Forgetting your friends and your poor parents, You seem to be able to live only with the great; And you would doubtless believe that you are imitating the vulgar If you remembered that you had a father. Act iii. scene 8. The harsh truth of these reproaches overwhelms Madame Dalainville, who is ready to faint: and here is the moral punishment of the ambitious, and a comical punishment: he has the great world at his house, and his wife, who must do the honors to this frivolous and wicked company, his wife begins to weep! What would one think of it! What does he say? Dry your tears; It is very essential, I warn you: Act iii. scene 8. This intrigue and this dialogue are excellent. They naturally arise from the different passions which animate the personages, and from the fault which they have committed. We well know that we may say that these passions do not spring from ingratitude: it is ambition, charlatanism, or vanity. It is not ingratitude, but they are all intimately connected with it. The true ingrate-that is to say, the man who feels pleasure in returning evil for good-is rare and monstrous, and moreover, would be scarcely tolerated at the Theatre in tragedy. But this ingratitude which proceeds from selfishness, and which is only the preference which man has for himself over his benefactor; this ingratitude which has a little corner in all hearts, is put in comedy because it is not necessarily odious. Such is the ingratitude of the two sonsin-law they are more selfish than ungrateful. We have remarked the kind of morality which the story illustrates. This story takes the side of fathers; but it does so because the father, after the first moment of wickedness, had the intention of duping the hypocrites; and the story seems especially to put an end to this narrative. It would be an error, however, to believe that such is the general character of the literature of the middle ages, and that in the tales or romances of chivalry, the fathers have not the dignity and authority which they ought to have. On the contrary, there is in these old fabliaux a great respect for the sentiments and natural duties of man: the paternal character is there every where honored; filial piety is there every where commended and rewarded. Never, in the romances of chivalry, are fathers ridiculous; never are the sons insolent and disrespectful. The events are often strange and fabulous, but the sentiments are always true, and of a noble and elevated character. In these narratives, which are a faithful picture of the manners of the feudal society, kings are sometimes treated with little consideration, and the great Charlemagne is not always painted in favorable colors: he is impatient and quarrelsome; he is inclined to anger and suspicion; and is even sometimes represented as having been insulted and beaten by his vassals. But there is, above royal majesty, another majesty more inviolable and more sacred: it is that of paternal authority, which no son would dare to outrage with impunity, were he even to become a greater proprietor than his father. And we may add, as a last trait, that, in these romances, the paternal power is conscious of its dignity, and that it never lowers itself for a moment, even for love. "My Lord," says his wife, Mabilette, to the old Chevalier Guérin de Montglave, "our four sons will return to see us to-day. You have told them to go and seek their fortunes in the world; they have obeyed you, and they are now dukes, counts, and great barons, having under their banners many men-at-arms, and in their dungeons a quantity of gold and silver. Let us hasten to meet them at the gate of the city of Bordeaux, that we may the sooner see and embrace them.” "My Lady," replied Guérin de Montglave, "our children do their duty in coming to see us, and I have hastened to embrace them; but I do not wish to deprive them of the honor of rendering to us all the homage which they will also receive one day from their own children. Let us await them. Only come with me to this window, that you may see them coming afar off." We see in what a touching and natural manner the sentiments of paternal and maternal love are expressed in the literature of the middle ages: the mother thinks of embracing her children soonest; the father, without loving them less, thinks of the respect which they owe him, and, to reconcile his dignity and tenderness, goes to place himself at the window, to see them while they are yet afar off. XIII. OF FATHERS IN COMEDY, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE COMEDIES OF MOLIERE. COMEDY is embarrassed, when it wishes to defend fathers; it is less restrained when it attacks them; but it meets on this side a dangerous rock: it runs the risk of becoming immoral, and it is this which caused J. J. Rousseau to censure comedy, and especially the comedies of Moliere : "It is assuredly a great vice," (says he in his letter on theatrical exhibitions,) "to be avaricious, and to lend money on usury; but is it not a still greater vice for a son to rob his father, to be disrespectful to him, to make insulting reproaches to him; and when this angry father gives him his malediction, to answer with a grumbling air, that he cares nothing about his gifts? If this pleasantry is excellent, is it less punishable on that account? And is the piece in which they make us love the insolent son who has made it, less a school of bad manners?" In the eighteenth century, J. J. Rousseau attacked comedy, and censured it for teaching children the forgetfulness of the respect which they owe to their parents, as Aristophanes in former times, in The Clouds,* accused philosophy of perverting the minds of the young, and weakening the authority of paternal power in their hearts. And it is thus that comedy and philosophy, the two most reckless arts in the world, the one by raillery, and the other by suggesting doubt, have in their disputations alternately recognized and denounced each other, for violating the sacredness of the paternal power, which lies at the foundation of society. *See in The Clouds, the scene where Phidippides beats Strepsiades, his father, and demonstrates to him, by the aid of the principles of Socrates, that he has a right to beat him. Before Rousseau, Bossuet and Nicole had spoken of the Theatre in the same manner; and before Bossuet and Nicole, Saint Chrysostom had condemned it. Shall we attempt to protest against this anathema? Shall we endeavor to maintain, as the philosophers of the eighteenth century did, that the Theatre is a school- of morality? No: let us recognize the evil where it lies; but let us so measure it that it may not appear to be greater than it is. We will not extol the stage, but we will only condemn it for the faults which belong to it. We ought not to expect of it the purity of Christian morality; whoever wishes that, must go to seek it at the Church. Nor ought we to ask of it the severe and high-toned morality of the Porch; nor should we even expect of it the virtuous hatred which the sight of evil gives to good people: it rather takes the part of Philente, who quietly takes men as he finds them, than the part of Alceste. Let us not believe, however, that the drama is, of all the kinds of literature, the most destitute of morality. The mirror of human life, the Theatre, is as moral as our experience; and we may add, alas! to disguise nothing of its inefficacy, as moral as the experience of others, which avail but little in producing a reform. We will consider in another place what are the dangers of the Theatre in a moral point of view. We wish at present only to ascertain if it is true that Moliere, in his comedies, wished to weaken paternal authority. We will remark first, that the fathers, husbands, and old men whom Moliere makes game of, are not ridiculous in their character of father, husband, and old man, but for the vices and the passions which dishonor in them this very character. In the School for Husbands, Sganarelle is ridiculous, not because he is old, but because being old, he is amorous, and a cold and morose lover, which is contrary to the character of love. And it is so true that Sganarelle is not ridiculous on account of his age, but on account of his faults, that on the side of him is Aristes, his brother, old also and amorous, but amiable and indulgent, who is the hero of the piece, and whom the young Leonora willingly marries. It is not old age that Moliere ridicules, but the faults which dishonor it. We cannot say as much for Arnolfe in the School for Wives: he is not ridiculous because he is old, but because he is captious and jealous. George Dandin is not ridiculous because he is married, but because he has made a marriage of vanity, and he pays the penalty of his pride. Harpagon, in fine, amuses us not as a father, but because he is avaricious; and if his son is wanting in respect for him, it is because the miser, the usurer, and the amorous old man, the three vices, or the three ridiculous qualities in Harpagon, conceal the paternal char acter. Comedy, in causing the vices to punish each other, represents the justice of the world as it is; a justice which is accomplished by the aid of the human passions which contend with each other, and alternately obtain the mastery. It is this justice which the proverbs also express, which are only comic ideas recapitulated in maxims, when they say, for example to the avaricious wife, a gallant sharper. When the passions are strong and violent, this justice is terrible, and creates the emotion of tragedy; when the passions are more insignificant and trivial, this justice is jocose and humorous; it then creates the ridicule of comedy. An attentive study of the parts of father and son, of Harpagon and Cleanthe, in The Miser, will justify these reflections. If we wished in a sermon, to describe avarice, and to render it odious, if we said that this passion made us forget every thing, honor, friendship, and family; that the miser prefers his gold to his children; that if they were reduced by the avarice of their father to the greatest extremities, they would very soon cease to respect him, and that this revolt of the children is the chastisement of the avarice of the father; if we said all that in a sermon, who would be astonished? Who would think of pretending to say, that in speaking thus, we encourage children to forget the respect which they owe to their parents? Moliere, in the scene of The Miser, which J. J. Rousseau censures, has only put in action this sermon which we have imagined. When the father forgets his honor, the son forgets the respect which he owes to his father. We are not in fact deceived: a glorious title is that of a father of a family; it is almost that of a priest; but it is a title which obliges, and if it gives rights, it also imposes duties. We know well that a son should never accuse his father, even though he should be culpable; that is the precept, but it is, alas! the practice only of virtuous sons. But Moliere, in The Miser, did not at all intend to represent Cleanthe as a virtuous son, whom we must approve at the expense of his father; he only wished to oppose avarice to prodigality, because these |