their tirades. Between these extremes he
thought there was a place where artistic spirit
might be displayed in a dignified and beautiful
style. But he never found that place, despite
his poignant finale, when Henrietta declares that
her mother's lover is her own.

Contrast this effective, if too heroic, dénoue-
ment with the cold cynicism of Maurice Donnay
in L'Autre Danger, where a pure girl is forced
by cruel circumstances to hear her mother's
shame published, to learn the awful news that
the man she loves is the lover of her mother,
and, to cap this assault upon our nerves, the
lover is made to marry the wretched girl so as
to divert suspicion from the inhuman mother.
In the grip of his dark pessimism Edmond
de Goncourt predicted that in fifty years the
book would kill the theatre. It was about nine
years later that Ernest Renan, according to
Octave Uzanne, said one evening in conversa-
tion among friends, "Fifty years hence no one
will open a book." Both prophecies are likely
to come to naught. Bad books, bad plays, we
shall always have with us. Life seems too brief
for the larger cultivation of beautiful art.

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