With you, a criminal trial is conducted publicly and before a jury; with us in France it is carried on in the Chambers of the Judge with only the lawyer present. There sometimes result from this latter method dramas of the kind of which my play LA ROBE ROUGE is one. The judge, too directly interested and free of the criticism which might fall on him from the general public, is liable to the danger of forming for himself an opinion as to the guilt of the accused. He may do this in perfect good faith, but sometimes runs the risk of falling into grave error. It thus occasionally happens that he is anxious not so much to know the truth as to prove that he was right in his own, often rash, opinion. LA ROBE ROUGE is a criticism of certain judicial proceedings which obtain in France; but it is also a study of an individual case of professional crookedness. We should be greatly mistaken were we to draw the dangerous conclusion that all French judges resemble Mouzon, and we should be equally wrong were we to condemn too hastily the French code relating to criminal trials. In the struggle of society with the criminal it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, for the legislator to hold in equal balance the rights of the individual as against the interests of society. The balance sometimes leans one way and sometimes the other; and had I been an English citizen, instead of writing a play against the abuse of justice by a judge, I might have had to illustrate the same abuse by the lawyer. I wish most sincerely that these three plays may interest the people of England and America. The problems which I have studied I am sure I have not brought to their final solutions. My ambition was to draw and keep the attention of honest people on them by means of the theatre. BRIEUX. WOMAN ON HER OWN [LA FEMME SEULE] TRANSLATED BY MRS. BERNARD SHAW CHARACTERS THERESE MADAME NERISSE MADAME GUERET MOTHER BOUGNE CAROLINE LEGRAND MADAME CHANTEUIL LUCIENNE MADEMOISELLE GREGOIRE MADEMOISELLE BARON MADEMOISELLE DE MEURIOT ANTOINETTE BERTHE CONSTANCe MAID WORKWOMEN NERISSE FELIAT RENE CHARTON GUERET MAFFLU VINCENT A DELEGATE PAGE BOY GIRARD CHARPIN DESCHAUME WORKMEN WOMAN ON HER OWN ACT I SCENE:--_A Louis XV sitting-room. To the right a large recessed window with small panes of glass which forms a partition dividing the sitting-room from an inner room. A heavy curtain on the further side shuts out this other room. There are a table and piano and doors to the right and at the back. The place is in disorder. One of the panes in the large window has been taken out and replaced by a movable panel. It is October._