ART. II.-1. Les Lionnes pauvres. By Emile Augier. Paris:

Michel Levy.

2. Fanny Etude.

By Ernest Feydeau; with a Preface by

Jules Janin. Paris: Amyot.

NOTHING is better worth studying than success.

What

succeeds means something, and the fact of its succeeding furnishes the clue to a particular state of the public mind. The large sale of works of the highest order in art-of books such as Grote's History of Greece, or Ruskin's Esthetical Dissertations, or Humboldt's 'Cosmos'-proves simply the degree of curiosity and of intellectual activity in the educated classes: it affords no proof of what the moral tendencies of a whole population are. It touches upon an educational, not upon a social fact. The finest work ever conceived upon a political, historical, scientific, or artistic subject, may be the produce of an age, the social and domestic morality whereof are of a very inferior order; but a popular novel or play that all the world rushes to see or to buy, cannot be otherwise than the indication of the general moral tendencies of the population. The less such a production means as to literature the more it signifies as to morality. It would not be in everybody's hands if it did not reflect everybody's thoughts. It is not its merit but its success that should be studied.

We have before us two productions of the contemporary literature of France, which, if they mean anything, mean what it is impossible not to look upon as of the highest importance, and which, if they were unmeaning, could not have attained to the success they have achieved. All Paris has flocked to see 'Les Lionnes pauvres' at the Vaudeville, and Messrs. Ste.-Beuve, Jules Janin, and the journalists whose business it is in Paris to point out to the public all new literary productions of any value, with one accord affirm that 'Fanny' is in the hands of every woman' in France. Jules Janin opines that the more virtuous' (!) the woman the less harm she will see in the book, but that, virtuous or not, there is no woman throughout France who will not, or who, indeed, by this time has not read it.

'Fanny' is a tale in one very small volume, of which M. Janin has written the preface; Les Lionnes pauvres' is, as we have said above, a comedy in five acts, performed at the Vaudeville, and whose author is M. Emile Augier, the well-known dramatist, and recently-elected member of the Académie Française. We should wish, in a few words, to make our readers acquainted with the subjects of these two productions of the modern French muse. 'Fanny' is the history of a young man of twenty-four, who is in love with a woman of thirty-five. The lady's heart (if in all this

there

Origin of Les Lionnes. ·

323

there be a question of anything in the shape of heart') seems to be agreeably divided, however, between her lover and her husband; and the jealous tortures of the former are what furnish the chief matter for the seventy-four chapters of what the critic Ste.-Beuve does not scruple to denominate a poem.' 'A poem,' he exclaims, 'from its form, its language, and a certain tone that reigns throughout: (un certain souffle qui y règne d'un bout à l'autre). There are details in this book that the English reader will easily understand we cannot possibly enter into, and which we firmly believe a French public only can consent to be made familiar with. But we might as well agree to ignore the present state of French civilisation altogether as shut our eyes to the existence of such works as this Fanny.' With the book itself, therefore—because it has had such a success, because it is in everybody's hands, because it is, as M. Janin apprises us, 'hidden under every toilet-table with the book itself we must, for all these reasons, have to do; and, in spite of the repugnance, of the disgust with which it inspires us, we must either, to a certain degree, initiate our readers into the hideous mysteries of its pages, or forego what we take to be a duty -that, namely, of watching the rise or fall of the public morals in other countries. Since the universal establishment of railroads and electric telegraphs, and since steam has set time and distance at nought, England no longer

6

'Coops from other lands her islanders.'

She is almost as much surrounded by the moral atmosphere of ' other lands' as by her own; consequently, there is as much need to analyse the vitiated state of that atmosphere as there was to inquire into the filthy condition of the Thames, when the whole legislature of Great Britain was made sick by its emanations.

The subject of the Lionnes pauvres' is, like that of 'Fanny,' a variety of adultery; this crime being, apparently, to the literature of fiction in France, what Montesquieu's special public virtue is to each special form of government: that, without which it could not subsist. It has been said of Russia that its political form is 'despotism tempered by assassination;' it may, without too great severity, be said of France, that her social edifice is based upon money-matches mitigated by adultery.

The peculiar variety' of the crime made use of by M. Augier in his new comedy is that of pecuniary corruption. It is not the adultery which results from sentiment misguided and uncontrolled -the adultery of weakness, in short-no; it is the adultery of speculation. M. Augier, an observer somewhat of the Balzac school, a man whose opinion of his countrymen and women is ratified by his countrymen and women's approbation, i. e., by popularity M. Augier deliberately represents contemporary society in Paris (which city, we are told, embodies all France)

and

and especially the female portion of society, as far more perverse than frail.

One word upon 'Les Lionnes.'

The term is a modern one, and does not date further back than ten or a dozen years. The first time it was applied in print we take to have been somewhere about the year 1842-3, in a three-volumed novel, entitled 'Les Lionnes de Paris,' written by the late Countess Merlin, and not by any means the best effort of the pen of that amiable and talented lady. Madame Merlin, however, amiable, talented, and popular as she was, very nearly compromised her social position by this work; for though it achieved no great success, its title remained as a stigma upon the class least likely to forgive such an attack; and the flashy, immoral set, of whom certain high-born ladies it would be but too easy to name were the leaders, admitted their right to the epithet of lionne' by their very anger at its having been applied to them. Little by little the word crept into general usage, and any woman who in any measure overstepped the boundaries whereby what is called 'good society' in France hedges itself in, was immediately pointed at by the over-righteous' as a 'lionne.' The only true translation of the term 'lionnerie' into English is to be found in the Americanism we have so triumphantly introduced into our fashionable vocabulary-fast.' To be a lionne' is to be what we should now call 'very fast,' only there is a vast difference in the mode of execution on the two sides of the Channel. We will exemplify: the heroine of that clever and much-read book Kate Coventry' is the very arch-type of all that is most irreclaimably 'fast; the book is the record of how 'fast' an English girl may be without doing anything really blameable. Here we have the difference; Kate Coventry is a young girl, in French civilisation she could not be anything save a married woman. Imprudent in the one case, she would inevitably be guilty in the other. The difference between what is fast in England and what is so in France lies simply in the introduction of the principle of wrong. The lionne' is of many kinds, but it is almost impossible to conciliate her existence with that of good reputation or good conduct.

Up to the close of Louis Philippe's reign, the 'lionne' was simply an ardent votary of what, in his defence of Madame Lafarge, M. Paillet denominated la famosité.' She sacrificed everything for notoriety, and the one thing she aspired to was to be talked about. Up to ten years ago, extravagance had not attained its present pitch; le luxe' had not been actually held up to the whole nation as a public and political virtue; and not only was it possible for a woman in society to mix in all the gatherings of the great world, dressed as fitted her husband's more or less well-known

fortune,

Napoleon III., and his Influence on French Morals. 325

fortune, but if she was suspected of employing any illicit resources in the payment of her own private bills, she was coldly looked upon, and, if convicted of the infamy, she was 'cut.' Up to the period of the Revolution of February there was a line drawn between the women whose fidelity to their lords was more than questionable, and those who in such infidelity found a pecuniary resource. Since 1848 things have changed altogether. Extravagance has been transformed into a positive duty; not to dress in a certain way has been made for Parisian women the equivalent of not to be; and provided they contrive now to frequent the haunts of the world' with due brilliancy of appearance, 'the world' tacitly consents not to examine whence these appearances proceed.

This alteration has not been effected suddenly, from the day to the morrow. No; like most of the changes of cureless disease, it has marched by gradual steps, securing by to-day's progress the conquest of yesterday, and arriving, by the very gentleness of its advance, at the perfection of unresisted evil. After the overthrow of every social distinction, after the comparative annihilation of society in February, 1848, the first attempt at a return to its pleasures and its conventionalities was made by the Prince-President, Louis Napoleon, a man who, from the combined circumstances of birth, education, political chances, and personal instincts, was devoid of any of the prejudices (!) which should influence the ruler of a state in favour of what, in this country, we somewhat exclusively term morality. The level to which the morals and manners of society sank in France during the five years of Louis Napoleon's unmarried life, the tone of the so-called court' at the Elyséeall this is, we imagine, but too notorious throughout the civilised world; and were it not so, any attempt to describe it minutely to the English reader must be forbidden us by the respect with which that same reader inspires us. Suffice it to say, that the first five years' possession of supreme power by the Prince-President had mainly helped to destroy social morality in France. It no longer became a question of why this or that person should be welcomed in the world,' but rather of why any one should be excluded.

And yet there remained a further downward step to take in all this degradation. We will not affirm that French society has taken it, but we will quote the words of M. Augier, in his recent piece: Men speculate on 'Change; women have another little traffic-it is in the air (!); and, after all, these turpitudes are now the secret of Polichinelle. On the one hand, is the greediness for what you don't possess; on the other, the rage to seem to possess more than you have. Pride, vanity, crinoline! parbleu! The whole thing is easy enough to explain.'

We are perfectly aware of how extremely difficult and delicate is the nature of the task we have undertaken to perform; but still we

doubt

doubt the expediency of, for that reason, leaving it altogether unperformed; and we ask any reflecting man whether such a condition of the public morals as stands revealed by the words we have just quoted, and by the fact of those words being nightly uttered to the applause of a theatreful of people; whether, we repeat, such a condition of the public morals in any one given country ought to be a matter of indifference to the philosophical student in any other?

We have said, and we repeat, that what, in the literature of fiction, does not correspond to any particular state of the public mind, and does not excite any popular emotion, does not succeed. What sells what, to use a cant phrase, 'takes '-is what, with more or less acuteness of outline, or more or less force, reflects the image that is for the moment uppermost in the public idea. From 1830 onwards, you find, as the vital principle of French literature of fiction-adultery. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Madame Sand, Alfred de Musset, Balzac, all the writers of any mark own the one same impulse. They call this the 'reawakening of passion;' they say it is the assertion of its rights by the human heart, which had by the classical school been cabinn'd, cribb'd, confin'd,' and forced to express what it was not natural it should feel. Nothing of all this is true. It is not the breath of passion that animates the school of writers of the period of July:' it is the breath of wrong. Passion is not necessarily impure, nor is wrong poetical per se; yet here is the mistake made by the entire school of French writers of twenty or twenty-five years ago. The type of that time is Antony, in Alexandre Dumas' drama of that name. It was declared by the readers of what was then Young France' that all restraint was intolerable, and contrary to the dignity of the human race; and they rebelled against whatever served to define man's position with regard to his Creator or to his fellowmen. They rebelled against the restraint of religion, the restraint of the law, or the restraint of morality. Pascal's maxim duly remembered, Qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête,' it may be said that the theorists of 1830, aspiring to be more than men, in reality sank down to be far less.

Antony, the type, as we say, of the July period,' was the incarnation of revolt from cradle to grave. The public admired, and was called upon to admire him, because he was a pariah; because he had no parents, but was found somewhere by some one, and educated heaven knows how. The theory sought to be established was that of the necessary inferiority entailed upon whomsoever was in tranquil possession of a legitimate father and mother! Adèle d'Hervey, Antony's ladye-love, was, of course, a married woman, whose husband was guilty of the one sole crime of representing the 'odious restraint' imposed by society upon

people