otlights, needed buskins and frippery, or, at any rate, fostered
them, as the pieces of Hugo and de Vigny proved.

The younger Dumas, Emile Augier, Halevy and Becque--with a crescendo
that in the last of the four is somewhat harsh--diverged from the
traditional path, and in their plays put men and women whose motives
and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their audience. The
departure from old lines in these dramatists is patent; and, after
discounting the part that may have been temperamental or contingent on
some other cause, there remains the larger share to attribute to
Balzac's influence. Dumas' _Dame aux Camelias_ originally staged in
1852, was a timid start in the new direction. The theme, that of the
courtezan in love, was a favourite one with the classical school, and
much of the ancient style and tone pervades it; yet its atmosphere is
a modern one, the expression of its sentiment is modern too, and the
accessories are supplied with an eye to material and moral exactitude.
The same author's _Question d'Argent_, composed a few years later, was
a more direct tribute to the modifying power of the _Comedie Humaine_.
It was Balzac's _Mercadet the Jobber_ remodelled with a larger stage
science. Hypnotized subsequently by the _piece a these_ (and not to
his advantage) Dumas went off at a tangent whereas Augier, once
engaged in the newer manner with his _Gendre de Monsieur Poirier_,
persisted in it with each of his succeeding pieces, flattering his
model by resurrection after resurrection of the _Comedy's_ principal
actors, Bixiou and Lousteau in Giboyer and Vernouillet, Balthazar
Claes in the Desronceretz of _Maitre Guerin_. Ludovic Halevy
apparently wished every one to perceive what he owed to the father of
French realism. Finding in the _Petty Bourgeois_ a Madame Cardinal
whose comic personality and peculiar moral squint suited one of his
plays, he adopted her entirely, name and all, altering only what her
more recent surroundings required. Henri Becque digested Balzac rather
than imitated him. One feels in reading his _Corbeaux_ that it is a
disciple's own work. The master's virtues and some of the disciple's
faults are everywhere present, both in the subject and in the
treatment. We have the same world of money and business that shows so
big throughout the _Comedy_, an unfaithful partner and lawyer
introducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan. The practice
of legal ruse and robbery--in these things