Ml ■■ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 __ 44 ay--E 7 192-2— 
 
 THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY 
 
 QLA.Y_I»0BBUa3_^IIBGE 
 
 ENTITLED JCHE. -IBQHKL EE ALIS1L _QZ _ ALFEEE. _ GJ1PJIS_ 
 
 IS APPROVED BY ME AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 
 DEGREE OF _ . BACHSLQB - X3E-JLR2S- -III -EBBHCE 
 
 Instructor in Charge 
 
 Approved : 
 
 HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/ironicrealismofaOOburg 
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . 
 
 I wish to express my thanks for the forbearance and 
 aid that Dr. Arthur Hamilton has show me in the prepar- 
 ation of this paper. 
 

 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2ABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter 
 B (DO GRAPHICAL . 
 
 Chapter 
 THE LITERARY NATURE 
 Chapter 
 
 CAPUS AND LUCK. 
 
 Chapter 
 
 CAPUS AND DIVORCE. 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 OF CAPUS. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 CAPUS AND THE NEW WOMAN. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 CAPUS AND HIGH FINANCE. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 ■■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter I 
 Biographical . 
 
 Although his day is near its close, Alfred Capus is 
 perhaps now one of the most enjoyed of the French comic 
 dramati sts .He is not the typical popular dramatist of the 
 day, who folds his tent and silently steals away as soon as 
 the night is upon him. He is not, to use an American compari- 
 son, a man who is as Avery Hopwood,who writes a naughty play 
 or two and then subsides in favor of his more lucky successor 
 who can satisfy the more present wants of the fickle public 
 in a better fashion. He has succeded as few men do in giving 
 the public what it wants.lt has not always been what the crit- 
 ics wanted, but it has got by, and if we are to believe the 
 French Acaderny.it will continue to get by for years to come, 
 for Capus is now one of the immortals. 
 
 Capus is a son of the South. He was born at Aix, 
 Provence, in 1858. His early years wore spent there, and 
 
 after some preliminary schooling at Toulon, he went to Paris 
 at the age of fourteen. Fourteen is a very impressionable age, 
 and the city of light fascinated him. The reupon, he had the 
 ambition ,and who is to say whether it was a lofty one or 
 not, of becoming a true bou'levardier . But this first flush did 
 not prevent him from pursuing his first intentions of be- 
 coming a mining engineer, and he accordingly entered a tech- 
 nical school. But this noble will power seems to have faded, 
 for after a few years of half-hearted study, or so we are led 
 to believe, he failed to get the degree that would make him 
 a full-fledged engineer. 
 
2 
 
 He saw that he had been ?/rong in choosing his life's 
 work, and that practical science was not the field in which he 
 would do his best work. In this he was not alone, for many an- 
 other French author has had the aarne beginning, among whom 
 one may number Maurice Donnay.But the young Capus had the prob 
 lem of earning a living before him, and he followed his inclin- 
 ations. He made his first venture into the field of letters 
 in collaboration with a certain L. Vonoven in a volume of 
 short stories and sketches called Les Konnetes Gens . How 
 successful this attempt was is not known.lt must have been 
 fairly so, for the next year the collaborators had a play, 
 he Mar i rnalgre lui , produced at the Theatre Gluny. 
 
 This literary seems soon to have dissolved , for Capus 
 spent the next three years in looking for a permanent posi- 
 tion. When one spends that length of time in looking for 
 something to give a livelihood , he is pretty sure to reach 
 grievous straits before long. He knew all the experiences of 
 the struggling young author. We do not know whether he lived 
 in a garret in the conventional fashion or not, or whether 
 he subsisted on rye bread and onions , sometimes on rye bread, 
 and sometimes on onions,and when he was flush on both, or 
 not, but we do know that his life was anything but easy dur- 
 ing these three long years. 
 
 At the end of this time, and with nothing in sight, it 
 
 is needless to say that Capus was in a rather gloomy state of 
 mind, and had just resigned himself to leaving France to 
 practice his half-learned profession abroad. But at the right 
 time his chance came, and he was encouraged to stick a little 
 
3. 
 
 longer. The fates, by some whimsy or ot her , gr ante d hima 
 small sum of money, through the veiy timely death of a 
 relative, and Capus started on his quest anew. 
 
 Hot long after this, about 1882, he got a position on 
 Le Clairon , a Paris newspaper , through the kind offices of 
 his friends Paul Hervieu and Marcel Prevost. The next year he 
 had the chance to better himself on a new review, Les Grimaces , 
 under the leadership of Octave Mirbeau,and it is needless to 
 say that he accepted it without delay. Then a little later he 
 went to the staff of Gaulois . By this time Capus was a- 
 ttr acting some attention ,and had begun to contribute to 
 various periodicals , such as L 'Echo de Paris . L ' Illustration , 
 and La Revue Bleue .Meant ime he was writing novels, four of 
 which appeared Before his first play. The are: Qui Perd Gagne , 
 t ftgn T?an y I)£oar ts .1891 , honsiour veut Hire ,1893 , and Anriees 
 d 'Aventures ,1894. The year that his last novel appeared, he 
 changed positions once more, this time going to the staff of 
 Figrro .where he has remained to this day. He is at present 
 joint editor of the paper with Robert de Elers.In 1914 Capus 
 was made a member of the Erench Academy. 
 
 Capus is unmarried and belongs to no secret societies. 
 
4 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 THE LITERARY NATURE OF CAP US. 
 
 Mr. Frank W. Chandler in his "Contemporary Drama of 
 France ''calls Capus an’ironic realist, 1 and goes on to ex- 
 plain himself. To mind a realist is a ipan whose task is 
 
 "to face the facts of life rather than to fly from 1hem,to 
 resist the temptation merely to record such f abts , rather 
 than to subject them to an intelligent ordering (as Sardou 
 does), to look upon the actual unafraid, neither depressed or 
 elate, — such is the business of the realist "(2) . But Capus 
 is more than this sort of dramatist to him, and he goes on to 
 define the ironic realist. Says he: "Ironic realists are those 
 whose temperament necessarily affects their reactions upon 
 observed reality ,who stand apart from the human drama, amused 
 or scornful, but prepared to interpret without undue intrusions 
 of heart or conscience (3)1' All of which is very well. 
 
 It does not seem that either of these definitions are 
 entirely suited to the dramatist Capus. He is not a realist 
 in the sense that Chandler would have him. To my mind the 
 realism of Capus is a qualified realism, a realism that he 
 
 has made for himself , although it is real enough for stage 
 purposes. In a lecture Capus is credited with having said 
 
 in reference to modern society that it does not lend itself 
 readily to dramatic treatment , "fo r to use a metaphor from 
 photography, it vail never sit still long enou^i to be snapped. n 
 (4). V.hich seems true enough. But to pursue the photographie 
 metaphor a little farther, it is possible to make "stills" of 
 
5 . 
 
 it, in the manner that our moving pictures do. Capus has 
 posed his personnages in the best studio manner. His plots 
 
 and scenes are well within the hounds of reality, hut they have 
 been made so by the hands of the artist with selected matwr- 
 ials.In ordinary life, whose portrayal is the self-imposed duty 
 of the realist, one vroudl hardly expect to find thrown together 
 such characters as Brignol,the Commandant Brunet, and his 
 nephew Maurice, whom we find in Brignol^t sa fille . They are 
 real enough characters in themselves , but they have had their 
 milieu chosen for them. Of course Capus can lay the whole 
 matter at the feet of luck, as he is inclined to do in many 
 of his plays, but that would be rather overworking coincidence. 
 
 For the realism of Capus is distinctly a different 
 one from that of Brieux, or of Porto Riche, or of Our el, or of 
 Lavedan,if only the more representative plays are considered. 
 That may, of course, be laid to the fact that Capus is a comic 
 dramatist , but that does not entirely explain away the diffi- 
 culty in definition. The inclinations of the man Capus have 
 been such that he has been compelled to use the particular 
 genre that he has, the gain the ends he is seeking. For he is 
 
 a man of his own will, and is not likely to be sways d to a very 
 great extent by principles and theories. He hasn not been a 
 realist purposely, but has rather fallen into it as being the 
 most convenient for his needs. His needs may be said to be 
 dictated by a cynic and boule var dier , who is not interested in 
 the ordinary for its wwn sake, but only in so far as he can 
 use it for his own ends.^s a result of this he writes as he 
 does. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 . 
 
 In th e matter of Capua’ irony, one is somewhat at a 
 loss as to what to say. Chandler says that he is ir-onic, and 
 several other critics find that he has this peculiar quali- 
 ty. There is classic irony and romantic irony, hut whoever heard 
 of realistic irony? 
 
 Irony one finds defined as ”a form of speech in which 
 the real meaning is concealed or contradicted hy the words." 
 
 The same source goes on to define classic, or tragic, irony as 
 follows: "In this form of irony the words and actions of the 
 characters belie the real situation, which the spectators 
 fully realize. It may take several forms; the character speak- 
 ing may be conscious of the irony of his words while the rest 
 of the actors may not, or he may be unconscious and the actors 
 share the knowledge with the spectators, or the spectators 
 may alone realize irony. The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles 
 is the classic example of tragic irony at its fullest and 
 finest . "(5) 
 
 This is particularly applicable to that drama which 
 treats of subjects familiar to the audience, so that it follows 
 the lines of the play, as its author has conceived it and always 
 keeps in close intellectual contact with him. But that can not b 
 be done in the case of the comic realist, as is Capus. 
 
 Nor does the idea of romantic irony seem to apply, al- 
 though Capus may be called something of a sentimentalist. 
 
 Says one ?/riter:"The romantic realist .... is ready to mock at 
 
 his o wn convictions" ( 6 ) . One doubts vhether Capus is ready to 
 do this or nat, although he may be mocking at something. The 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7 
 
 writer above quoted goes on to say:” the romantic realist 
 shatters the illusion wantonly. It is as though he wpuld in- 
 flict the disillusion on others from which he himself has su 
 
 suffered." ( 7 ) 
 
 This may perhaps be what Chandler meant when he called 
 Capus an ironic realist, a man that has looked upon life and 
 found that it has not nearly the grandeur that its press 
 agents have assigned it. For we must remember that Capus is a 
 boulevar die r , that to be one was one of his first ambitions, 
 and that he devoted himself for some time to perfecting him- 
 self in that metier . And a boulevardier is no Rousseauistic 
 romanticist, or little brother of the poor, nor a man of any 
 great faith. He is by nature a cynic and a doubter, one who 
 mocks and is scornful. He has found life rather empty and 
 without any special meaning,and &e has the bad habit, one 
 might say, of breaking his spoiled eggs before the rest of 
 deluded humanity. 
 
 But one must not get the idea that Capus is a pessi- 
 mist. For k e is anything but that . He finds no little enjoy- 
 ment in life as it is, although he does it with his tongue in 
 his cheek, and he goes to bed every night with the contented 
 knowledge that it is not worth a candle. 
 
 Capus , it must be rent -inhered , is a native of the South, 
 and whoever heard of such a man being a pessimist, or going 
 mad, or shooting himself unless it was over a love affair? 
 
 Capu3 has nature to help him in keeping a certain optimism, 
 but the boulevard has also made him something of a cynic, para- 
 doxical as it may seem. 
 
8 
 
 Then there is another thing that disproves any pessi- 
 mism on the part of Capus. Along hack at the time of the Theatre 
 Libre , and the beginning of naturalism, there was a sort of 
 counter movement started to counteract the gloomy and hopeless 
 plays of such men as Zola and others. There was no definite 
 
 school that we know of that had such an avowed purpose, bit 
 if it be assumed that there was such a school, one critic says: 
 "The school M. Capus belonged to reacted against this dogma 
 (i.e. that a playnto be realistic had to be gloomy and pessi- 
 mistic ), discovered a new way of being modern, invented a 
 theater designed to prove that plays without pessimism 
 needn't taste as if the modern salt had been left out ".(8) 
 
 As a result the earlier plays are particularly op- 
 timistic. One may imagine Capus saying to himself : "The average 
 human is morally down at heel, but what of it so long as many 
 human beings, not a bit above the aver age, are kindly and lively 
 and worth listening to?" (9) And says the critic: "To save the 
 optimism of this kind from fatuity was easy for M. Capus, who 
 tempered it with many strokes of tart observation and by a 
 humour that seems indifferent to its truth. "(10) 
 
 And if perhaps M. Capus lost a little of his optimism 
 
 in his later plays, it is not so grave a thing,for he still has 
 his gift of amusing us. 
 
 His irony, then, reduces itself to a certain light 
 csmicism,a certain scorn of things as they are that a man of 
 Capus’ nature and habitat can not help but have, and which 
 are perhaps rather salutary in the long run. They give one an 
 aloofness that is very protective. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9 
 
 In considering the works of Alfred Capus , a great 
 deal of time and trouble will be saved if only the better 
 playsa are taken into account. The others when read, give 
 one the impression that they are very thin stuff , and that 
 their author must have been in need of money, or suffering 
 from a case of bad judgement when he allowed them to be pub- 
 lished. According to Barret H. Clark "in forming a critical 
 
 i 
 
 judgement of Capus' work ,we should of course take into 
 account the seven or eight really significant plays. ..La Veine , 
 Brignol et osa fill e , Les beux Bcoles , La Petite Fonctionnaire . 
 Rosine , -ues Lar i s de ueontine . .... "(11) . And according to 
 Chandler we ajrny possibly add two others that Capus wrote in 
 collaboration: ! 'Aventurier . and l 'Attentat . And to make the list 
 as representative as possible, without making it too long, one 
 might add La Bourse ou la vie . 
 
 Scrutiny shall be directed, then, toward these plays 
 especially, in a consideration of Capus as an ironic realist. 
 

 » . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 CAPUS AND LUCK. 
 
 Long before Capus had ever written a play he had taken 
 
 exception to the rule that earlynto bed and early to rise 
 
 makea man healthy, wealthy, and wise and that a penny saved 
 
 is a penny earned. There is not a copy of Anne e s d 1 Aventure 
 
 to be. had, but I believe that it is somewhere in that novel 
 
 that Capus philosophizes to this effect; 
 
 "Quelle illusion de croire que les evenements de notre 
 existence s’enchainent et se command enti Notre vie est 
 une courte serie d’anecdotes racontees sans lien;notre 
 ame est changeante et variable corn e elle;nos sentiments 
 sont aussi imprevus que des reves;et ce so nt des lois 
 eternellement ignorees aui nous donnent avec indifference 
 les joies et les peines,les snatins lumineux,les heures 
 lourdes et obscure s ." (12) 
 
 This is not a very profound philosophy, but then what can one 
 expect from a native of the South, a boulevardicr ,and a 
 skeptic?It i3 a philosophy, but a philosophy of a lartarin, 
 or to go further Last, an Omar Khayam. 
 
 But it is not the philosophy of a man who is faithful 
 to his v/ife and who commutes daily and eats three heavy meals 
 a day and is satisfied with the wifold as he has found it. 
 
 It is the philosophy of a man who is not satisfied with 
 the traditional order of things.who believes that axioms 
 alone can not make a man successful , that no matter how many 
 "success" or "per sonali ty " books he may read, ha can not 
 achieve his coveted ends unless his most capricious mistresses, 
 the fates, have it in their mind to help him. And that , of course, 
 has its basis in a very old philosophy of the Creeks .Fatalism, 
 

 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 „ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
11 
 
 we are told, was the philosophy of a dying race and the child 
 of blasphemous and heterodox paganism. But camot a man, and 
 a good Christian at that, be the exponent of this creed, if he 
 be cynical enough? 
 
 That is the state that Cap us is in when he preached 
 "everything will come out all right in the end" as he does 
 in Brignol et sa fille, his first play . 
 
 In this play v/e have Brignol, a dr earner, who is con- 
 stantly on thenpoint of closing some very advantageous busi- 
 ness transaction but never quite finishes, who has come to 
 Paris because he has not been able to make a living in his 
 native provincial city. This move has been made in spite of the 
 vigorous protests of his brother-in-law, Valpierre , and of that 
 worthy man's wife. His condition has not been appreciably Na 
 bettered as we see in £he very first scene , wherein the con- 
 cierge is shown trying to get the last half year ' s rent, but 
 is put off with the most extravagant promises. And to make 
 
 things wor se ,Val pierre and wife are due to arrive in a last 
 attempt to bring Brignol back In reason, as these worthy pro- 
 vincials see it. This move does not succeed, and things are made 
 still worse when the Commandant Brunet comes to reclaim some 
 thrity thousand francs that he has entrusted to Brignol,in 
 order not to lose them at baccarat. Brignol has of course in- 
 vested tftem in some will-o’-the-wisp money making scheme and 
 has succeded in losing the entire amount. Things begin to look 
 very dark. Happily the nephew of the irascible Brunet happens 
 along, and is very much taken with Cecile , Brignol’ s partner 
 and daughter. The uncle is in anything but a sweet temper at 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
12 
 
 the thought of not being able to lose all his funds at bacca- 
 rat, and threatens everything , including a lav/suit, in which 
 Brignol,for obvious reasons, does not wish to become involved. 
 Maurice being somwehat groggy from his first view of Cecile, 
 
 agrees to bring Brunet back to reason. He does this and gains 
 Brignol a little time in which to get the money. But the 
 money can not be got , and Maurice finally has to loan the 
 amount to Brignol. Love is blind. He rises quite appreciably 
 in the esteem of Brignol, and. as much so in the esteem of 
 Cecile , the reby making the affair quite inexpensi ve for him. He 
 frequents the Brignol household a great deal, and gi ves them 
 theatre tickets and looks out for them in various small ways. 
 Meantime Brignol has become involved with a certain man of 
 affairs, Carriard, who has promised Brignol a very substantial 
 position in a factory that he is buying,in exchange for the 
 hand of Cecils. Brignol with the best intentions in the world 
 has agreed to this, but when the time comes for final settle- 
 ment, he is not so sure, for he is pretty certain that Ce'clle 
 is in love with Maurice, and he is inclined to think that 
 Maurice will make the better and more desirable husband of 
 the two. At last the news has to be broken to Carriard that 
 he is the loser, and he becomes as wrathful as the Commandant 
 has been over certain sums of money that he has lent Brignol. 
 Then there comes a serious note in the play. It occurs to Mme . 
 Brignol that Cecile is well on the way to being compromised, 
 for she has doubts as to the intentions of Maurice, of which 
 the young man himself in not any too sure. He has been around 
 the house continually, but has exhibited no matrimonial incli- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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13 
 
 nations as yet* To avoid any na.sty consequence s , the family 
 ggrees that decile shall be packed off to Poitiers with her 
 uncle. When Maurice hears this, he makes up his mind, with the 
 aid of his uncle Brunet, and everything comes out as it should. 
 There is only a lawsuit hanging ova’ Brignol's head with 
 Carriard, bfct he is confident that everything will come otu 
 all right. And for a paternal benediction to his daughter he 
 says:"3h bien,vous le voyez...tout s' arrange! "(13) 
 
 This was the first play that Gapus had tried by him- 
 self and there are numerous faults that are found in every 
 playwright's first work. The dialogue, for instance, is far 
 different from that of ten years later. The speeches are 
 too long as a whole, and many a good situation has not been 
 made all that it might have been. A case in pointiis Scene 7 
 of A ct III. It is the only big scene that Maurice and u ecile 
 have, and interesting as it is, it is not as great as it mi git have 
 been. As was said before the speeches are too long, some of 
 them being as many as forty lines in length. Lovers, even in 
 the situation that the pair was in are never as oratorical as 
 Capus has made them. There is a great deal more thoguht than is 
 said, thoughts are advanced timidly, and perhaps ne'ver finished, 
 and there is a great reserve that we do not find in our lovers 
 of this scenem And there are other instances of this same over- 
 sight, the working up to a good scene, and then bungling it, but 
 the dialogue is anything but boresome.lt is merely not as 
 smooth as it is to become later in the dramatist's career. 
 
 The realism of the play, as before mentioned, is a 
 somewhat selected realism. The personnages of the play are 
 
14 . 
 
 taken from the bourgeoisie , and as members of that class are all 
 that they should be. Brignol has a hundred prototypes in very 
 large cities and in no matter what country. And they have, ex- 
 cept in rare instances , wives and daughters very like Mme. and 
 Mile. Brignol. The character of Brunet is t rue, per haps , but is 
 undoubtedly less known than that of the others. Maurice is an 
 
 every day enough young man. The Valpierres are very good Stud- 
 ies of the French provincial , as seen thr ough the eyes of the 
 
 boulevar dier . Carrier d is nothing out of the ordinary. Of 
 course it is not every day that such a collection of individ- 
 uals are thrown together, but then what are the odds, as long 
 as they are inter e sting, as these folk surely are? 
 
 Outside of being potentially ironical in the idea of 
 the prevalence of luck, there is also a great deal of irony to 
 be found in Capus ' choice of characters. In doing this Caqpus 
 has shown us a rather unflattering picture of a small, but dis- 
 tinctive , group of people that exist in every town over ten 
 thousand. They are those unfortunate people without wealth 
 who are always living from hand to mouth with a few dollars 
 that they ftave earned here or borrowed there, always hoping 
 that the next ship in will be their’ s. They are always just at 
 the point of putting the finishing touches on some new enter- 
 prise that v/ ill net them thousands, but those last touches 
 never seem to reach their destination. Capus has shown us all 
 
 this in a most cruelly ironic way and with never a detail left 
 out. Be has no very good opinion of such people and that phase 
 of life that they represent, and has held them up before our 
 eyes with a slight, tight smile about the lipfe, 'he do not see 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15 
 
 the smile, but it is there. To a msn like Capus,the idea of a 
 man leading such a life as Brignol led is not so much a sub- 
 ject for pity as for derision. He is derisive accordingly, or r 
 rather ironical, as he holds before our eyes this picture of 
 Parisian life, silently and unobtrusively. He does this in the 
 way that a mother shows a son, smudged and ragged, to his 
 father .perhaps without expression, yet subtly disapproving. 
 
 There are several minor points of irony in the play. 
 
 The case of Brunet is a good example. A man with the weakness 
 that Brunet had is very often the subject of laughter, and 
 Capus has laughed with the rest. But his laugh has ha.d the slight 
 est bit of an edge, for he does not draw us a picture of this 
 self-conscious old debauche in what would be called soft tones. 
 The idea that he should be so conscious of his weakness that 
 he trusts his money in the hands of such a person as Brignol 
 
 in order to prevent his losing it, and yet is not strong enough 
 to conquer his weakness, affords much ironic mirth to Capus. 
 
 Another occasion for irony has been found by Capus in 
 the Valpierres from Poitiers. They are most distinctly not of 
 Paris nor of its beliefs. Capus himself came from the pro- 
 vinces, but in due time came to be one who thought and did as 
 the Parisians do . He finds a great deal of amusement in the 
 crotchets and whims of these ultra-respectable people to whom 
 nothing but the orthodox is permitted. Their minds are as 
 rigid and fixed in their self-satisfied atrophy as a piece of 
 petrified wood is unre claimable , and they are as narrow-minded 
 and bigot ted as the characters in a recent American popular 
 novil. Mme .Valpierre is shocked to think that Brignol may 
 
. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 . 
 
 ' 
 
 ? 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 ■ I • 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
16 
 
 make as much money in a day or two as her husband has amassed 
 by thirty years' patient labor, and in such a low financial 
 way. To the minds of both, the life that Brignol is leading 
 is immoral and not in keeping with God's law, and they are 
 convinced that his only salvation is to return to Poitiers 
 and try to live on the starvation wages that he might earn as 
 a lawyer. And 'they fight on throughout the play in much this 
 saipe fashion, always opposing their narrow ideas of the pro- 
 vinces to those of the man of the city, Brignol . 
 
 It is possible that there is a great deal of irony in 
 Capus' choice of situation. In Brignol he has taken a man of 
 the type that he is to treat ironically and placed him in 
 very trying circumstances , that are to the average theatre-goer 
 very funny. Just at the time when Brignol should be in the 
 greatest of prosperity he is in very precarious circumstances, 
 in danger of being sued and sold out, and has no way to turn. 
 His case, no matter how convincingly he may talk, can never be 
 very strong for his opinionated relatives. They have come 
 to say "I told you so", and their wish is granted, for things 
 could hardly be in a worse state. It is only the boundless 
 optimism of Brignol that prevents them from breaking him. And 
 the very fact that he is optimistic with his affairs in the 
 condition that they are is a bit ironical. Things are in such 
 an irretrievable mess that an ordinary man would despair at 
 the thought of trying to straighten them out in the manner 
 that Brignol has a mind to use . The only seemingly rational 
 
 way that there is out of the difficulties is, as his brother- 
 in-law says, to arrange with his creditors and then ge to work 
 

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 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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17 
 
 and pay his debts as he can. But Brignol is not made of that 
 kind of stuff. Rather, he is glad that he owes only sixty- 
 eight thousand francs, when he was sure that he owed many more 
 than that. So he goes on in his foolishly hopeful way with 
 his incessant Tout s ’arranger a". 
 
 In the next play that comes from the pen of Gapus we 
 have something of the same idea of luck. In this particular 
 play, however , there is a strong element of fantasy,for some of 
 the things that happen to Rosine can come only under b that head. 
 It is the story of an upright young woman who has been deceived 
 by a man for the first time ,and her redemption. Rosine, a 
 young woman of the provinces , has been proposed to by a young 
 gentleman whom we do not see, and he has been accepted. His 
 parents, however , very nasty and small minded villagers , can not 
 see the '.ay to his rnarraige with a young woman without fortune. 
 Love , however , surmounts all obstacles , and they have lived to- 
 gether for five years, though unmarried. Then, by means of a pre- 
 text, the young man is lured to his home in another village 
 where he is compelled to marry a wealthy, but altogether un- 
 desirable young woman. His sister, an angular specimen of 
 rusticity , comes to break the news to Rosine, and does so in a 
 ver crude and thoughtless way. She even has the effrontery to 
 offer the girl money, and in the end leaves her the possessor 
 of the furniture of the unfortunate house hold, which/by the way 
 s&e reclaims lat er. Rosine .undismayed by the turn of events, 
 starts out to earn her own living and is aided by Page let, a 
 lawyer, and Mme. Sr anger, aumt of the man Rosine is to marry. 
 These good people that she is to do all the mending and sewing 
 
16 
 
 for the village wives. They are of course told why it is that 
 Rose is reduced to such a mean degree, and are very solicitous. 
 All goes well for some time and Ho sine is successful in ward- 
 ing off lovers of all sorts. There is one young man, Georges 
 Desclos.who is different from his physically minded fellow- 
 
 citizens, and who pays very earnest court to Rosine vfaom he 
 loved as a child. He is very poor .however, his yearly earnings 
 being in the neighborhood of eight hundred francs, so there is 
 no immediate prospect of his being accepted by the heroine. 
 While all this is going on, there in another aspirant for 
 her body in the person of one Helion, a manufacturer of the 
 town, who has just been abandoned by his Paris mis tress. All 
 she has to do, he tells Rosine, is to write him the simple word 
 yes , and a luxurious apartment in Paris is hers. One day his 
 wife surprises him as he is making various advances to Rose, 
 and her jealous petty mind, which should have become accustomed 
 to being deceived along time ago, sets to work with the result 
 that Rosine is soon boycotted by all the good women, and there 
 is no chance of gaining a livelihood any longer in the town. 
 And to cap the climax the Butauds, through the agency of Lucy, 
 a woman whom I suspect of having complexes , sends a demand for 
 the furniture that they so magnanimous! y had given Rose. Rose 
 now has no visible means of support end not much of a place 
 left to live in. She is on the point of writing ^elion the 
 word "Yes", when Georges happens along at the right time, pro- 
 poses, and is accepted. They are to ge to Paris to try things 
 anew, but they have no money,so the old philosopher gives them 
 the few louis that he has painstakingly saved for improvements 
 

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 El ^ 1 i 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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19 
 
 on his farm. With this romanesque note the play ends, and the 
 audience wipes away a few tears and marvels at the shill of 
 M. Capus. 
 
 The main element of Capus 1 idea of fate comes in at 
 the end of the play, as we have seen, but there it is .Although 
 we do 3m± have the boundless optimism of the two lovers, we 
 somehow v/onder if Capus' has in his mind as happy a fate as 
 rn^Lght be for them. The lovers are united in a vary romantic 
 fashion which pleases the audience and reminds the critic 
 of Rostand, fchd that is all there is to it. The main thing in 
 the play is, after all, not the mating of another pair of 
 humans, but rather a deft study of provincial manners, and 
 Rosine and Georges are the framework on which it is hung. 
 
 The play may be called a French dramatic "Biain 
 Street". Capus, himself a hybrid Parisian, takes the provinces 
 £o task for their narrowness in matters of moral and ethical 
 conduct. The men of the play are all from the stock of Kenni- 
 cott,and they act as he acted. Their life is so petty and hide- 
 bound that they snap at Rosine's misfortune as a shark snaps 
 at a fish, and dwell upon it as something outside the bounds of 
 normal human conduct. When they first hear about it ,Mme .^elion 
 is prompted to remark: 
 
 MM2. HELION 
 
 La pauvre fill el A-t-elle des enfants? 
 
 MME . GRANGER 
 Des enfants ? . . . .Non. 
 
 MME.HBLION 
 C’est regrettable! 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 I , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
£ 0 . 
 
 D3SCL0S 
 
 Pour quoi? 
 
 MME. HSL IOU 
 
 Parce que,au cas ou elle en aurait eu,notre oeuvre, qui 
 est consacrd a 1 ' enfance ,lui aurait donne un secours. 
 
 MM3. GRANGER 
 
 3n efi'et. 
 
 PESCLOS (a mi-voix) 
 
 Si elle avait pu prevoir (14) 
 
 In this hit of dialogue we have seveera}. characters outline! 
 in a very few words. We see clearly the petty self-suff iciency 
 of Mme. Helion,thw well-meaning misunderstanding of Line. Gran- 
 ger, and the ?diolesome, jovial , go od nature of Desclos. He is 
 the armour hearer of Capus in this campaign against "main- 
 streetism" as he found it in the French provinces. 
 
 Desclos is one of the masterpieces of character draw- 
 ing hy Capus. He is a philosopher , a jester, and above all a 
 man with a great understanding. He is a man who laughs at the 
 world in order not to cry over it, and he laughs v ry suc- 
 cessfully. He is old as we see him in the play, and death is 
 perhaps not far off. One of his provincial friends rebukes 
 him for talking so freely of death, and he replies : "fourquoi 
 n’en parlerais-je pas ? Rien n'est plus naturel. .Qu’est-ce 
 que la mort? Un simple for malite . . . " (15 ) bo simple minded 
 
 villager would talk about so grave a thing in a like manner. 
 
 To him all things are big today and little tomorrow. In last 
 
 words to Georges , after he has taken the news of the approaching 
 marriage and deparure for Paris v/ith the utmost calm, and has 
 

 
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El. 
 
 even helped along in the announcement , he remarks of the money 
 that he has given the couple that he is going to tell his sis- 
 ter about it, but "Ohi pas tout de suite... Je lui apprendrai 
 ca a 1a. longue,peu a. peu, en m* amusant . . . J’ auztai la quelpues 
 bonnes soirees. . .AhJ ahi "(16) £o he bids them the best of luck 
 and promises to visit them the next year. Here we have a spar- 
 tan father. There are no tears, no protests at Georges 1 leav- 
 ing;there is no parsimony , for does he not give aLl his savings 
 to Georges voluntarily? There is only the utmost broadminded- 
 ness, entire fairness, and a kindliness that life in the pro- 
 vinces does not often have. 
 
 Then the supreme example of the provincial is found in 
 the person of Lucy Butaud. She is narrow-minded, vindicative , 
 stingy, has strange ideas about social rank for one of the 
 bourgeoisie , and is painfully superstitious , all of which are 
 
 traits of the common person of the provinces. 
 
 Rosine is a somwehat serious play, and for that reason 
 
 the irony is in the characters , rather than in the situations. 
 
 One critic suns it up as follows: "a deft study of provincial 
 
 manners,written on broad lines. In this sense it is a true 
 piece of v/ork , complete and w ell thought out. It presents at the 
 same time a sedtion of humanity and an author.. The treatment 
 of that section of humanity gives evidence of scrupulous care, 
 s desire to enter into the field of actual experience , and 
 makes us feel when and ho w the action begins , deve lops , and is 
 carried to a logical and fitting close. "(17) And this , all in 
 all, is a just criticism. 
 
 In La Yeine Capus comes out openly for his theory that 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
22 • 
 
 luok is the main determinant in man’s destiny,so openly 
 that he calls the play "luck". And it is indded luck that makes 
 things happen as they do. The long arm of coincidence is given 
 a hard stretch in this play, which is one of the most success- 
 ful that Gapus has done .Charlotte Lanier , proprietress of a 
 flower shop that she has come to after having started in very 
 mean circumstances. Above her shop there lives a lawyer , Julien 
 Breard, who has no clients. u e induces her to go to Havre with 
 him for a week-end, and when at last her little shop has perish- 
 ed under the hands of its multitudinous credito rs, the y estab- 
 lish themselves in his apartmenifc . He still has no clients, but 
 one day there comes the ex-employee of Charlotte, Josephine , who 
 has established a liaison with a wealthy young man, with the 
 news that she has work for Breard. It seems that her lover, 
 Edmond Tourneur , desires to sue certain newspapers for libel of 
 his dead father. Breard takes charge, and being no ignoramus, 
 he arranges things for Tourneur to his satisfaction and ends 
 up by being given control of all the affairs of that young man, 
 who is too apathetic to manage them himself. They are invited 
 to his summer home, and there Breard meets an adventuress with 
 
 whom he falls in love , for getting about Charlotte ,who has been 
 tutoring to make herself worthy of him. Meantime he is elected 
 
 deputy through special chance, and the associates that he has 
 made in his connection with Tourneur. His new flame, Simone 
 Baudrin,is an old experienced hand, and he succeeds only in 
 making a fool of himself. Since has risen so meteorically and to 
 such position, he thinks that the bourgeoise little proprietress 
 of the flower shop that was is not good enough for him. He soon 
 
23. 
 
 sees his error, and aftre he has been tried by Josephine and 
 found true, he is again greeted by Charlotte , and the play ends as 
 they are starting for the town from which he was elected to get 
 married. 
 
 Breard is something of the type of Brignol,in that he is 
 not inclined to wort very hard, but he has not the stupendous 
 imagination of our dreaming high-financier. As one of the char- 
 acters describes him, he is:"Avocat sans clients, paresseux et 
 ambitieux a la fois, ego'iste ;aucun avenir,a rnoins d’une chance 
 extraordinaire que rien ne fait pre voir ; couver t de dettes. "(18 ) 
 
 Save that the speaker shows just a trifle of malice, the whole 
 description is only too true. But the chance that is not for- 
 seen does come, and it comes in the person of Josephine. From 
 then on one chance after another leads on up a step at a time 
 until he is deputy from his department and is well on ke way 
 to that fame that merits slanderous gossip in the newspapers. 
 
 If the potential irony that is to be found in Capus 1 
 philosophy of luck be applied to La Veine , we find that we have 
 here a great piece of irony. Y/e find a statement of the luck 
 theory in Breard' s speeeh:”Je ne suis pas superst itieux. . . Je 
 crois tout hornrae un peu bien doue , pas trop sot, pas trop timide, 
 a dans sa vie son heur de veine, un moment quand les autre s 
 homines semblent tafrvailler pour lui,ou les fruits viennent se 
 mettre a ported de sa main pour qu’il les cueille. Cette-heur-la, 
 ma petite Chariot te , c ' es t triste a dire,mais ce ndest pas ni le 
 travail, ni la patience eui nous Is donnent . " ( 19 ) 
 
 In the character of Breard there has been placed ndi 
 little irony, as we dee disclosed before our eyes. He does not 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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24 
 
 change during the play, but is a static char acter , for at the end 
 he is fundamentally as lazy as he was when the curtain first ros i, 
 and he has shown himself coloss ally egotistical in his affair 
 with Simone Baudrin. This fixity of his character is in itself 
 ironic to some degree. Capus evidently does not aoprove of a 
 man that changing event ss do not affect. 
 
 And the progress that such a man as Brear d makes in 
 the world is open to very broad irony. In speaking of this or 
 that unfortunate happening,we say that it was "the irony of 
 fate ”, meaning thereby that fate has talcen things in her own 
 hands with a caprice that is contrary to all expectations. 
 
 That is a cruel irony. But may we not suppose the reverse of 
 this, that when things look very dark fate again takes things in 
 hand and with a happy caorice gives something that is very 
 much to be desired , instead of the expected awful outcome? That 
 is kindly irony. 
 
 This kindly iron is what we have in La Veine , in that 
 everything happens as it should, although it does not seem 
 possible. One happy thing after another happens for Breard,who 
 is a rather charming man, but faulty. At the beginning of the 
 play we have not the slightest idea that he will ever be any- 
 
 thing but the mediocre lawyer ta|ht he is, living four or five flo< 
 up in a not very select district of Paris. But the happy irony 
 of fate and the dramatist have decreed otherwise , and he is in 
 the end embarked upon a promising political career in an office 
 furnished with English furniture. It is this same gentle irony 
 that keeps him out of t he clutches of Simone Baudrin and 
 brings him back to the kindly arms of Charlotte. 
 
 rs 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter IV. 
 CAPUS AND DIVORCE . 
 
 25 . 
 
 In tojw of his most interesting plays, Gapus has dealt 
 with the problem of divorce, but perhaps with no very great 
 finality, nor yet with any desire to appear iinal. He has mere- 
 ly looked out over the broad vista of present day divorce and 
 formed his boulevard opinions about the matter. And these are, 
 of course, not those of a man with any very great illusions 
 about life. He has made his own little system, and in it he 
 has left a place for what our modern moralists look upon as 
 a grave ganger. Capus finds it anything but a danger. To him 
 it is rather a subject for much sardonic amusement. 
 
 In the first play in which he attacks the problem, there 
 is very little of the serious, for the play is a flip , Par isian 
 comedy about a most engaging little person who just can’t stay 
 married, if the tenets of the old regime are to be he}.d to. This 
 play , Les Haris de Leontine ,1900, has to do with the escapades 
 of a pert young lady named Leontine. She has, it would seem, 
 led her husband a mep^ life, and he has, after enduring as much 
 as his staid soul would allow, allowed her to divorce him. She 
 has deceived him v/ith all the simplicity of a child playing 
 with dolls, has been extravagant , and has in general shattered 
 most of the illusions that the poor man had about her. And she 
 has taken the divorce as a mere matter of course. As Adolphe 
 says,sfre has taken it "tres gaiement , comme elle avait pris le 
 mar&Age ,et sans y attacher plus d 1 importance . Puis elle est 
 entree dans la galanterie qui etait sa veritable vocat ion. " ( 20 ) 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
26 . 
 
 And she has been most impudently getting large sumssof money 
 from the long-suffering Adolphe in spite of the remonstrances 
 of his friends • Things seem to go from had to worse and one day 
 she wanders into Adolphe’s apartment with the naive announce- 
 ment that she has no money.and will ask for none, hut that she 
 will put up with him for a few days until something turns up. 
 
 She is something ef a female Micawber,is Leontine. She has been 
 sold out, and declines to go to any of her friends, for she has 
 had the bright idea of coming to Adolphe. He is very properly 
 scandalized and tries everything that he can think of to dis- 
 lodge her, but stay she will. After she has disrupted the whole 
 schame of his life, and has taken to receiving guests of rather 
 shady characters , Adolphe goes off to the provinces wit h his 
 friend Plantin. Then there enters the story the Baron de la 
 Jambiere,as the unrequited lover of leontine. And we also get 
 a glimpse of the savant Anatole,o£ whom we are to see more 
 later. And after a time -“eontine marries the Baroij.as a matter 
 of course, as though she were trying to experience as many hus- 
 bands as possible before too late. She has the future to look 
 out for, too, and it is not so bad, one would imagine, to make one’s 
 living by being a baroness. But her volatile nature is not long 
 contented with th Bar on, who , i t must be admitted, is_ rather 
 stupid, and she busies herself with Anatole,who does not know 
 quite what it is all about, but after a time becomes anamoured 
 of her. The intrigue is discovered by the amusing old royalist 
 aunt of the Baron,who advises him as to his wife’s fidelity. 
 
 He is hurt. There has been an assignation made, and the Baron 
 and his aunt plot to surprise the two culprit s .They do so , 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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27 . 
 
 finding Leontine in a rather distressing state of neglige.and 
 the prefect of police is summoned to take the complaint. By the 
 irony of fate and the dramatist , the prefect is none other than 
 Adolphe, who has been appointed to the office through his friend 
 Plantin. He sees the state of things and after much earnest coun- 
 sel , convinces the Baron that he must not divorce Leontine. This 
 suggestion is acted on, and in due time Adolphe and the Baron 
 become fast friends. And leontine, as gay as ever, turns match- 
 maker, and ends up by marrying off Adolphe to Hortense,the 
 cousin of the Baron, after a thrilling time trying to keep her 
 past connection with Adolphe secret. So everything ends happily, 
 and we hope that Leontine has at last found the true fidelity. 
 
 o here we have Capus ' ironic philosophy about divorce. 
 
 Hi protagonist in the play is, of course, the amusing Adolphe, 
 who counsels the Baron that the best thing that he can do is to 
 stay married to leontine. As he says to the Baron; 
 
 "Vous ne savez done pas ce que e'est un divorce. Vous ne 
 rendez pas compte de tous les tracas,de toutes les conn- 
 plications qui en resultentl Conferences avec les avoues 
 et avec les avocat s,olaido iries publiques , devant tous 
 vos concitoyens alleches par le scan dal e,ou l 1 avocat de 
 la partie adverse parlera avec indignation de la gross- 
 ierete de vos moeurs,d® vos habitudes .. .Si vous le defiez 
 ( i . e .: 1 1 avocat ), il en dir a le double. II se montrera 
 surpris que votre femme ait attendu si longtemps pour 
 vous trooper , il insinuera que si elle n’etait pas un ange 
 de vertu^, elle aurait deserts le domicile conjugal apres 
 la premiere nuit de noces,il inventera sur votre vie 
 privee des histoires crous tillantls qui feront la joie de 
 toute^la ville v et vous serez peut-etre par-dessus le 
 marche , condamne' a faire time forte pension a madame la 
 
 Baronne . " ( 21 ) 
 
 And Adolphe goes on to paint a picture of the possible 
 future of a divorced woman, that she may have no money, no family, 
 
 and no one to whom to turn, and she will probably end up that 
 
" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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28 . 
 
 most odious of things, in the eyes of the moral Adolphe, a 
 "cocotte". And all that is hardly, when all is said and done, the 
 true philosophy of such a man as we are led to believe Adolphe 
 to be. A man of the seeming moral inclinations that Adolphe seems 
 to be would hardly balk at a few personal inconveniences ,wheh 
 it was a question getting free from a lewd w oman . It is rather 
 the free and easy opinion of the egoistic bo v.le vardier,o£ a 
 man who is too lethargic, or too disinterested in principle, to 
 allow himself to be jarred from his narrow and self-sufficient 
 ways of life. And it is uite possible that Capus sincerely 
 believed the dicta of Adolphe, at least wh en he was writing it. 
 
 For he is a cynic,and to such a man the things that tradition 
 holds most dear are not v/orth a far thing, when there is the 
 possibility of a greater unhappiness. There is less of the theor- 
 etic in this play than in Les Deux Scoles , a later play with a 
 similar subject. Reasons here are very material, the reasons of 
 an epicurean, or perhaps of a hedonist. It is a matter of choos- 
 the lesser of two evils, which in this case happens to be infidel- 
 ity, as opposed to the inconvenience of a public divorce scan- 
 dal. In other words, we have here the philosophy of a self-indul- 
 gent man who sees nothing in life but what little ease one can 
 extract from it. 
 
 In the next play of the same subject , Les Deux Scoles , 
 1902, we have a Little different treatment of divorce , although 
 it is still seen through the eyes of the cynical boulevar dier . 
 
 In this play, however , we have a little more explicit directions 
 given for the avoidance of divorce. The play has to do with the 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
29 
 
 separation of Henriette from her husband (who is fundamentally 
 a good enough husband ), because he is given to having ’’bonnes 
 amies". This goes against the inclinations of Henri ett e ,who is 
 something of the same type of woman as Leontine , except that 
 her inspirations are always in a moral dire ction, an d that she 
 has a very definite moral standard which she holds to with a 
 great deal of vehemence. As a result she holds to her deter- 
 mination to divorce Edouard, in spite of the advice of both 
 her mother and father. So they are divided by law, and Edouard 
 
 proceeds to amuse himself with the mistress that he has picked 
 out, even before the proseedinga had been started, much to the 
 
 consternation of his father -in-1 aw, who is something of a gay 
 dog himself. Henriette takes up with the politician le Hautois, 
 a staid, serious old fellow, who is the personification itself — 
 so Henriette thinks. Things go on, and by various ways , ^douar d 
 falls in love with his ex-wife, and frequents her father's house 
 ,a great deal. When he proposes, and it is brought out that the 
 main reason that he deceived Henriette was that he did not wish 
 to appear stupid, she sends him packing in very short order. The 
 date for her wedding with le Hautois is set, and all the prep- 
 arations for the establishment of a new household are under 
 way. Then, one day, she finds Estelle, the former mistress of Ed- 
 ouard who is out for bigger game , in the arms of her hitherto 
 impeccable le Hautois, and is thoroughly disillusioned. She 
 decides that women were made to be deceived, and thinking that 
 she would rather be deceived by Edouard than by le Hautois, she 
 accepts him and announces that she does not wish to know any- 
 thing about his future ’’bonnes amies”, although she is convinced 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
30 
 
 that they will come. 
 
 In this play there is not the same airy , semi-farcical 
 
 treatment of the subject that we have in naa. r,Jf r -.i.s M. 
 although there is a tone of sohisticat ion and cynicism through- 
 out the play that removes it from the more serious attempts 
 of Capus. The whole thing is artificial , for that natter, but 
 the dramatist has painted so skillful veil over it that it is 
 not readily obvious. 
 
 The conception of the dramatist that all husbands can 
 
 be arbitrarily into two schools, as he puts it into the mouth 
 
 of Mme. Joulin,is not true. Says she: 
 
 "Un mari exact a l'heure des repas et exact a l'heure du 
 bergari Eh bien,ma fille,ce n'est pas possible 1 II y^ a 
 d'un cote la vie fantaisiste et de 1 ' autre la vie reelle. 
 
 II faut choisir;on ne peut pas mener les deux successive - 
 ment douze heures par jour. ParbleuJ je crois bien oue 
 ce serait le revel Mais la nature n'a pas voulu cue nous 
 fissions ce reve-lal Laquelle de ces deux existences vaut 
 le mieux? 9 a »P ar example , je n'en sais rien. St comme dit 
 ton pere quand il joue au piquet,il y a deux e coles. " ( 23 ) 
 
 To her mind there can be only two kinds of husbands: those who 
 
 are amusing and deceive you, and those who are dull and do not 
 deceive you. That is just a little short-sighted, for might not 
 
 a husband be dull and deceive you, as well as a husband might be 
 amusing and not deceive you. ^any women profess to have found 
 this latter sort. The way that she makes life at all interest- 
 ing with a Don Juan for a husband is to ignore his doings. She 
 says : 
 
 "La femme, la vraie ferane, telle du moins que je la comprends, 
 ne doit jamais chercher a savoir si elle est trompee • Nous 
 soranes trop superieures en general a nos mari s, pour nous 
 preoccuper de ces details. Et les honreeo ne meritent meme 
 pas que nous attachions tant d ’ importance a leurs fautes. 
 Qu'ils nous trompent,si 9 a leur fait plaisirl Quant a nous, 
 nous devons rester non seuloment dans la doute,mais dans une 
 dedaigneuse ignor ance . . . " (84) 
 
31 
 
 This is the idea of no ordinary woman, as one can easily see. 
 
 It is rather that of the ideal woman of the boule var die r ,the 
 
 womans 1 he thinks possibly he might marry, if there were any 
 such, and then leans back with the contented knowledge that there 
 are none of that species exteant. For such a man is one who has 
 no desire to have his pleasure curtailed by need of endless ex- 
 planation as to the way in which he has achieved it. And £ack 
 of all this there is the accompanying irony th&t there is not, 
 for that reason of non-exist ence , and can not be any very happy 
 solution of the problem under present eondit ions , customs , and 
 beliefs.. And the dramatist can see no reason why there should 
 be any need of a solution, why there should be all this hulla- 
 baloo over something that is very convenient and useful. For 
 somehow one feels that, as he reads the pages og this play, there 
 is a sardonic grin on the face of Capus as he puts his puppets 
 through their paces. 
 
 We have a slight recurrence Id the idea of luck and fate 
 
 in this play in the words of Estelle, the "bonne amie" of Edouard: 
 
 "Je suis de venue .... Comment appelle-t-on ca..Ah oui, fatal - 
 iste. II m 1 arrive r a ce qu'il voudra mai ntenant ;tout^ ^a , qa 
 m'est egal« St vous comprenez que je ne me fais guere 
 d’illusions.n'est-ce pas? II va m'en arriver de s aventures, 
 et des droles. . . ." ( 22) 
 
 This is the same thought that we have expressed by Julien Brea&d 
 in ^eifle .with a slightly different application, perhaps in 
 this case, but still fundamentally germany to that same idea. 
 
 Les Deux Scoles , which came the year after La ^eine , is in a diff- 
 erent manner, but Capus has not yet got entirely away from the 
 fancies of the earlier plays, for ideas do not change as readily 
 
 as habits. 
 

 
 
 * 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
32. 
 
 In these two plays, -^es L aris de Leontine and Les Deux 
 Bcoles , Capus has made, for the ironist, a most scathing denun- 
 ciation of one of the most striking phenomena of Paris, or as 
 it now is, of most any large city , regardless of country. The 
 marrying wo man, whom divorce has fostered, and divorce it self, do 
 not get a very gentle treatment in the hands of this dramatic 
 gargoyle of the Boul ' Mich 1 . He finds things deplorable, hut not 
 for the orthodox and rational reason. He finds that divorce, in 
 spite of the layman to the oontrary,is not nearly as necessary 
 as it is made out to be, that it is deucedly inconvenie nt , and that 
 as a cure it is worse than the ill. To bring this new idea to 
 perfection, he goes on to say in the second play that the best 
 way to avoid the whole thing is to, practice self-delusion, for 
 what we do not know will not hurt us, and that if married folk 
 mus sin let them keep it to themselves and not bother their 
 partners with confession. Here we have the crovming irony of the 
 whole problem. The dramatist has shown us that happiness can 
 come only through self-delusion, bu the supression of fact, and 
 through the glossing over of truth, and that, I believe, is mon- 
 struousfy ironical. For we have the same idea expressed by the 
 cynical Helling in Ibsen's "Wild Duck", when toward the last of 
 the play he says: "Rob the average man of his life -illusion, and 
 you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke. "(25) And the 
 truth, such as it is, of his statement is borne out by the Rkdals , 
 who are happy through self-delusion, and who are thrown into a 
 turmoil and great unhappiness by lie coming of the mistaken 
 idealist, Gregprs 1 erle . And there the matter stands. 
 
* 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
23 . 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 CAPU3 AND OH E NEW WOMAN . 
 
 With in the last two decades or so , woman has stepped 
 forth as something more than a fireside companion. She is no 
 longer content to sew, and bake, and brew, but has through various 
 agents come to desire the liberty enjoyed by men. This is not a nejf? 
 or startling fact, for at present most of the world is cognizant 
 of it, and probably three-fourths of this same world are busy 
 deploring the state of things. But the movement , perhaps first 
 supported first by Ibsen in his "Doll's House", anci today we 
 have votes, for women, women legislators , financier s , and whatnot . 
 
 That the movement is still crescent is beside the point. Woman 
 started out on her own, and is still intent ®on the goal, such 
 as it is, and today we even read of a woman who took unto her- 
 self a wife. 
 
 Twenty years or so ago,Capus touched somewhat on this 
 social phenomenon in one of his first plays, La Petite Fonctionnair 
 
 1900. He did something that had newr been done before; he treated 
 the economically independent woman. In this he anticipated Brieux, 
 who did the same thing more seriously some elevn years later. 
 Suzanne Borel,a comely youngwoman, giving been deprived of her 
 parents and fortune, has entered the postal service, and eventually 
 been stationed as postmistress at fre s si gny-sur -Loire. She 
 proves to be an excellent public servant ,al though she makes some 
 changes th&t are not appreciated by the villagers. They resent 
 two mail deliveries in the same day, since that gives them their 
 evening papers in the evening, a thing that is quite displeasing. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
34 
 
 for they are accustomed to waiting until the next morning to 
 read their news. And the fact that Suzanne , and does sketches 
 on Sunday causes no little talk about the town. This does not 
 bother her particularly, for she has many of the ways of the city, 
 and is content with the knowledge that she is doing he duty 
 faithfully. She makes a decided impression on the men of the town 
 especially Pagenel who has been married so long that he is 
 getting tired of being faithful to his wife. H e become enamoured 
 of the young lady, and on the advice of his gay friend Bebardin 
 endeavors to establish her in Paris as his mistress. She has 
 always been virtuous and can see no reason for changing her 
 ways. Meant ime , however , she has me t the Vieomte de Samblin,but 
 contrary to the statements of her gamine helper Riri,she does 
 not fall in love with him, for he is an ill -educated and not 
 particularly graceful member of the pampered nobility. At least 
 that is what she thinks. But the day that the invitation for 
 his marriage of convenience with Hermanoe Liseuil come, and he 
 gives her one, there comes the very sudden realization to her 
 that she does love him, and she tells him as much in a restrained 
 but haughty manner. The marriage is not broken for this new- 
 found love for the next that we see of Suzanne is when we dis- 
 cover her in the apartment that Pagenel has furnished for her 
 in Paris, as he had promised. She has found that it was rather 
 unliveable in Pressigny after the ajrnrriage of the man that she 
 loved with another woman, who, to make things worse, is an old 
 friend of hers. She has allowed the suggested arrangement , but 
 has not done everything that the old philandere £ has expected. 
 
 She merely allows him to touch the ends of her fingers. He and 
 
35 . 
 
 Lebardin have come t© Paris "bunburying" and are having tea with 
 Suzanne, T'here has been some ridiculous pretext or other for 
 the trip, but things seem to have gone wrong, for the uncle that 
 Pagenel was supposed to visit arrives in Press igny to visit 
 him while he is away. Thereupon that wot thy man’s w ife smells 
 a rat, and she sets out for Paris in company with Mme. Pagenel. 
 
 They arrive at the apartment while Suzanne is treating the 
 rheumatism that Pagenel has acquired while routing about, and thin; 
 are made rather awkward for the deceivers. Just before this, 
 Pagenel and his "bonne amie" have met the Vicomte,who is in 
 Paris alone, for as we learn later his marriage has been any- 
 thing but successful. His wife , immediately after the marriage, 
 has taken up with the man whom she has loved all the time. This 
 is too much for the Vi comte and he has come to Paris to forget 
 his troubles. u e comes to call on Suzanne , after the smoke has 
 partly cleared away, and the culprits have been more or less clear - 
 ed of their suspected misdeeds, Phey are to be taken home, cured 
 of all desire for sin. Suzanne finds that she still loves the 
 Vicomte.and he finds that he loves her more than he had thought. 
 The thrifty lebardin sees his chance to clear the matter up 
 financially, sells the furnishings and goodwill of the apart- 
 ment to the Vicomte,and comes back to interrupt Suzanne's fianl 
 surrender with the key, as the cut&ain falls. 
 
 The realism of the play is not particularly questionable, 
 although it is that peculiar sort of realism that belongs to 
 Capus, characterised as Bselective'. u e started out with the idea 
 of a postmistress in a small provincial town, but to do what he 
 wanted to with her he had to look around for other particular 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
36 . 
 
 characters. She had been a virtuous young woman as he had con- 
 ceived her, mainly because she was an independent woman and he 
 had to have a foil for her. He found them in the persons of 
 nebardin and Pagenel,so they have to be in the play. Naturally 
 the men have to have wives, and as they were provincial folk, 
 these wives were made militant in their ideas as to domestic 
 fidelity. And then there had to be someone for Suzanne to fall 
 in love with, both an ordinary and an extraor dinary young man, 
 so the Vieomte was created for the part. This gave him his 
 main character s, and the minor ones were as they had to be under 
 the circumstances. It is highly doubtful , though, if one ordinary 
 village would hold the various types, few as they are, that we 
 have used in this play. And the circumstances and situations 
 that they find themselves in are created, although they have 
 been given the gloss of reality. Actually , Suzanne would 
 probably ha ve led a very ordinary and hum-drum existence in 
 Pressigny^ Instead we have very interesting characters in 
 amusing situations , so "the play’s the thing." 
 
 There are two important sources of irony in the play. 
 
 The first, of course, is the treatment of the woman with a career. 
 Capus in his position of boulevardier and cynic gives us no 
 little delicate irony in his handling of Suzanne, He has first 
 of all been ironic in the very choice of his subject. His view 
 of woman, in his quality of Parisian celibate, is hardly that 
 of the normal or, ordinary man. To his mind a woman is something 
 £o amuse oneself with, and to buy trinkets for. -‘-'he thought of a 
 woman taking life seriously enou^i to go out and work for an 
 honest living probably caused him to smile wryly. And it gave 
 

37 . 
 
 him the idea of writing a play about her. His treatment of the se] 
 supporting woman is anything but the serious and defensive 
 treatment of Ibsen, and of the later Frenchmen. But he does attacl 
 the problem. and might be said to speak more than he thinks, in 
 spite of the fact that he has no interest in social problems 
 as such. While he shows many of the bad. angles in the life 
 of the independent woman, they are not as important as he makes 
 them, so that in the end we haare a fair brief for the new 
 woman. 
 
 f- 
 
 There is a bolder irony, though in the dramatists treat- 
 ment of the provincial town and its inhabitants. His work here 
 is not quite as emphatic as it was in Ho sine , but it is any- 
 thing but a weak attack. .He has taken more specialized items 
 in the petty prejudices and crotchets of a small town and held 
 them up disapprovingly. For instance,the incident of Suzanne's 
 piano and her sketching, is a case in point. And the dislike of 
 the townspeople at getting their newspapers in the evaning, 
 is yet another. There are other cases of the same sort, and the 
 whole things goes to make up the irony of the dwellers of a 
 French mainstreet . The stupidity of the men of the town is shown 
 in the almost pathetic efforts of Pagenel and -^ebardin to find 
 amusement , and their having to go to Paris as a last resort. As 
 before said, the arraignment is not as complete as in Ho si ne , 
 but it is more obvious than the irony of the new v/oman. 
 
 There is some thing more or less predominant in this play 
 that has not beenmmet in any of the others. That is sentimentality ,, 
 Chandler accuses Capua of being a sentiment alist , somewhat in 
 the manner of Schnitzler . ( 26 ) The sentimentality in this play 
 

58 
 
 hinges on the virtue of Suzanne, and of her and the dramatist’s 
 trial by fire, so that she may come out at the end as immaeualte 
 as she entered. The fact that she so nobly, left Pressigny 
 when she saw that the man she loved was irretrievably married, 
 and the brave way in which she bore up under the strain of un- 
 requited love are other phases of this same sentimentality . 
 
 The ending o£ the play reminds me of the only novel by Robert 
 W. Chambers I have ever read, where the heroine gave the keys to 
 her bedroom to her husband after many months. But the tone of 
 
 the play as a whole is not so bad as that. 
 
 Again in this work there is something predominant 
 
 idea of La Veine shows up again. And that is the philosophy of 
 luck or chance. One example will suffice. Riri is telling Su- 
 zanne that she is not the mistress of her emotions. Suzanne 
 has just said that she will fall in love with whom she likes 
 when she decided to. To which Riri replies: 
 
 "Vous me faites rire.vous aussi,avec vos idees. Hst-ce 
 que vous le savez de qui vous serez amour euse.iJon,ma chere, 
 vous ne le savez pas. Ce sera peut-etre d’un paysan.comme 
 peut-etre dans dix ans^mais ouil Vous etes ©ommes les 
 camarades. On ne vous enverra une^epeche la veille pour 
 vous prevenir. St un beau matin, en vous reveillant , vous vous 
 apercevrez que vous etes amoureuse. Ca vous sera venu 
 pendant la nuit."(27) 
 
 Here is the old fatalistic idea that one does not command his 
 own fate, but that he is to receive whatever his lot may be. And 
 this statement is borne out by S uxanne’s sudden perception for 
 her love of the Vicomte. 
 
 Another play of somewhat the same type as La Petite 
 yonctionnaire is Les Favorites , 1911. In this we have a different 
 phase of the new woman, in that in the play we have three am- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - • 
 
 
 
39. 
 
 bitious women, one of whom wants to make her name on the stage 
 as ouickly as possible , another wishes to make her way into 
 high society, and another wishes to further the interests of 
 her lover, a journalist. Godfish, an English Jew,3ranchin, and 
 yillerbois have been given the idea of establishing a new news- 
 paper in Paris by either their wives or their mistresses, They 
 finally agree among themselves that it is the only way to keep 
 peace, and act accordingly. They enlist Bourdolle , minister of 
 education, as editor-in-chief , after he has had trouble in his 
 department , and things seem to be getting along very nicely. Then 
 Bourdolle falls in love with a young woman on his staff, his 
 wife finds it out, and they separate. He pursues his affair 
 with Luce, the woman in the case, and it is only through the effort 
 of the kindly old uomtesse that the husband and wife are recon- 
 ciled, and the reconciliation is indirect at that. For lime. 
 Bourdolle has, in one way and another , gained the promise of 
 the office of prime minister of France for her erring husband. 
 
 The news of this comes and there is need of a new editor of 
 Ciel et Terre . Godfish comes with the suggestion that they 
 make Lahure his successor , for he is indded a very brilliant 
 historian, although he has a constant need of money beacause of 
 his ridiculous affair with Bianca, who has scared him into sub- 
 mission.. So the play ends happily , although ironically. 
 
 This play, not the best of those of Gapus was a great 
 success when given in Paris in .December ,1911. The town liked 
 it because it did not see through it.. 
 
 As a matter of fact it is a very definite dig at the 
 Parisian public. The idea that women of the type that we find 
 
represented in this play could get as far as they did was 
 very definite irony in the hands of Capus. They were all 
 ambitious , and strange to say, their ambitions were all granted 
 by the ironic will of the dramatist. Mme. Villsrbois did 
 gain a certain entrance into society, and Codfish did please 
 his mis tress, and iiahure came out decidedly higher than when he 
 went in, but it was 11 due to the caprice of the playwright. 
 
 The idae that people can lead a life such as the people we meet 
 in this play, and' like it, is somehow impossible to conceive in 
 the mind of the dramatist. So he has shown it in its true 
 colors with all its petty deceits, its cruelty, its shallowness, 
 its unscrupulousness , its blindness , but above all its humours. 
 The man Lahure is a truly drawn character , but his inability, 
 his lethargy ,and his awkwardness in his affaires de coeur , in 
 spite of his being a Parisian, and his chrdmic impecuniosity 
 make him a human and syraapthetic person. 
 
 That may be called irony, and perhaps that is what it 
 is, but when one really wants to he can read irony into every- 
 thing that uapus ever wrote,. just as the lbsenists have founS 
 about ninety per cent more symbolism in Ibsen than he ever put 
 
 there . 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 k 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
41 . 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 CAPTJS AND HIGH FINANCE. 
 
 In every society, no matter of what country, tnere has 
 developed a type of family that is sociologically and econom- 
 ically out of place, fhey are very often the third generation 
 of an individual who orignally brought the stock to financial 
 safety, fhe second generation gained , perhaps , social standing 
 at the expense of the family fortune , thereby leaving the third 
 generation with position but without the means of properly 
 keeping it up. lo they drift on, trying to keep up appearances 
 with the funds that would keep an honest bourgeois family more 
 than comfortable. And with this impecuniosity there comes a 
 certain unscrulousness that leads the individuals to all sorgft 
 of petty tricks and efforts to better their condition, much to 
 the dismay and disgust of their associates. Capus,in spite of 
 his possible social anarchy.has a sense of tradxtional decorum 
 that makes him look dubiously on such doings, we have an idea 
 that he thinks that everyone.no matter what his position may 
 be, should live within his income. 
 
 Accord ingly, in La bourse on la vie, 1900, he has 
 shown us a family in the condition sketched above. Jacques iier- 
 baut.an easy-going engineer, has been content to live on his 
 small income. but thanks to an extravagant wife he soon runs 
 through both income and rrinciple. *he news comes from his sol- 
 icitor, when he is expecting it least, that he is bankrupt, or as 
 he puts it ,”decave' r . I’he only thing that remains is a small 
 property in Limoges. ±ie takes the energetic resolution that he 
 

 
 
 
42 . 
 
 and his wife are going there to live, and try to recoup. .But 
 Helene, his wife, finds this entirely out of the question. They 
 are not the only ones in Paris in that fix, so that is no reason 
 for leaving the world of pleasure and gaiety for the provinces. 
 
 So they stay, since Jacques is anything hut energetic, things go 
 on, but become anything but better . Jacques is at last reduced to 
 the levei where he borrows money from a groom. Meantime we have 
 learned of the love of le aoussel for Helene , something rather 
 surprising to his friends in view of the fact that he is more 
 given to cocottes than he is to society women. After practic- 
 ally an act finding out the condition of the Herbauts , relief is 
 brought in the person of Pervenche,an old acquaintance of Helene 
 She is the mistress of one Brassac,a parvenu little esteemed by 
 the crowd that the Herbauts belong to. But when Helene sees in 
 him a possible solution of their dilemma, she becomes very cor- 
 dial with pervenche, in spite of the fact that she is little 
 more than an ordinary woman of the streets. 
 
 In the next act we find that she has managed to get 
 Jacques an offer of partnership with Brassac.in spite of the 
 fact that Jacques does not w^ant and has no money to put in the 
 firm, 'i'his is beajcuse the parvenu Brassac has aspirations to 
 break into society, as we say in this country, and in Jacques he 
 sees the lever that he needs. Jacques wan introduce him to many 
 influential men and get him into the club that he wants. Bo the 
 papers are signed,after nrassac has got the poor man drunk, and 
 things seem to be coming along better than was expected. Brassac, 
 by means of his good nature has persuaded all his cocoties and 
 their latest loves to leave their money with him to play the 
 

 
 . 
 
 , 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 t. 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 : 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 ♦ 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 , 
 
 
 
43 
 
 stock market with and is very successful, iierhaut has also 
 profitted by the association and has become very good friends 
 with the jovial speculator. This last gentleman has a large 
 operation under way in England and it looks as though he is due 
 to make a formidable amount of money. And he has progressed in 
 society. He has fallen in love with a Louth American countess, 
 who is incidentally very wealthy. Then the crash comes, and he is 
 ruined. The only thing for him to do is to fly the country for 
 the partnership contract makes Jacques responsible for all 
 debts. He acts accordingly,and Jacques ends up in a debtors 1 
 prison very much against his will. Things look very dark, and 
 the irrepressible Helene goes to le Houssel for a loan to get 
 Jacques out of jail. He is very willing to oblige, but endeavors 
 to make certain little arrangements that Helene cleverly avoids. 
 She gets the money and takes it to Jacques and tells him with 
 charming naivete about le Houssel. He immediately sends the 
 check back. Things are as thick as ever, when the astonishing 
 i$i*assac walks into the prison. He had fled the country right 
 enough, but being very far gone over the countess, he had tried to 
 se^nak back into the country to her. ne was seen by one of his 
 ex-loves and reported to the police. The countess i£ loyal to 
 him, though, and settles his affairs out of her own fortune. This 
 is very lovely, and nrassac is filled at once with all sorts of 
 new plans. He has a little paper that Jacques ©an sign. . . . Hut 
 Jacques is through, and the pair decide to go to Limoges, for 
 Helene has had just about enough high finance, lo the play ends. 
 
 This play gives us a very interesting picture of 
 some good people who are without money and are trying to get it 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
44 
 
 quickly ana unscrupulously, nemesis comes justly, ana they 
 see the proper way out. It has been a rather heart-racking 
 lesson, though. *he irony, such as it is, is to be found in the 
 realism itself. Y/he racer one may be he does not have to look 
 far for this type of family for as Helene says; ’’Tout le monde 
 est decave a laris 28 ) And she speaks truer than she thinks. 
 The existence of the species does not need any very great proof. 
 These people, in the eyes of Capus, are but little bet'cer than 
 social parasites .with their petty borrowing and underhanded 
 methods os? making money, as a result he shows then up with the 
 strictest realism without any extenuation whatever. Perhaps, 
 though, he may hold a brief for Herbaut.who has the best of in- 
 tentions but hasn’t the strength to live up to them. The play 
 is an accurate and unflattering portrait of a definite stratum 
 of Parisian society, and it id the picture of a stratum that 
 Capus does not think ought to exist. 
 
 A large indictment that capus has of the "decave 1 !; is 
 that in his need he takes up with men of questionable financial 
 workings,as did our friend nerbaut. vjrassac, the rrench parvenu, 
 is something of the prototype of a once very popular magazine 
 hero in this count ry, Wallingford. He has been treated in a mere 
 general way than was the American, but he has all the joviality 
 and good-fellowship of thata amiable crook. Tith the increasing 
 power of money this type of individual has become more and more 
 common, and they are so under foot nowadays that we pay no 
 attention to them. But at the time Capus wrote his play they 
 were not so common, since to put one of them on the stage was 
 considered quite a novelty. Brassac is a human enough figure. 
 
45 . 
 
 and we can not help feeling a little sympathetic for him in 
 spite of the fact that he is what he is. For Brassac is a de- 
 classe--he doesn't fit in. He started from very humble beginnings 
 and by his sharpness and foresight has come into a certain 
 amount of money. He has made no social progress , though, and 
 that is the thing that he wants most to accomplish. He has his 
 automobiles , and his girls, and his ridiculous built-in bar, but he 
 is not happy. He must gain an entrance into the jmonde . That is 
 why he is sportsman enough to take Herbaut as partner, in spite 
 of the fact that he is Penniless. Jacques can do the thing for hir: 
 that he could never do himself, get him by the gates of that 
 long-sought land--”society" . x hen his little world will be com- 
 plete. In France, where money-making is till more or less frowned 
 upon by the elite, this seems an almost impossible thing, but it 
 is just such people as the Herbauts that are responsible for 
 men like Brassac getting into the best clubs and circles. The 
 self-made man is not wanted. In this country of course the self- 
 made man is srery desirable , the moresself-raade the better. So, 
 such a man as Brassac, in the situation that we see him in, may 
 be very literally done, but at the same time there must be some 
 malice in the portrayal , especially when he comes from the pen 
 from such a self-sufficient man as Capus. 
 
 Another character that gives Capus no little amusement 
 is the sometime mistress of Brassac, Pervenche. There is of course 
 the direct irony of the life that she is leading, always being 
 betrayed by this man or that with the promise of marriage. Her 
 lasting hope and her everlasting denial .humourous as they are, 
 are nevertheless tragic irony. But we also have the happy irony 
 

46 
 
 of her finding of her first love, Georges, as an attendant in 
 the debtors’ prison. But there is also a dig at the society 
 that can cause the existence of such a person, this perpetual 
 plaything of men to be cast aside as soon as the novelty has 
 worn off a bit. She is humoured a bit by the happy ending that 
 Gapus has given her affairs, but that may possibly be laid at 
 the door of his sentimentality. 
 
 -here is one instance in the play where Gapus uses 
 direct satire . i'hfet is in the burlesque picture of a French 
 debtors’ prison, with its extravagant appointments and its 
 college trained guards. I know nothing about French prisons, but 
 the idea may be an attack on them, or on the judiciary for its 
 treatment of debtors. At any rate the idea is amusing, even to 
 an Angle-Saxon. Andther example might be in the bar of Brassac. 
 It is possible thfet this is an attack on the extravagant bad 
 taste of the new-rich. 
 
 -'echnically the play might be improved, and the issues 
 might be more unified than they are, for the play is more a slice 
 of life than are some of Gapus’ other plays. But it gets across 
 as it is, and is probably far smoother in presentation than it 
 appears in a casual reading, -he group photographs that we have 
 here are delightful. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
47 . 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Emile de Saint-Auban, in his volume on the theatre, 
 has a chapter called ,T Le Sourire de 1 anarchie,"in which he calls 
 Capus a social anarchist. He thinks that Car, us is a man opposed 
 to existing modes and manners, and that he is the philosopher 
 of disorder. As he says: 
 
 Tt Le stimulant qui pique sa fantaisis est la haine bien- 
 veiiiante , l’animosite sans fiel qu’on nomme: la vie reg- 
 uliere. Cette regularite', t issee par les codes, les prejuges, 
 serablent a notre ecrivain la^pire des const itutions , et 
 1'crdre bourgeois lui apparait comr.ie le plus perilleux des 
 d^sordres” ( 29 ) 
 
 And this author goes on to say that the only thing that can com- 
 fort Capus for this state of things is a father-in-law who 
 does not care a great deal for custom, or a virtuous cocotte like 
 Mile. Pervenche who has lovers but is looking for a husband, and 
 who is very superior to the women who have a husband and are 
 looking for lovers. 
 
 So he goes about upsetting , for himself at least, some 
 of the established codes of conduct and deriving a great deal of 
 pleasure from this exercise. He is never militant in his warfare, 
 if such it be, but is rather like a cat that caresses you as it 
 scratches. But the scratch is never very deep. For his method is 
 largely that of irony, as we see, from character and situation. He 
 is restive and the ordinary, though it may have its problems, 
 holds no interest for hiip. And he is restive with more than a 
 single order of things, for he has something th say against the 
 provinces as well as the metropolis. He can paint a French 
 "Main street" , as he did in Kosine,or he can turn his guns on 
 
48. 
 
 the city as he did in hes Favorites or La Bourse ou la vie . 
 
 He was transplanted to the city while young and set about getting 
 as much of its spirit as he could. He did this consciously , how- 
 ever, and as he acquired the tang of the boulevards he was still 
 enough of his original self to be able t probably, to look at things 
 rather coldly and see all their faults and shortcomings. He 
 followed his inclinations , though, and asma result he has great 
 deal of the spirit of the city in him. But because he did what 
 he did so consciously, and used his earlier standards as a basis 
 of comparison, he has retained even today much of his provincial 
 nature. As a result he has a way of looking at his subject 
 from two angles. The opinions of either of his natures are not 
 hard and fast ones of either of the environments from which 
 he drew them, but rather a synthesis of the two. He sees the bad 
 of both sources and points it out accordingly. This is a very s 
 strange faculty, and it has been reached through a certain mind, 
 which in turn may be due to his earlier scientific training. 
 
 So Capus is a painter of the disorganisation of France 
 
 as he sees it. M. de Saint-Auban goes on to say: 
 
 "11 peint si gentiment notre disorganisation qui,peut-etre, 
 
 est le point de depart d une organisation nouvellei 
 
 II a la decomposition airaable et,avec lui,on s'abandonne 
 aux douceurs d'un irrespect qui ne sied pas trop mal au 
 desarr&is de notre decadence ou les principes ne sont plus 
 a la mode,ou les lois font mine de devenir des prejuges 
 et ou il n‘y a guere plus,en somme, que 1‘imprevu qui 
 arrive. . . ."(30) 
 
 So he is something of an anarchist. Hot the bomb throwing variety, 
 but rather the parlor sort, who amuse themselves much with their 
 new theories on manners , customs , and ins titut ions , but are too 
 lazy and inactive to actually pa^rctice what they preach. They 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
49 . 
 
 are more interested in theory for itself than in any practical 
 reform, '-‘•'hey dwell in the land of the dread hypothesis. Gapus 
 sees that the times are changing, hut is more interested in 
 guessing as to which way they will turn rather than in trying to 
 direct their turning. And he is too much of the cynic to take it 
 very seriously. 
 
 ^e is interested rather in taking individaal cases 
 $nd phenomena and examining them and exhibiting them under his 
 own microscope for what they are worth. ]?or, after all, he is 
 just a dramatist who designs to amuse, and does so although his 
 work is tinctured with his own peculiar self, which is the pro- 
 duct of two almost opposed environments. And he does amuse us. 
 
 "Joiis traits , scenes curieuses , observations aigues qui 
 dessinent gentiment les coins de la societe , voila bien, 
 n'estSce pas , 1 ‘ habituel bagage de M. Alfred uapus,le plus 
 gai,le plus souriant.le plus leger des anarchist es ... sinon 
 le raoins dangereux ,T (31). 
 
 But it is to be doubted if one gains many converts with sar- 
 donic laughter. 
 
 THE END. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Alfred Capus: 
 
 Brignol et sa fille 
 
 Paris 
 
 1894 
 
 Rosine 
 
 T? 
 
 1897 
 
 Le Maris de Leontine 
 
 T? 
 
 1900 
 
 La Bourse ou la vie 
 
 TT 
 
 rr 
 
 La Veine 
 
 TT 
 
 1901 
 
 La Petite Fonct ionnaire 
 
 Tf 
 
 r» 
 
 Les Leux Ecoles 
 
 T? 
 
 1902 
 
 Les Favorites 
 
 ?? 
 
 1911 
 
 Henrik Ibsen 
 
 The ¥1151 buck Hew York 1915 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 I. J3ooks: 
 
 1. Barret H. Clark 
 
 Contemporary French Dramatists 
 
 Cincinnati 
 
 1915 
 
 2. Frank ¥a$leigh Chandler 
 
 Contemporary Drama of France 
 
 Hew York 
 
 
 3. Encyclopedia Britanniea (gdition 11) 
 
 t* TT 
 
 1911 
 
 4. Irving Babbitt 
 
 Rousseau and Romanticism 
 
 Boston 
 
 1919 
 
 5. Frank Eadleigh Chandler 
 
 aspects of the Modern Drama 
 
 Lev; York 
 
 1914 
 
 6. Antoine ^enoist 
 
 De Tha|etre d ' au jourd 1 hui v.2 
 
 Paris 
 
 1912 
 
 7. Emile de Saint-Auban 
 
 L’Idee sociale au theatre 
 
 ?? 
 
 1901 
 
 Magazines : 
 
 1. Hew Republic v.18 pp.220 
 
 Hew York 
 
 1917 
 
50 
 
 FOOTNOTES • 
 
 1. Clark: Contemporary French Dramatists p.137 
 
 2. Chandler: Contemporary Drama of France p.122 
 
 g tt »* n m tt rt 
 
 4. Clark: Contempoarary French dramatists p.137 
 5 * "Irony” — Encyclopedia Britannica 
 
 6. Babbitt: Rousseau and Romanticism p.263 
 
 7. « " " " p.265 
 
 8*New Republic vl8 p.220 
 
 g tt tt tt tt 
 
 10 .” ” ” " 
 
 on. 
 
 11. Clark: Contemporary 
 
 French Dramatists 
 
 p. 150 
 
 
 12.Benoist ; 
 
 x heatre d ' 
 
 aujourd * hui 
 
 p. 5 
 
 
 l3.Brignol 
 
 et sa fille 
 
 
 p. 117 
 
 
 14 .Rosine 
 
 Ac t II, S 
 
 cene 8 
 
 p. 138 
 
 
 15. " 
 
 T* 
 
 " 6 
 
 p. 123 
 
 
 16. " 
 
 Act IV 
 
 " 11 
 
 p.313 
 
 
 17. Clark: Contemporary 
 
 French Dramatists 
 
 p. 142 
 
 
 18 . La v eine 
 
 Act I, Scene <jr 
 
 p.33 
 
 
 19 . " " 
 
 TT 
 
 " 6 
 
 p. 54 
 
 
 20 . Haris de 
 
 Leontine 
 
 Act I, Scene 6 
 
 p.ll 
 
 
 21. " " 
 
 TT 
 
 Act II " 17 
 
 p. 135 
 
 4? 
 
 X 
 
 22.Les Deux 
 
 Bcoles 
 
 Act I , Scene 11 
 
 p. 72 
 
 
 23. " 
 
 TT 
 
 Act III, Scene 4 
 
 p. 226- 
 
 7 
 
 34. TT 
 
 TT 
 
 Act I , Scene 5 
 
 p.33 
 
 
 25. She Hi Id 
 
 Luck 
 
 Act V 
 
 p. 372 
 
 
 26. Chandler: Contemporary Drama of Prance p.122 
 
 27. La Petite Ffcnct ionnaire Act Il.^cene 16 p. 159 
 
 28. La Bourse ou la vie Act I, Scene 2 p.5 
 
 29.St-Auban: L' Idee Sociale au tlfatre p.197-8 
 
 30. " " TT " " p.201-2 
 
 31. " " " " " p. 206