After his marriage in 1892 Romain Rolland returned to Italy, where he gathered material for his thesis, which he presented and successfully upheld at the Sorbonne in 1895. His subject was _The Origins of the Modern Lyric Theater. History of the Opera in Europe Before Lully and Scarlatti._ This he published in book form in 1895. But in addition to his university studies and his lectures, he found time to experiment with the dramatic form, and in 1896 he published his _Saint Louis._ As this was later included in a volume called _Tragedies of Faith--Les Tragédies de la Foi_--together with two other plays, he evidently conceived it as one of a series of works based upon a single underlying idea. _Saint Louis_ depicts, in the author's own words, "religious exaltation." In _Saint Louis_ and the two other plays which accompany it--_Aërt_ and _Le Triomphe de la Raison_--"One can observe the presence of the main currents and passions of the French youth of today." All three show "the ardor of sacrifice, but a sacrifice which is courageous, militant: a double reaction against cowardice of thought and cowardice of action, against skepticism and against the relinquishment of the great destiny of the nation." But in spite of this "program," M. Rolland is an artist far too austere to write thesis-plays; he has often spoken in contempt of them. Nor did he in the least appeal to the great public; for his plays have as yet not proved acceptable to them. _Saint Louis_ is a beautiful poem, not a tragedy after all, but a triumph, for no hero may see the fruits of his labor, and if a temporary failure seems for a moment to cloud the sky, it is only temporary. This is the message of _Saint Louis_. The good monarch who, "dying at the foot of the mountain, sees Jerusalem only through the eyes of his army," is a figure of hope. _Aërt_ takes us from the time of the Crusades to "an imaginary Holland of the seventeenth century." Aërt, the son of a murdered patriot, is imprisoned by his father's assassin; he makes a vain effort to rally the forces of the opposition, and at last, free from all that is vile in life, he throws himself from the window. _Le Triomphe de la Raison_ belongs, so far as the subject is concerned, to the Revolutionary plays. As an afterpiece to _Le 14 Juillet, Danton_, and _Les Loups,_ it shows the Revolution "devouring itself"--to translate literally the author's own comment. So far as it depicts the excesses into which faith can lead men, it is a tragedy, but there is an implication of progress in the characters whose fate is bound up with that of the Revolution, even those who fell prey to the blood-lust of the Girondist massacres.