"I do not know myself," Entragues answered, "having brought him here only through international courtesy." "And to get rid of him?" Fortier questioned. "But Renaudeau does not permit himself to be overreached. Besides, we shall see, for he has left me a copy: '_The Voluntary Expiation_, drama in eight scenes.' Ah! there is an _Explanatory Note_: 'In default of social justice, inner justice punishes the guilty; one has opprobrium for its end; the other, rehabilitation; the one abases, the other elevates.' A period, then a dash, and these three words twice underlined: 'VOLUNTARY EXPIATION SANCTIFIES.'" "Well!" Entragues said, "it is quite puerile, but perhaps the text contains interesting details." "Yes," Renaudeau put in, "a new form justifies all subjects, as a fine resilvering conceals verdigris. Do you ask for indulgence?" "Oh! no," Entragues returned, "although I have a certain interest in having him believe he is destined for fame. If you wish to oblige me, humor him with illusions until the final dagger thrust." "So you are becoming wicked, Entragues?" asked Fortier. "No, it is just for the sport." He requested an envelope and, after inserting the box ticket with his card and writing the name of Madame Sixtine Magne upon it, he had it dispatched to her. As soon as the office boy left, remorse seized him: perhaps he would have done better to go there in person. No. Yes. No. Yes. Renaudeau, who had glanced over the manuscript, arrested this fatiguing game of see-saw by saying: "It is not, perhaps, so bad. When a drama has a philosophy, it appears superior to anything we have. Our classical theater is so denuded of mystic sense! Corneille does politics, Racine, the psychology of the laboratory, and as for Molière, he is closed to aught that is not ruse, enjoyment, banal remarks on love, and vague statements. When he wishes to take up any traits of manners, it is to subject women to the materialism of life, to rail at nobility, because there is none, or at the doctors, because they cannot cure him of his hypochondria. Veuillot, but Hello especially, has judged him well: he shuts the door. It is really the theater of a Gassendist." "You are speaking of Molière?" asked Calixte, entering. "He is a wretch: he has jeered at the dreamer." "Nevertheless," objected Van Baël, "what of Alceste and Don Juan?" "But," Renaudeau interposed, "even had he done nothing at all, he would be, like Voltaire, beyond criticism." "Don Juan would have charm, were it not for his ridiculous rustics," Calixte said. "But see how everything shrinks in the brain of this bourgeois: if Don Juan is not a fastidious person, if in the vast field of corn he does not choose the finest, the highest and the most golden, if he makes a sheaf of everything, he is no longer Don Juan, he is a trailer after petticoats." "Precisely," Entragues said, "but if he loves them all, it is because he idealizes them all."