Part 22

"You have repented and suffered enough, and you have worked and wept and expiated enough, too, my poor Claudie," he says. Through all this she has become worthy to make an excellent marriage. It is a case of that special moral code by which, after free love, the fault must be recompensed.

Claudie is later on the Jeannine of the Idees de Madame Aubray, the Denise of Alexandre Dumas. She is the unmarried mother, whose misfortunes have not crushed her pride, who, after being outraged, has a right now to a double share of respect. The first good young man is called upon to accept her past life, for there is a law of solidarity in the world. The human species is divided into two categories, the one is always busy doing harm, and the other is naturally obliged to give itself up to making good the harm done.

The Mariage de Victorine belongs to a well-known kind of literary exercise, which was formerly very much in honour in the colleges. This consists in taking a celebrated work at the place where the author has left it and in imagining the "sequel." For instance, after the Cid, there would be the marriage of Rodrigue and Chimene for us. As a continuation of L'Ecole des Femmes, there is the result of the marriage of the young Horace with the tiresome little Agnes. Corneille gave a sequel to the Menteur himself. Fabre d'Eglantine wrote the sequel to Le Misanthrope, and called it Le Philinte de Moliere. George Sand gives us here the sequel of Sedaine's chef-d'oeuvre (that is, a chef-d'oeuvre for Sedaine), Le Philosophe sans le savor.

In Le Philosophe sans le savoir Monsieur Vanderke is a nobleman, who has become a merchant in order to be in accordance with the ideas of the times. He is a Frenchman, but he has taken a Dutch name out of snobbishness. He has a clerk or a confidential servant named Antoine. Victorine is Antoine's daughter. Vanderke's son is to fight a duel, and from Victorine's emotion, whilst awaiting the result of this duel, it is easy to see that she is in love with this young man. George Sand's play turns on the question of what is to be done when the day comes for Victorine to marry. An excellent husband is found for her, a certain Fulgence, one of Monsieur Vanderke's clerks. He belongs to her own class, and this is considered one of the indispensable conditions for happiness in marriage. He loves her, so that everything seems to favour Victorine. We are delighted, and she, too, seems to be in good spirits, but, all the time that she is receiving congratulations and presents, we begin to see that she has some great trouble.

"Silk and pearls!" she exclaims; "oh, how heavy they are, but I am sure that they are very fine. Lace, too, and silver; oh, such a quantity of silver. How rich and fine and happy I shall be. And then Fulgence is so fond of me." (She gets sadder and sadder.) "And father is so pleased. How strange. I feel stifled." (She sits down in Antoine's chair.) "Is this joy? . . . I feel . . . Ah, it hurts to be as happy as this. . . ." She bursts into tears. This suppressed emotion to which she finally gives vent, and this forced smile which ends in sobs are very effective on the stage. The question is, how can Victorine's tears be dried? She wants to marry young Vanderke, the son of her father's employer, instead of the clerk. The only thing is, then, to arrange this marriage.

"Is it a crime, then, for my brother to love Victorine?" asks Sophie, "and is it mad of me to think that you will give your consent?"

"My dear Sophie," replies Monsieur Vanderke, "there are no unequal marriages in the sight of God. A servitor like Antoine is a friend, and I have always brought you up to consider Victorine as your companion and equal."

This is the way the father of the family speaks. Personally, I consider him rather imprudent.

As this play is already a sequel to another one, I do not wish to propose a sequel to Le Mariage de Victorine, but I cannot help wondering what will happen when Vanderke's son finds himself the son-in-law of an old servant-man, and also what will occur if he should take his wife to call on some of his sister's friends. It seems to me that he would then find out he had, made a mistake. Among the various personages, only one appears to me quite worthy of interest, and that is poor Fulgence, who was so straightforward and honest, and who is treated so badly.

But how deep Victorine was! Even if we admit that she did not deliberately scheme and plot to get herself married by the son of the family, she did instinctively all that had to be done for that. She was very deep in an innocent way, and I have come to the conclusion that such deepness is the most to be feared.

I see quite well all that is lacking in these pieces, and that they are not very great, but all the same they form a "theatre" apart. There is unity in this theatrical work of George Sand. Whether it makes a hero of the natural son, rehabilitates the seduced girl, or cries down the idea of mesalliances, it is always the same fight in which it is engaged; it is always fighting against the same enemies, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. On the stage, we call every opinion contrary to our own prejudice or narrow-mindedness. The theatre lives by fighting. It matters little what the author is attacking. He may wage war with principles, prejudices, giants, or windmills. Provided that there be a battle, there will be a theatre for it.

The fact that George Sand's theatre was the forerunner of the theatre of Dumas fils gives it additional value. We have already noticed the analogy of situations and the kinship of theories contained in George Sand's best plays and in the most noted ones by Dumas. I have no doubt that Dumas owed a great deal to George Sand. We shall see that he paid his debt as only he could have done. He knew the novelist when he was quite young, as Dumas pere and George Sand were on very friendly terms. In her letter telling Sainte-Beuve not to take Musset to call on her, as she thought him impertinent, she tells him to bring Dumas pere, whom she evidently considered well bred. As she was a friend of his father's, she was like a mother for the son. The first letter to him in the Correspondance is dated 1850. Dumas fils was then twenty-six years of age, and she calls him "my son."

He had not written La Dame aux Camelias then. It was performed for the first time in February, 1852. He was merely the author of a few second-rate novels and of a volume of execrable poetry. He had not found out his capabilities at that time. There is no doubt that he was greatly struck by George Sand's plays, imbued as they were with the ideas we have just pointed out.

All this is worthy of note, as it is essential for understanding the work of Alexandre Dumas fils. He, too, was a natural son, and his illegitimate birth had caused him much suffering. He was sent to the Pension Goubaux, and for several years he endured the torture he describes with such harshness at the beginning of L'Affaire Clemenceau. He was exposed to all kinds of insults and blows. His first contact with society taught him that this society was unjust, and that it made the innocent suffer. The first experience he had was that of the cruelty and cowardice of men. His mind was deeply impressed by this, and he never lost the impression. He did not forgive, but made it his mission to denounce the pharisaical attitude of society. His idea was to treat men according to their merits, and to pay them back for the blows he had received as a child.(49) It is easy, therefore, to understand how the private grievances of Dumas fils had prepared his mind to welcome a theatre which took the part of the oppressed and waged war with social prejudices. I am fully aware of the difference in temperament of the two writers. Dumas fils, with his keen observation, was a pessimist. He despised woman, and he advises us to kill her, under the pretext that she has always remained "the strumpet of the land of No." although she may be dressed in a Worth costume and wear a Reboux hat.

(49) See our study of Dumas fils in a volume entitled Portraits d'ecrivains.

As a dramatic author, Alexandre Dumas fils had just what George Sand lacked. He was vigorous, he had the art of brevity and brilliant dialogue. It is thanks to all this that we have one of the masterpieces of the French theatre, Le Marquis de Villemer, as a result of their collaboration.

We know from George Sand's letters the share that Dumas fils had in this work. He helped her to take the play from her novel, and to write the scenario. After this, when once the play was written, he touched up the dialogue, putting in more emphasis and brilliancy. It was Dumas, therefore, who constructed the play. We all know how careless George Sand was with her composition. She wrote with scarcely any plan in her mind beforehand, and let herself be carried away by events. Dumas' idea was that the denouement is a mathematical total, and that before writing the first word of a piece the author must know the end and have decided the action. Theatrical managers complained of the sadness of George Sand's plays. It is to Dumas that we owe the gaiety of the Duc d'Aleria's role. It is one continual flow of amusing speeches, and it saves the piece from the danger of falling into tearful drama. George Sand had no wit, and Dumas fils was full of it. It was he who put into the dialogue those little sayings which are so easily recognized as his.

"What do the doctors say?" is asked, and the reply comes:

"What do the doctors say? Well, they say just what they know: they say nothing."

"My brother declares that the air of Paris is the only air he can breathe," says another character.

"Congratulate him for me on his lungs," remarks his interlocutor.

"Her husband was a baron . . ." remarks some one.

"Who is not a baron at present?" answers another person.

A certain elderly governess is being discussed.

"Did you not know her?"

"Mademoiselle Artemise? No, monsieur."

"Have you ever seen an albatross?"

"No, never."