They are very pretty, very alert, very French, these plays of the Theatre de Madame.  They have aged less than many pretentious works that have aimed at immortality.  There is hardly one of them without its ingenious idea, something truly scenic.  We often see amateurs seeking pieces to play in the salons; let them draw from this repertory; they will have but an embarrassment of choice among plays always amusing and always in good form.

Scribe said, in his reception discourse at the French Academy (January 28, 1836):—­

“It happens, by a curious fatality, that the stage and society are almost always in direct contradiction.  Take the period of the Regency.  If comedy were the constant expression of society, the comedy of that time must have offered us strong license or joyous Saturnalia.  Nothing of the sort; it is cold, correct, pretentious, but decent.  In the Revolution, during its most horrible periods, when tragedy, as was said, ran the streets, what were the theatres offering you?  Scenes of humanity, of beneficence, of sentimentality; in January, 1793, during the trial of Louis XVI., La Belle Fermiere, a rural and sentimental play; under the Empire, the reign of glory and conquest, the drama was neither warlike nor exultant; under the Restoration, a pacific government, the stage was invaded by lancers, warriors, and military costumes; Thalia wore epaulettes.  The theatre is rarely the expression of society; it is often the opposite.”

Scribe was an exception to the rule thus laid down by him.  The Theatre de Madame is an exact painting of the manners, the ideas, the language of the Parisian bourgeoisie in the reign of Charles X. Villemain was right in saying to Scribe, on receiving him at the Academy:—­

“The secret of your success with the theatre lies in having happily seized the spirit of your century and in making the sort of comedies to which it is best adapted and which most resemble it.”

The world that the amiable and ingenious author excels in representing, is that of finance and the middle classes; it is the society of the Chaussee d’Antin, rather than that of the Faubourg Saint Germain.  His Gymnase repertory is of the Left Centre, the juste milieu, nearer the National Guard than the royal guard.  The protege of Madame the Duchess of Berry never flattered the ultras.  There is not in his plays a single line that is a concession to their arrogance or their rancor; not a single phrase, not one word, that shows the least trace of the prejudices of the old regime; not one idea that could offend the most susceptible liberal.  It is animated by the spirit of conciliation and pacification.  We insist on this point because we see in it a proof that a Princess who took under her protection a kind of literature so essentially modern and bourgeois, never thought of reviving a past destroyed forever.