ARGUMENT

The first act takes place in the Tuileries. Dorante, a great boaster, gifted with an invincible propensity to colour the truth» has newly arrived from Poitiers, where he was studying for the Bar, and, assuming airs of assurance, seeks adventure in Paris. Fortune aiding, he has scarcely a few hours to wait before he meets with a love affair and a duel. Incapable to say a woid without inventing a story, ho tries to persuade the first lady he meets in the Tuileries that he is desperately in love with her for months, while his highly-coloured description of a purely imagrnary sérénade induces the too-credulous Alcippe to see in him a preferred rival. Hence arises a séries of intricate situations and imbroglios which are often more than a match for the skill of Dorante, in spite of the marvellous fertility of his imagination.

Wishing to avoid a marriage devised for him by his father, Dorante (Act II.), by means of a compUcated and amusingly incrodible story, tries to make the old man believe that he has already contracted marriage secretly at Poitiers.

Challenged by Alcippe, whose jealousy has been awakened by the story of the sérénade, Dorante fights bravely (Act III.), but without any harm resulting on either side, though he cannot help relating the péripéties of Ûie duel in a most dramatic manner to his valet, just describing the death of his adversary, when the iatter appears perfectly safe and sound, or rather, as Dorante vainly attempts to put it, miraculously redivivus.

The lady he was courting, suspecting the shallowness of his passion, has recourse to a disguise, with the help of a friend (Act rV.), by which she brings Dorante to a supposed rendez -vous, and hears him repeat, though he thinks her another lady, the same véhément protestations of love he had made before. Nevertheless Dorante, who is never disconcerted, shows a great skiU in trying to gct out of the scrape, and, whilst he is uncertain himself which of the two fair ladies he loves most, and scarcely able to distinguish them by their names, he has succeeded, in spite of his incorrigible boasting, to win the heart (Act V.) of the charming Lucrèce, and easily obtains the consent of a too indulgent fathei to a union which seems a rather sweet punishment for the liar, faithful to the last to his character — ^a conclusion which evidently ghows that in the eyes of Corneille Dorante' s story -telling is rather a ridiculous than a really perverse habit, a travers d'esprit, not a vice de cœur.