Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their lives before.In the course of a very few years we have seen--"The Wandering Jew;""Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the "Massacre of the Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of the Red Sea;" and "The Deluge."The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights.There was his famous tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them.And why? Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues.The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.
"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out against the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA." (This dear creature is the heroine of the play of "Caligula.") "It matters little to me.
These people have but seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!
"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking hours."You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint Dumas is another.We have people in England who write for bread, like Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line;but they don't set up for prophets.Mrs.Trollope has never declared that her novels are inspired by heaven; Mr.Buckstone has written a great number of farces, and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle.Even Sir Edward Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and was uttering five-act revelations.
All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent tragedy; as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy."Caligula" is killed at the end of the performance;Messalina is comparatively well-behaved; and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere "vase"and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
STELLA (Continuant.)Voila Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes, Et, spectacle inoui qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une aureole d'or D'ou partaient des rayons de si vive lumiere Que je fus obligee a baisser la paupiere;Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les voyageurs divins etaient aupres de moi.
Un jour de chacun d'eux et dans toute sa gloire Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire, Et tu l'adoreras, j'espere; en ce moment, Ma mere, il te suffit de savoir seulement Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:
Un edit les avait bannis de leur patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrites, Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotes, Sur une frele barque echouee au rivage, Les avaient a la mer pousses dans un orage.
Mais a peine l'esquif eut-il touche les flots Qu'au cantique chante par les saints matelots, L'ouragan replia ses ailes fremissantes, Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes, Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux, Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux!...
JUNIA.--Mais c'etait un prodige.
STELLA.--Un miracle, ma mere!
Leurs fers tomberent seuls, l'eau cessa d'etre amere, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D'une manne pareille a celle du desert:
C'est ainsi que, pousses par une main celeste, Je les vis aborder.
JUNIA.-- Oh! dis vite le reste!
STELLA.--A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quitterent la maison:
Marthe prit le chemin qui mene a Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie, Et celle qui resta....C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!)Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois d'alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la put separer a tout jamais du monde.....
Aquila se souvint qu'il avait penetre Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignore, Grotte creusee aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes, Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abimes.
Il offrit cet asile, et des le lendemain Tous deux, pour l'y guider, nous etions en chemin.
Le soir du second jour nous touchames sa base:
La, tombant a genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l'antre inconnu, Denouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.