bles down on the second, this latter
knocks down the third, and the state of things goes from bad to worse
until they all lie prone on the floor. Or again, take a house of cards
that has been built up with infinite care: the first you touch seems
uncertain whether to move or not, its tottering neighbour comes to a
quicker decision, and the work of destruction, gathering momentum as it
goes on, rushes headlong to the final collapse.

These instances are all different, but they suggest the same abstract
vision, that of an effect which grows by arithmetical progression, so
that the cause, insignificant at the outset, culminates by a necessary
evolution in a result as important as it is unexpected. Now let us open
a children's picture-book; we shall find this arrangement already on
the high road to becoming comic. Here, for instance--in one of the
comic chap-books picked up by chance--we have a caller rushing
violently into a drawing-room; he knocks against a lady, who upsets her
cup of tea over an old gentleman, who slips against a glass window
which falls in the street on to the head of a constable, who sets the
whole police force agog, etc. The same arrangement reappears in many a
picture intended for grownup persons. In the "stories without words"
sketched by humorous artists we are often shown an object which moves
from place to place, and persons who are closely connected with it, so
that through a series of scenes a change in the position of the object
mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes in the situation
of the persons. Let us now turn to comedy. Many a droll scene, many a
comedy even, may be referred to this simple type. Read the speech of
Chicanneau in the Plaideurs: here we find lawsuits within lawsuits, and
the mechanism works faster and faster--Racine produces in us this
feeling of increasing acceleration by crowding his law terms ever
closer together--until the lawsuit over a truss of hay costs the
plaintiff the best part of his fortune. And again the same arrangement
occurs in certain scenes of Don Quixote; for instance, in the inn
scene, where, by an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, the
mule-driver strikes Sancho, who belabours Maritornes, upon whom the
innkeeper falls, etc. Finally, let us pass to the light comedy of
to-day. Need we call to mind all the forms in which this same
combination appears? There is one that is employed rather frequently.
For instance, a certain thing,