"I do not think so," Calixte said. "Molière only made these countrywomen victims of Don Juan to put the comic note into his play: he had to make his audience laugh and the first conception that came was good. And Alceste? Does this person who detests men and who prefers solitude to the few concessions demanded by a pretty woman--does this man find, at the end of five acts, a single word to paint the soul-state of a hater of humanity? He is only a crabbed fellow. Above all else, he places the joy of being himself in liberty, far from the world, and he does not know how to express it: he has no soul! With what delicious grace does the so ridiculed Thisbé, the Thisbé of Théophile, tell Bersiane of her dread of noise, external life, the movement of things: THISBE Sais-tu pas bien que j'aime à rêver, à me taire Et que mon naturel est un peu solitaire, Que je cherche souvent à m'ôter hors du bruit? Alors, pour dire vrai, je hais bien qui me suit: Quelquefois mon chagrin trouverait importune La conservation de la bonne fortune, La visite d'un Dieu me désobligerait, Un rayon de soleil parfois me fâcherait. "And what do the professors mean by telling us that the sentiment of nature was unknown in the seventeenth century, when we find such verses, again in the same Théophile: Les roses des rosiers, les ombres, les ruisseaux, Le murmure des vents et le bruit des oiseaux, or such lines: Chaque saison donne ses fruits, L' automne nous donne ses pommes, L'Hyver donne ses longues nuits, Pour un plus grand repos des hommes. Le Printemps nous donne des fleurs, Il donne l'âme et les couleurs A la feuille qui semblait morte.... "I do not know the rest. One always reads the same books," Calixte concluded, "without suspecting that only those which the majority disdains have interest." "Théophile," Entragues remarked, "is one of the rare French poets. He is full of delicate reveries. I know him well for I love him: Prête-moi ton sein pour y boire Des odeurs qui m' embaumeront. "The second Théophile has spoken of him without having read him. This is obvious, for why should he have passed his time in explaining him, if he had known him? One only talks of what one does not know; to talk of what one knows seems useless; one gets bored and bores others as well. That is why criticism is, most often, so disagreeable when it is well informed, and partaking of an emetic laxity, the rest of the time." "Like that of Bergeron," Calixte said. "Why have you accepted his dilution of nonsense on Verlaine and Huysmans?" "As an advertisement, my dear," Fortier answered. "It is virtually printed on the blue sheets of the initial and final announcements." "He is witty," Renaudeau said, "and that amuses: one must live. It has gained us several alleged subscriptions."