96 THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS Sorry return to promiscuity, in our overheated halts like lupanars, which the clergy is not altogether unreason- able in condemning! Do people gather here simply to study amatory manifestations? In that case, why not freely open training schools for courtesans? Is it for the benefit of the sidewalk traffic, later in the evening, that the public is here being prepared? fresh and stormy winds of Dionysian drama! Aeschy- lus where art thou who wouldst have blushed to represent aught of amorous passion but its crimes and infamies? Do we not, even yet, perceive the heights to which rise those chaste pinnacles of modern art, "Macbeth" and "Athalie?" But why disturb ourselves? Turning our eyes from these summits to the scene before us, we do not feel depression; indeed, we indulge in a hearty laugh. These characters here before us? Why, they are but puppets of comedy, nothing more. And the effort of their mis- guided authors to make them serious and tragic despite their nature has resulted in mere caricature. In more intelligent hands, have not the best of our dramas wherein love is important (but not of the first importance, as in this XXVIII) returned logically and naturally to an indul- gence of smiles? "he Cid," which is the classic type of this sort, is a tragi-comedy, and all the characters sur- rounding Romeo and Juliet are frankly comic. Nevertheless, our blind dramaturgy, with continued obstinacy, still breathes forth its solemnities in this equivo- cal rhythm. Whether the piece treats of sociology, of politics, of religion, of questions of art, of the title to a succession, of the exploitation of mines, of the invention of a gun, of the discovery of a chemical product, of it mat- ters not what --a love story it must have; there is no escape. Savants, revolutionists, poets, priests or generals present themselves to us only to fall immediately to love- making or match-making. It becomes a mania. And we are asked to take these tiresome repetitions seriously! This, then, is the actual stage of today. In my opinion, de Chirac alone has shown himself its courageously logical
