His lively conquerors treated him with the honors of wit as well as of war. They made a _mot_ for him, of the kind they get up so cleverly in Paris. When the Turk is told how much it had cost the great monarch of France to fit out the fleet which had just reduced a part of his city to ashes, he exclaims, amazed at the useless extravagance,--"For half the money I would have burned the whole town."

Cervantes was a slave in Algiers a hundred years before Regnard, and no doubt used his experience in the story of the Captive in "Don Quixote." Regnard also worked his African materials up into a tale,--"La Provencale,"--and varnished them with the sentimentality fashionable in his day. Zelmis (himself) is a conquering hero; women adore him. He is full of courage, resources, and devotion to one only,--Elvire,--who is beautiful as a dream, and dignified as the wife of a Roman Senator. The King of Algiers is on the quay when the captives are brought ashore. He falls in love with Elvire on the spot, and adds her to his collection. But his passion is respectful and pure. Aided by Zelmis, she escapes from the harem. They are retaken and brought back; but instead of the whipping usually bestowed upon returned runaways, the generous king, despairing of winning Elvire's affections, gives her her liberty. In the mean time Zelmis has had his troubles. His master has four wives, beautiful as houris. All four cast eyes of flame upon the well-favored infidel. Faithful to Elvire, Zelmis of course defends himself as heroically as Joseph. The ladies revenge the slight in the same way as the wife of Potiphar. The attractive Frenchman is condemned to impalement, when his consul interferes with a ransom, and he is released just in time to embark for France with Elvire.

Although Regnard often alludes with pride to his travels, the sketch he has left of them is meagre and uninteresting, and written in a harsh and awkward style. Lapland was a _terra incognita_,--Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia not much better known; yet this clever young Parisian has little to relate beyond a few names, which he generally misspells or misplaces. No descriptions of town or country or scenery; no traits of manners, character, or customs, except a dull page on the sorcery and the funeral ceremonies of the Lapps. The only eminent man he notices is Evelius, the astronomer of Dantzic,--one of the foreign _savans_ of distinction on whom Louis XIV. bestowed pensions in his grand manner, omitting to pay them after the second year. Regnard seems to have written to let his countrymen know where he had been,--not to tell them what he had seen. Had he made ever so good a book out of his really remarkable journey, little notice would have been taken of it. Voyages and travels were looked upon as a dull branch of fiction,--not nearly so amusing or improving as cockney excursions from one town of France to another in the neighborhood, described after the manner of Bachaumont and Chapelle: not sentimental journeys, by any means; eating, drinking, and sleeping are the points of interest:--

"Bon vin, bon gite, bon lit,
Belle hotesse, bon appetit."

Even Regnard, who had seen so much of the world, tried his hand at this kind of travel-writing and failed lamentably.

At thirty, Regnard closed a chapter in his life, and turned over a new leaf. He gave up wandering and gambling, the ruling passions of his youth, and settled himself comfortably for the rest of his days. For occupation and official position, he bought an assistant-treasurership in the _Bureau des Finances_. His house in the Rue Richelieu became famous for good company and good things, intellectual as well as material. In the country his _Terre de Grillon_ was planted with so much taste that the lively persons who liked to visit there called it a _Sejour enchante_. In laying out his grounds, his intimate, Dufresny, was doubtless of use to him. This spendthrift poet, reputed great-grandson of Henri Quatre and the _belle jardiniere_, had great skill in landscape gardening, admitted even by those who found his verses tedious. He it was, probably, who introduced Regnard to the stage. For several years they supplied the Theatre Italien with amusing trifles,--working together in one of those literary partnerships so common among French playwrights. The "Joueur" broke up this business connection. Dufresny accused Regnard of having stolen the plot from him, and brought out a "Joueur" of his own. Regnard insisted that Dufresny was the pirate. The public decided in favor of Regnard. Dufresny's play was hopelessly damned, and no appeal ever taken from the first sentence. The verdict of the _bel-esprits_ was recorded in an epigram, which ended thus:--

"Mais quiconque aujourd'hui voit l'un et l'autre ouvrage
Dit que Regnard a l'avantage
D'avoir ete le 'bon larron.'"[F]

Dufresny had more wit than dramatic talent. He will live in the memories of married men for his famous speech,--

"Comment, Monsieur! Vous n'y etiez pas oblige."

It was in 1696, twelve years after his return to Paris, that Regnard sent the "Joueur," a comedy in five acts, and in verse, to the Theatre Francais. It was received with enthusiastic applause. Nothing equal to it had appeared in twenty-four years since the death of the great master; nor did the eighteenth century produce any comedy which can be compared with it for action, wit, and literary finish,--not excepting the "Turcaret" of Le Sage, and Beaumarchais's "Barber of Seville," which are both better known to-day.

Regnard sat to himself for the portrait of Valere. The wild and fascinating excitement of play, the gambler's exultation when he is successful, his furious curses on his bad luck when he loses, his superstitious veneration for his winnings, are drawn from the life. When Fortune smiles, Valere neglects Angelique, his rich _fiancee_; when he is penniless, his love revives, and he is at her feet until his valet devises some new plan of raising money. He swears, if she will forgive him, never again to touch dice or cards, and five minutes afterward pledges for a thousand crowns a miniature set in diamonds she has just given him to bind their reconciliation, and hurries back to the gaming-table. He wins, but thinks his gains too sacred to pay away, even to redeem the portrait of Angelique.

"Rien ne porte malheur comme de payer ses dettes,"

is his answer to the prudent Hector,--a maxim current among many who never play. At last comes a reverse of fortune so sweeping that he cannot conceal it. Angelique might have forgiven him his broken promises, but the pawnbroker enters with her picture and demands the thousand crowns. This is too much. She rejects him and gives her hand to his rival. His indignant father casts him off forever. But no feeling of regret or of repentance arises in the mind of the gambler. He turns coolly upon his heel, and calls to his valet,--

"Va! va! consolons-nous, Hector,--et quelque jour
Le Jeu m'acquittera des pertes de l'amour."

Richard is the name of this prince of rascally and quick-witted valets; but he calls himself Hector, after the knave of spades, because he serves a gambler. He has good sense as well as ingenuity; for he gives his master the best advice, while he strains his invention and his impudence to help him on to destruction. Nerine, maid to Angelique, declares open war against Valere, and vows that her mistress shall not throw herself away upon a silly dandy, an insipid puppet, with nothing to recommend him but his fine clothes and his swagger.

"True enough," laughs Hector, "but

"C'est le gout d'a present; tes cris sont superflus,
Mon enfant."

"And Valere is a spendthrift, an inveterate gambler, who will bring her to misery and want."

"What of that?

"Tant que tu voudras, parle, preche, tempete,
Ta maitresse est coiffee,...
Elle est dans nos filets."

"And such an outrageous _roue_ that he cannot live in his father's house."

"We do not deny it," Hector answers. "It is no fault of ours.

"Valere a deserte la maison paternelle,
Mais ce n'est point a lui qu'il faut faire querelle;
Et si Monsieur son pere avait voulu sortir,
Nous y serions encore;...
Ces peres, bien souvent, sont obstines en diable."

Nevertheless, the obdurate parent, in the hope of reforming his son, and of providing for him by the excellent match with Angelique, hunts up the prodigal and lectures him after the manner of fathers. Hector joins in, and expresses strongly his disapprobation of games of chance; "_les jeux innocents, ou l'esprit se deploie_," are the only safe pastime.

"But will our father pay our debts this time?"

"Not a crown."

"Will he lend us the money at one per cent a month? Once out of this pecuniary strait, we can marry Angelique, and be rich and virtuous. Besides, we have assets as well as debts: here is our schedule."

The elder softens a little and takes the paper. At the head of the list of debts he finds Hector's bill for wages and services rendered, leading off a long file of Aarons and Levys; and the assets consist of a debt of honor owing by an officer killed at the Battle of Fleurus, and the good-will of a match at _tric-trac_ with a poor player who had already lost games enough to make his defeat certain.

The action of the comedy does not lag or limp from the opening scene to Valere's last words. The versification is easy and natural; the dialogue abounds in wit and comic humor; it is short and quick, with none of those tedious declamations which weary and unsettle the attention of an audience. Take it all in all, we may say, that, if Moliere had chosen the same subject, he could hardly have handled it better.

Not that Regnard can pretend to rank with Moliere in genius, or even near him. The "Gambler" is admirably done; but it is the only comedy in which Regnard attempted character. He drew from his experience. Moliere was so skilful a moral anatomist that he required only a whim or a weakness to construct a consistent character. This wonderful man found the French comic stage occupied by a few stock personages, imported from Spain and Italy. The elders were fathers or uncles, rich, miserly, and perverse, instinctively disposed to keep a tight rein on the young people, of whose personal expenses and matrimonial projects they invariably disapproved. The persecuted juniors were all alike, colorless shadows, mere lay figures to hang a plot on: _Leandre, amant de Celimene; Celimene amante de Leandre_: helpless creatures, who would have been quite at the mercy of the old dragons of the story, were it not for the powerful assistance of the rascally soubrettes. These clever sinners abounded in cunning contrivances, disguises, and tricks, which resulted in the signal discomfiture of the parents and guardians. In the last act, they are forced to consent to all the marriages, and are cheated out of most of their property; they are even lucky to escape with their lives. There was no mercy for Age in those plays.

"Pluck the lined crutch from the old limping sire;
With it beat out his brains."

The theatre was the temple of youth, of love, and of feasting. Away with the dull old people! Providence created them only to pay the bills.

"Fuyez d'ici, sombre vieillesse,--
Car en amour les vieillards ne sont bons
Qu'a payer les violons."

Did gentlemen of a certain age go to the theatre in the seventeenth century? expend their money to see themselves abused and ridiculed? Did they laugh at these indignities and enjoy them? We might wonder, if we did not know that Frenchmen never grow old, so long as they have an eye left for ogling or a leg to caper with.

Moliere took these old inhabitants of the stage into his service, and injected new life into their veins. He gave them the foibles, the follies, and the vices he saw about him, and made them speak in a new language of unrivalled wit, humor, and mirth. But his genius was shackled by the artificial conventions of the theatre, which did not allow him time or space to fully develop a character. A grand comic creation like Falstaff was impossible. He introduces a single propensity of mankind, exhibits it in all its relations to society, shows it to us on every side; but it remains only a trait of character, although we see it in half a dozen different lights. Tartuffe is the one exception; in him, hypocrisy hides covetousness and lust; and Tartuffe is Moliere's masterpiece. But in most of his comedies he displays rather a knowledge of the world than a knowledge of human nature. In his walk he has no equal at home or abroad; but his walk is not the highest. We feel that something is wanting, and yet we can hardly extol him too highly. He brought comedy into close relation with every-day life; he is the father of the modern French stage, which has gradually cast off the old conventional personages. The French dramatists of to-day are not men of genius like Moliere, but, in their airy, sparkling plays, they represent the freaks, follies, and fancies of society so exquisitely that nothing remains to be desired. They furnish the model and the materials for the theatre of all other nations.

When Regnard came before the public, the stage remained as Moliere had left it The only new personage was the Marquis, first introduced in the "Mere Coquette," by Quinault, the sweet and smooth writer of operas,--of whom it was said, that he had boned (_desosse_) the French language. The Marquis is the ancestor of our Fop,--

"Loose in morals and in manners vain,
In conversation frivolous, in dress extreme,"--

who in turn has become antiquated and tiresome. Regnard's only original character is the Gambler; in his other comedies he made use of the old, familiar masks, and won success by his keen sense of the ridiculous, his wit, and his unceasing jollity and fun. His Crispins and Scapins are perfect. What impudent, worthless, amusing rogues! To keep inside of the law is their only rule of right. "Honesty is a fool, and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman." They came of an ancient race, these Crispins and Scapins, that had flourished in Italy and in Spain since Plautus and Terence brought them over from Greece. They found their way to France, and even reached England in their migration, following in the train of Charles II. when he returned from exile, and during a short life on that side of the Channel added drunkenness and brutality to their gayer vices. The character was true to Nature in Athens or in Rome, where men of talent might often be bound to devote their brains to the service of those who owned their bodies, and by their condition as slaves were released from all obligations of honor or of honesty. In the seventeenth century it might pass in France; for the line between gentle and simple was so sharply drawn that ladies of rank saw no greater impropriety in disrobing before their footmen than before their dogs. But the progress of liberty or of _egalite_ blotted out the valets of comedy. Even in Regnard's time the inconsistencies of the character were noticed. Jasmin, in the "Serenade," utters revolutionary doctrine:--"How can an honorable valet devote himself to the interests of a penniless master? We grow tricky in waiting upon such fellows. They scold us; sometimes they beat us. We have more wit than they. We support them; we are obliged to invent, for their benefit, all sorts of knavery, in which they are always ready to take a share; and, withal, they are the masters, and we the servants. It is not just. Hereafter I mean to scheme for myself, and become a master in my turn."

Scapin has joined his brother pagans beyond the Styx; but Lisette blooms in evergreen youth. This young French person's theory of woman's rights is different from the one which obtains in New England; nor does she trouble herself at all to seek for woman's mission. She found it years ago. It is to deceive a man. She is satisfied with her condition, and with the old mental and moral attributes of her sex. When Crispin disguises himself in her clothes, he exclaims,--

"L'addresse et l'artifice ont passe dans mon coeur;
Qu'on a sous cet habit et d'esprit et de ruse--
Rien n'est si trompeur qu'animal porte-jupe."

This animal is as clever and as cunning in Paris to-day as when Crispin felt the inspiration of the petticoats.

In 1708, after another period of twelve years, "Le Legataire Universel" was played at the same theatre. In this piece the author relied entirely upon the _vis comica_ of his plot and dialogue. Geronte, a rich, miserly old bachelor, with as many ailments as years,--

"Vieux et casse, fievreux, epileptique,
Paralytique, etique, asthmatique, hydropique,"--

has for a nephew Ergaste, with well-grounded hopes of inheriting, and that shortly. These are suddenly dashed by the announcement that his uncle has resolved to marry Isabelle, a girl to whom Ergaste himself is attached. The nephew keeps his own secret, and judiciously commends the choice of his uncle. Geronte is delighted with him; even asks his advice about a present for the damsel,--something pretty, but cheap.

"Je voudrais inventer quelque petit cadeau
Qui coutat peu, mais qui parut nouveau."

Meeting with no opposition, the old gentleman gradually loses his relish for matrimony; and Madame Argante, the mother, promises Ergaste to give Isabelle to him, instead of to his uncle, provided Geronte will declare his nephew heir to his estate. Unluckily, there are two other collaterals, country cousins, whom Geronte has never seen, but whom he wishes to remember. Crispin, valet to Ergaste, assisted by Lisette, the old man's housekeeper and nurse, personifies first the male and then the female relative from the rural districts so well that Geronte orders them out of his house in disgust, swears that he will not leave them a sous, and sends for a notary to draw his will in favor of Ergaste. But the excitement of the last interview with Crispin, as a widow, is too much for his strength. He becomes unconscious, and apparently breathes his last just as the notary knocks at the door. In this moment of agonizing disappointment, the indomitable Crispin comes to the rescue. He puts on the dressing-gown and cap of Geronte, reclines in his easy-chair, counterfeits his voice, and dictates a will to the notary. Firstly, he bequeaths to Lisette two thousand crowns, on condition that she marry Crispin; secondly, he leaves to Crispin an annuity of fifteen hundred crowns, to reward his devotion to his master; the rest of the estate, real and personal, to go to Ergaste. The residuary legatee remonstrates warmly with the testator against his foolish generosity to Crispin and Lisette; but the sham Geronte insists, and Ergaste is obliged to submit. The notary withdraws to make the necessary copies of the will, and the plotters are chuckling over the success of their plans, when, to their dismay, Geronte enters, alive. He tells them that he feels his strength departing, and bids them send at once for the notary to settle his worldly affairs. The notary, who is ignorant of any deceit, assures him that he has made his will already, and shows him the document. The conspirators seize the chance of escape, confirm the notary's story, and relate all the circumstances of the conference, Geronte protests that he recollects nothing of it; he feels certain he could not have given more than twenty crowns to Lisette; as to Crispin, he had never heard of him. The answer is always, "_C'est votre lethargie_." While perplexed and hesitating, the old man discovers that a large sum in notes has been abstracted from his hoard. Ergaste had secured them as an alleviation in case of the worst, and had placed them in the hands of Isabelle. She promises to return them, if Geronte will make Ergaste his heir and her husband. In his anxiety for his money, Geronte consents to everything, and allows the will to stand.

Nothing, La Harpe tells us, ever made a French audience laugh so heartily as the scene of the will. Falbaire, one of the _poetes negliges_ of the eighteenth century, says, in a note to his drama, "The Monks of Japan," that the Jesuits furnished Regnard with the idea of this scene. In 1626, the reverend fathers, by precisely the same stratagem employed by Crispin, obtained possession of the estate of a M. d'Ancier of Besancon, who died suddenly and intestate. It is proper to add that M. Falbaire's drama was written against the Jesuits.

There are two other plays, out of some twenty that Regnard published, which will repay a reader: "Les Menechmes," imitated from Plautus, like Shakspeare's Dromios, and "Democrite,"[G] which reminds one a little of Moliere's "Amphitryon." Both are distinguished for that perpetual gayety, the most pleasing of all qualities, which is the characteristic of their author. It seems impossible for him to be dull; he never nods; his bow, such as it is, is always strung. It is remarkable that his comic scenes, although crammed with fun, never run down into farce; nor does he find it necessary to eke out his wit with buffoonery. He had an instinctive taste which preserved him from coarseness; although he wrote a century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Congreve.

We must admit that Regnard's mantle of decorum is not without a rent. In the "Legataire," as in the "Malade Imaginaire," may be found a good deal of pleasantry on the first of the three principal remedies of the physicians of the period, as mentioned by Moliere in his burlesque Latin:--

"Clysterium donare,
Postea purgare,
Ensuita seignare."

It seems to have been a good joke in France then; it is so now,--wonderfully fresh and new,--defying time and endless repetition. American eyes do not see much fun in it; they rather turn away in disgust. But on the risible organs of the French purgative medicines operate violently; and the favorite weapon of their medical service, primitive in shape and exaggerated in dimensions, is a property indispensable to every theatre. Regnard used it as a part of the stage machinery,--worked it in as a stock pleasantry, the effect of which was certain. Were he writing now, he would do the same thing. But in the "Joueur" nobody is ill; it may be read by that typical creature, the "most virtuous female," publicly and without a blush.

Gentlemen and ladies whose morals are not fully fledged are generally advised to beware of attempting to skim over the fiction of modern France. They may take up Regnard without risking a fall; for there is little danger of being led astray by the picaresque knaveries of Scapin and Lisette. In 1700 love for another man's wife had not come to be considered one of the fine arts. Nowadays the victims of this kind of misplaced affection are the heroes of French novels and plays. The husband, odious and tiresome _ex officio_, has succeeded to the miserly father or tyrannical guardian. He is the giant of French romance, who keeps the lovely and uneasy lady locked up in Castle Matrimony. He cannot help himself, poor fellow!--he is compelled to fill that unenviable position, whenever Madame chooses. Sentimental young Arthurs and Ernests stand in the place of Ergaste and Cleante, and are always ready to make war upon the unlucky giant. They overcome him as of old, scale the walls, and carry off the capricious fair one. We have hardly changed for the better. Ergaste and Cleante were not sentimental, but they were marrying men and broke no commandments.

Regnard's life of fifty years covers the whole of the literary age of Louis XIV. Before 1660 the French had no literature worth preserving, except Rabelais, Montaigne, a few odes of Malherbe, a page or two of Marot, and the tragedies of Corneille. Pascal published the "Provincial Letters" in the year of Regnard's birth. La Fontaine had written a few indifferent verses; Moliere was almost unknown. In 1686, when Regnard became an author, the Voitures, Balzacs, and Benserades, the men of fantastic conceits, the vanguard of the grand army of French wits, had marched away to Pluto and to Lethe. One or two stragglers, like Menage and Chapelle, lingered to wonder at the complete change of taste. The age had ripened fast. Not many years before, Barbin the bookseller ordered his hacks to _faire du St. Evremond_. St. Evremond was still living in England, dirty and witty; and Barbin still kept his shop, but gave no more orders for wares of that description. Many of the greatest names of the era were already carved on tombs: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Corneille, Moliere. Bossuet was a man of sixty; La Fontaine a few years older; Boileau and Racine close upon fifty. When Regnard died, in 1710, the eighteenth century had begun. Fontenelle, Le Sage, Bayle, men of nearly the same age as himself, belong to it.

In 1686 King Louis had reached the full meridian of his _Gloire_, _Grandeur_, _Eclat_. No monarch in Europe was so powerful. He had conquered Flanders, driven the Dutch under water, seized Franche-Comte, annexed Lorraine, ravaged the Palatinate, bombarded Algiers and Genoa, and by a skilful disregard of treaties and of his royal word kept his neighbors at swords' points until he was ready to destroy them. The Emperor was afraid of him, Philip of Spain his most humble servant, Charles II. in his pay. He had bullied the Pope, and brought the Doge of Genoa to Paris to ask pardon for selling powder to the Algerines and ships to Spain. He was _Louis le Grand, le roi vraiment roi, le demi-dieu qui nous gouverne, Deodatus, Sol nec pluribus impar_. Regnard witnessed the cloudy setting of this splendid luminary. After the secret marriage with Mme. de Maintenon, in 1686, Fortune deserted the King. He was everywhere defeated, or his victories were Cadmean, as disastrous as defeats. The fleet that was to replace James II. on his throne was destroyed at La Hogue by Russell. The Camisards defied for years the army sent against them. Rooke took Gibraltar. Peterborough defeated the Bourbon forces in Spain. Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramillies, Malplaquet, brought ruin upon France before Regnard was withdrawn from the scene.

Meanwhile the Eighteenth Century, with its godlessness and its debauchery, was born. Hypocrisy watched over its infancy. When Louis reformed, and took a pious elderly second wife, it was the fashion to be religious; and whoever wished to stand well at court followed the fashion. "You who live in France have wonderful advantages for saving your souls," wrote St. Evremond from London. "Vice is quite out of date with you. It is in bad taste to sin,--as offensive to good manners as to morality. And those of you who might be forgetful of their hereafter are led to salvation by a becoming deference to the habits and observances of well-bred people." The monarch himself was utterly ignorant in matters of religion; the Duchess of Orleans wrote to her German friends, that he had never even read the Bible. He was shocked to hear that Christ had demeaned himself to speak the language of the poor and the humble. "_Il avait la foi du charbonnier_," Cardinal Fleury said,--the blind, unreasoning faith of the African in his fetich. He considered it due to _gloire_ to assist Divine Providence in its government of the souls of men. Was he not the greatest prince of the earth, the eldest son of the Church, standing nearer to the throne of grace than any insignificant pope? Of course he was responsible for the orthodoxy of his subjects, a _demi-dieu qui nous gouverne_. He came to think religion a part of his royal prerogative, and misbelief treason against his royal person. He was quite capable of going a step beyond Cardinal Wolsey, and of writing, "_Ego et Deus meus_." He said to a prelate whose management of some ecclesiastical business particularly gratified him,--"_J'ignore si Dieu vous tiendra compte de la conduite que vous avez tenue; mais quant a moi, je vous assure que je ne l'oublierai jamais_." The spiritual powers are never backward in taking advantage of favorable circumstances: Huguenots, Jansenists, and Quietists were sternly put down, and the girdle of superstition tightened until it began to crack. The skeptics were quiet,--asked but few questions,--pretended to be satisfied with the time-honored answers Mother Church keeps for her uneasy children,--and seemed to be busy with the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes," and the "Dispute sur les Ceremonies Chinoises." It was not yet the time for them to announce pompously their radical theories as new and true. A thin varnish of decorum and orthodoxy overspread everything; but one may see the shadow of the coming _Regence_ in Regnard's works. He and gentlemen like him went to mass in the morning, and to pleasure for the rest of the day and night.

"Ils sont chretiens a la messe,
Ils sont paiens a l'opera."

Regnard was almost as much of a pagan as his favorite Horace,--called for wines, roses, and perfumes, and sang his Lydia and his Lalage almost in the same words. His creed and his philosophy were pagan. He adored three goddesses,--_la Comedie_, _la Musique_, _la bonne Chere_; his solution of the problem of life was enjoyment.

"Fair tout ce qu'on veut, vivre exempt de chagrin,
Ne se rien refuser,--Voila tout mon systeme,
Et de mes jours ainsi j'attraperai la fin."