Volume 183601

Paris and the Parisians in 1835.

  • Trollope, Frances Milton, 1780-1863.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paris and the Parisians in 1835. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Hola, mes maitres! Silence sur ce point!... Depuis quand n’est- il plus permis aun roi de courtiser sur la scéne une servante d’auberge ?... Mener un roi dans un mauvais lieu, cela ne se- rait pas méme nouveau non plus... L’auteur veut l’art chaste, et nonVart prude... Il est profondément triste de voir com- ment se termine la révolution de Juillet...” Then follows a précis of the extravagant and hateful plot. in which the heroine is, as usual, ‘‘ une fille séduite et perdue ;”’ and he sums it up thus pompously :—‘“* Au fond d’un des ou- vrages de l’auteur il y a la fatalité—au fond de celui-ci il y a la providence.” I wish much that some one would collect and publish in a separate volume all M. Victor Hugo’s prefaces; I would purchase it instantly, and it would be a fund of almost inexhaustible amusement. He assumes a tone in them which, all things considered, is perhaps unequalled in the history of literature. In another part of the one from which I have given the above extracts, he says— ‘¢ Vraiment, le pouvoir qui s’attaque a nous n’aura pas gagné grand’chose ace que nous, hommes d’art, nous quit- tions notre tache consciencieuse, tranquille, sincére, pro- fonde; notre tache sainte..... What on earth, if it be not insanity, could have put it into M. Hugo’s head that the manufacturing of his obscene dramas was ‘‘ une tache sainte?” The principal characters in ‘‘ Le Roi s’amuse” are Francois Premier; Triboulet, his pander and buffoon; Blanche, the daughter of Triboulet, ‘‘la fille séduite,” and heroine of the piece ; and Maguelonne, another Esmeralda. The interest lies in the contrast between Triboulet pander and Triboulet pére. He is himself the most corrupt and infamous of men; and because he is humpbacked, makes it both his pastime and his business to lead the king his master