INTRODUCTION XV

Les tenailles, he rose to greater heights as moralist and drama-1 C\^ tist, reaching bis artistic climai in La course du flambeau. At the time of his death he was generally recognized as the leading dramatist of his day in France.

Hervieu's drama as a whole is one of ideas, rather than oÛ passions. "His plays aîm above ail to make us think." 1 ' 1/ Two important plays, Les tenailles and La loi de l'homme, following the example of Dumas fils, deal yith the subject of divorce laws and their social effect. Like Dumas, Hervieu was a moralist, "moralist of the sternest," Doumic calls him." It has been well said of him that "his eatire work gravitâtes around morality; his work reasons, blâmes, or teaches."" And in welcoming him to the Académie, Brunetière, comparing him to a surgeon, said to him: " Y ou open up the sores and you operate upon the vices of our age." w

With this conception of the function of the dramatist, Hervieu's plays are of course markedly serious.' 1 Unlike Dumas' plays, in which an action leading to a serious or even bloody end is often lighted up by the flash of wit, Hervieu's are almost totally lacking m wit. Occasionally, but rarely, there is a slight touch of humor, generally humor of situation rather than of speech. Hervieu truly said of himself: "Au théâtre, je ne conçois pas comique. Ce qui me séduit, c'est la vérité et la force." a

b. Plots. — Logic of structure is a quality that Hervieu '-'. strove for and attained. "Je tiens à Être un logicien, un organisateur d'un conflit d'idées, de sentiments et de pas- sions," he is quoted as saying." His plots are notable for their

" Ib., p. 8g.

j" Revue des deux mondes, 15 mai, igoi, p. 436. * "'Ségur, lot. cit., p. loi.

■ F'iponsi au discours de rlceptien de M. Paul Hervieu, p. 301.

one-act plays, Point de lendemain and Modestie, stand apart from s light and graceful. Bagatelle, styled "comédie," begins and in the spirit of eighteenth-centuiy badinage, but the end is seri-