(Aux autres conjures)
  Couvrons nous, grands d’Espagnol
    (Tous les Espagnols se couvrent)
      Oui, nos tetes, o roi! 
  Ont le droit de tomber couvertes devant toi!

An effective scene of this type occurs in Monsieur Beaucaire, where the supposed hairdresser is on the point of being ejected with contumely from the pump-room at Bath, when the French Ambassador enters, drops on his knee, kisses the young man’s hand, and presents him to the astounded company as the Duc d’Orleans, Comte de Valois, and I know not what besides—­a personage who immeasurably outshines the noblest of his insulters.  Quieter, but not less telling, is the peripety in The Little Father of the Wilderness, by Messrs. Lloyd Osbourne and Austin Strong.  The Pere Marlotte, who, by his heroism and self-devotion, has added vast territories to the French possessions in America, is summoned to the court of Louis XV, and naturally concludes that the king has heard of his services and wishes to reward them.  He finds, on the contrary, that he is wanted merely to decide a foolish bet; and he is treated with the grossest insolence and contempt.  Just as he is departing in humiliation, the Governor-General of Canada arrives, with a suite of officers and Indians.  The moment they are aware of Pere Marlotte’s presence, they all kneel to him and pay him deeper homage than they have paid to the king, who accepts the rebuke and joins in their demonstration.

A famous peripety of the romantic order occurs in H.M.S.  Pinafore, where, on the discovery that Captain Corcoran and Ralph Rackstraw have been changed at birth, Ralph instantly becomes captain of the ship, while the captain declines into an able-bodied seaman.  This is one of the instances in which the idealism of art ekes out the imperfections of reality.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1:  That great spiritual drama known as the Book of Job opens, after the Prologue in Heaven, with one of the most startling of peripeties.]

[Footnote 2:  The first act of Mr. Gilbert Murray’s Carlyon Sahib contains an incident of this nature; but it can scarcely be called a peripety, since the victim remains unconscious of his doom.]

[Footnote 3:  For the benefit of American readers, it may be well to state that the person who changes a Bank of England note is often asked to write his or her name on the back of it.  It must have been in a moment of sheer aberration that the lady in question wrote her own name.]

[Footnote 4:  M. Bernstein, dishing up a similar theme with a piquant sauce of sensuality, made but a vulgar and trivial piece of work of it.]

[Footnote 5:  One of the most striking peripeties in recent English drama occurs in the third act of The Builder of Bridges, by Mr. Alfred Sutro.]

CHAPTER XV

PROBABILITY, CHANCE, AND COINCIDENCE