We are taken
into an impossible world of gay non-morality, where a wicked old
bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her
lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little
hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being married, says, "Le ciel
n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions." And the artless Colombine
replies, "Alors marions-nous!" To marry Colombine without a dowry
forms, as a modern novelist says, "no part of Leandre's profligate
scheme of pleasure." There is a sort of treble intrigue. Orgon
wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Leandre to escape from the
whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her dot and her husband.
The strength of the piece is the brisk action in the scene when
Leandre protests that he can't rob Orgon of his only daughter, and
Orgon insists that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so
charming a son-in-law. The play is redeemed from sordidness by the
costumes. Leandre is dressed in the attire of Watteau's
"L'Indifferent" in the Louvre, and wears a diamond-hilted sword.
The lady who plays the part of Colombine may select (delightful
privilege!) the prettiest dress in Watteau's collection.
This love of the glitter of the stage is very characteristic of De
Banville. In his Deidamie (Odeon, Nov. 18th, 1876) the players who
took the roles of Thetis, Achilles, Odysseus, Deidamia, and the
rest, were accoutred in semi-barbaric raiment and armour of the
period immediately preceding the Graeco-Phoenician (about the eighth
century B.
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