When Lugné-Poë produced The Comedy of Love at his Théâtre de l'Œuvre, the translation by Mlle. Colleville and F. de Zepelin, Catulle Mendès, who had been quarrelling with M. Poë to the extent of a duel, wrote the following criticism of Ibsen's early work. It illustrates the real Gallic point of view in the Ibsen controversy:-- It seems that sensitive admirers of Henrik Ibsen do not class The Comedy of Love among the masterpieces of the great Norwegian. I am glad of it for the sake of those masterpieces. The thing which is displeasing above everything in this piece, where Ibsen's genius once more halts, is that one is unable to get at the initial intention of the author. What does he pretend to teach by making to evolute and chatter in the garden of a country house--what house I do not know, but for certain it is a matrimonial one--a number of engaged couples, married folks and parsons who are the fathers of a dozen children each? Those who used to love love no more; those who were romantic have become bourgeois; those who are still romantic will become bourgeois. Then there is a poet, whose lyrics we should classify in France--but we are in Lugné-Poë's house I--as provincial, who treats like a Philistine all these poor engaged persons, these engaged lovers, of our everyday life. As for him, being a poet (Heavens I how mediocre his verses must be!)--he pursues the vague, the immaterial, the sublime. He would like very well to carry with him in this pursuit a young person, once upon a time "poetical," but all the same strongly "practical," who, after inclining for an instant toward a life of devotion and _dévouement_ with the poet, does not hesitate to espouse a very rich merchant, who evidently has read Emile Augier, badly translated. It is with difficulty I discover the object of Henrik Ibsen. This puzzle is, however, very excusable in a French critic, since it is shared by critics of the North. Madame Ahlberg (read Ernest Tissot's book) thinks that Ibsen desires to show the contrast between love and the caricature of it which we see in marriage. Georg Brandes, the celebrated Danish critic, in The Comedy of Love esteems it impossible to know where he would carry the poet, and says, "the only certain thing is his pessimistic, conception of love and marriage."