VI EMILE AUGIER

ever repentant, to rise ; * and Gabrielle, a eulogy of quiet home life and domestic affection, the exact opposite of the romantic idéal, was followed by a romantic drania of Richelieu's time {Diane). La Pierre de touche is also romantic in tone ; it is a tedious story of a talented young German pianist who inherits an enormous fortune from an admirer of his music and then goes to pièces like a wrecked ship in a storm. Hère, however, we begin to see the influence of the realistic prose comedy of manners which Dumas the younger had successfully transported from fiction to the stage : the comedy is written in prose and money is its central thème. A dainty Cinderella story {Philiberte) intervenes, and then Augier foUows steadily in the path pointed out by Dumas. He describes the influence of wealth, particularly the pursuit of wealth, on the society of his time : M. Poiriers son-inlaw sells his name for a dowry ; opulent bankers try in vain to forget and to make others forget the shady origin of their fortune [Ceinture dorée, les Effrontés) ; the fight for wealth blunts the sensitive honor of youth {la Jeunesse, la Contagion, Jean de Thommeray), and blinds men to the distinction between law and equity {Maître Guérin) ; the restless craving to make a show dégrades women {les Lionnes pauvres) and wrecks the family fortunes {les Fourchambault) .

Un Beau Mariage shows how hard it is to span the gulf separating the idle life of the rich from the scholar's life of toil. Not only the ' correct ' Marquis de Laroche-Pingoley, but the young heroine as well, divide men into two classes : those who look first at the fortune, then at the woman, and those who look first at the woman and then at her fortune.

* In a later play, le Mariage iV Olympe, recently adapted by Clyde Fitcli as The Marriage Game, he sliowcd tliat such women were often incapable of rising.

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And if a young nian bclonging to a third class, really in love, marnes money, his motives are apt to be misjudged, and he is likely to lose much of his dignity and independence.

Augier's dramatic prose style — he wrote practically nothing but plays — is perhaps the best of his time, clear, concise and vigorous, but his verse does not deserve the praise of its enthusiastic admirers. For he was not a poet. He was a sane, solid, talented bourgeois, whose strongest characteristic was conimon sensé. Eleven years before his death (1889) he withdrew from the théâtre at the height of his success : "Quittons-nous bons amis," he says to his "cher public," "et sache-moi gré de me condamner au silence de peur de t' ennuyer."