X INTRODUCTION

are directly mirrored — the famous interview between M. Turcaret and Rafle. That what seems to us such comparativelj mild satire could cause so much heart-buming amongst the traitants is, however, a very interesting indication of how high the tide of popular feeling was already running against the in-

r' struments of the national financial régime. ;

^~;^ ^^T^ç. low moral tone of the play is to be noted. The best

character is, perhaps, the Marquis, and he is only occasionally

sober.j Throughout the comedy it is a case of bite the biter, of

f diamond eut diamond. I Although M. Turcaret in the first act

'^ is a prosperousyf;/^;z^//?riLn3~mTHe last act is reduced to beggary, we need hardly try to see in this any moral, for by the ladder down which M. Turcaret has descended Frontin is rapidly mounting, and Frontin is much the more dangerous man of the two.^ Of the other men the Chevalier is an adventurer of the worst type, a polished blackguard who respects neither himself nor anybody else. Rafle is a parasite beneath contempt. ^

Of the women the Baronne is perhaps the least bad. Marine leaves her because her mistress is not wholly selfish, The Ba-

V ronne has even occasional moments when she actually pitiés L-her dupe, M. Turcaret: "Sais-tu bien, je commence à le

* plaindre." 2 Lisette is a remorseless sharper; Madame Jacob's unction lays her open to suspicion, and Madame Turcaret is ^the wife of M. Turcaret.

IhÊ play might indeed be charged with being episodic, and the plot, despite its briskness and bustle, "dry,"^ for the fall of M. Turcaret does not affect us very deeply, if the whole action were no^hmified by the lively, if unscrupulous, personality

j( ^ of FrontinïN He recalls at once Molière's Scapin, La Fontaine's RenardT^caumarchais' Figaro — perhaps, in minor key, Panurge.

^Lesage himself admits this. V. Critique de Turcaret, op. cit., p. 508.

'^ V. Turcaret IV, ix.

^ V. Critique de Turcaret, op. cit. p. 509-10.

*Cf. Brunetière, Epoques du Théâtre Français, p. 194-5.