of the soul, with
a single stroke of the pen. Dramatic _cheating of the eye_ is so
complete that often the spectator, when he is a mere reader of the
play, desiring to give himself once more the same emotion that he has
felt as one of the audience, not only cannot recapture that emotion in
the written words before him, but often cannot even distinguish the
passage where the emotion lies hid. It was a word, a look, a silence,
a gesture, a purely atmospheric combination, that held him spellbound.
So comes in the genius of the playwright's trade, if those two words
can be associated. One may compare writing for the stage in relation
to other phases of literature, as we compare ceiling painters with
[painters of] pictures for the wall or the easel. Woe to the painter
if he forget that his composition is to be looked at from a distance,
with a light below it!

A man without merit as a thinker, a moralist, a philosopher, an
author, may turn out to be a dramatic author of the first class; that
is to say, in the work of setting in motion before you the purely
external movements of mankind; and on the other hand, to become in the
theatre the thinker, the moralist, the philosopher, or the author to
whom one listens, one must indispensably be furnished with the
particular and natural qualities of a man of much lower grade. In
short, to be a master in the art of writing for the stage, you must be
a poor hand in the superior art....

That dramatic author who shall know mankind like Balzac, and who shall
know the theatre like Scribe, will be the greatest dramatic author
that has ever existed.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,'
by E. Irenaeus Stevenson

AN ARMED TRUCE

From 'A Friend of the Sex'

[The following conversation in the first act of the play
takes place in the pleasant morning-room of a country-house
near Paris, the home of M. and Madame Leverdet. M. Leverdet
is asleep in his chair. The speakers are Madame Leverdet, a
coquettish, sprightly lady approaching middle age, and young
M. De Ryons, a friend and neighbor. Madame Leverdet is
determined to marry off De Ryons advantageously, and as soon
as possible. Unfortunately he is a confirmed bachelor, not to
say woman-hater, whose cynicism is the result of severely
disappointing experiences. Under that cynicism there is
however genuine respect and even chivalry as to the right
sort of