INTRODUCTION

The phenomenal success of the book conducted him to the highest honor that France has to bestow on her men of letters, — a seat among the Forty Immortals. His immense popularity could never induce him to resume his literary work.

There are some who assign Labiche to a positively high position in literature. Though always light and easy, his dramas are never immoral ; and in this play it has been necessary to make no changes and to omit nothing out of a regard for propriety.

The title of the play is manifestly taken from La Fontaine's famous fable, La Cigale et la Fourmi, an adaptation from Aesop.

La Fontaine's cigale sings all the summer, and when winter comes begs food from the frugal ant, promising to repay it when summer comes back again. Lending is the least of the ant's faults. She asks how the grasshopper spent the summer. To the grasshopper's reply that she sang all the time, the ant says, " You sang, did you ? Well, you can dance now ! "

In this little comedy Labiche has given a wholly new turn to the fable, and the characters he uses are such as are familiar to-day.

The Chameroys have made money easily and have amassed a fortune. On the other hand Paul de Vineuil has run through with his entire wealth. Paul has become, as he calls himself, "a consulting spendthrift," and the Chameroys, who are stung by the taunt "ants," ask him to teach them how to spend their money. By the sweeping changes which he suggests he at first