appens, by a curious fatality, that the stage and society are
almost always in direct contradiction. Take the period of the Regency.
If comedy were the constant expression of society, the comedy of that
time must have offered us strong license or joyous Saturnalia. Nothing
of the sort; it is cold, correct, pretentious, but decent. In the
Revolution, during its most horrible periods, when tragedy, as was
said, ran the streets, what were the theatres offering you? Scenes of
humanity, of beneficence, of sentimentality; in January, 1793, during
the trial of Louis XVI., La Belle Fermiere, a rural and sentimental
play; under the Empire, the reign of glory and conquest, the drama was
neither warlike nor exultant; under the Restoration, a pacific
government, the stage was invaded by lancers, warriors, and military
costumes; Thalia wore epaulettes. The theatre is rarely the expression
of society; it is often the opposite."

Scribe was an exception to the rule thus laid down by him. The Theatre
de Madame is an exact painting of the manners, the ideas, the language
of the Parisian bourgeoisie in the reign of Charles X. Villemain was
right in saying to Scribe, on receiving him at the Academy:--

"The secret of your success with the theatre lies in having happily
seized the spirit of your century and in making the sort of comedies to
which it is best adapted and which most resemble it."

The world that the amiable and ingenious author excels in representing,
is that of finance and the middle classes; it is the society of the
Chaussee d'Antin, rather than that of the Faubourg Saint Germain. His
Gymnase repertory is of the Left Centre, the juste milieu, nearer the
National Guard than the royal guard. The protege of Madame the Duchess
of Berry never flattered the ultras. There is not in his plays a single
line that is a concession to their arrogance or their rancor; not a
single phrase, not one word, that shows the least trace of the
prejudices of the old regime; not one idea that could offend the most
susceptible liberal. It is animated by the spirit of conciliation and
pacification. We insist on this point because we see in it a proof that
a Princess who took under her protection a kind of literature so
essentially modern and bourgeois, never thought of reviving a past
destroyed forever.

The 28th of June, 1828, when the struggles of the liberals and the
ultras were so heated, Eugene Scribe, in connection with M. de
Rougemont, wr