* * * * *

Antoine, founder of the Theatre Libre, director of the Theatre Antoine during brilliant years, and now director of the Odeon (which he has raised from the dead), was always a tremendous admirer of Becque.  It was through Antoine that Paris had such magnificent performances of “La Parisienne.”  He had long expressed his intention of producing “Les Corbeaux,” and now he has produced “Les Corbeaux” at the Odeon, where it has been definitely accepted and consecrated as a masterpiece.  I could not refrain from going to Paris specially to see it.  It was years since I had been in the Odeon.  Rather brighter, perhaps, in its more ephemeral decorations, but still the same old-fashioned, roomy, cramped, provincial theatre, with pit-tier boxes like the cells of a prison!  The audience was good.  It was startingly good for the Odeon.  The play, too, at first seemed old-fashioned—­in externals.  It has bits of soliloquies and other dodges of technique now demoded.  But the first act was not half over before the extreme modernness of the play forced itself upon you.  Tchehkoff is not more modern.  The picture of family life presented in the first act was simply delightful.  All the bitterness was reserved for the other acts.  And what superb bitterness!  No one can be so cruel as Becque to a “sympathetic” character.  He exposes every foolishness of the ruined widow; he never spares her for an instant; and yet one’s sympathy is not alienated.  This is truth.  This is a play.  I had not read the thing with sufficient imagination, with the result that for me it “acted” much better than it had “read.”  Its sheer beauty, truth, power, and wit, justified even the great length of the last act.  I thought Becque had continued to add scenes to the play after it was essentially finished.  But it was I who was mistaken, not he.  The final scene began by irritating and ended by completely capturing the public.  Teissier, the principal male part, was played by M. Numes in a manner which amounted to genius.

* * * * *

“Les Corbeaux” was originally produced at the Theatre Francais, where it was not a success.  All Becque’s recent fame is due, after Becque, to Antoine.  But now that Antoine has done all the hard work, Jules Claretie, the flaccid director of the Francais, shows a natural desire to share in the harvest.  Becque left a play unfinished, “Les Polichinelles.”  Becque’s executor, M. Robaglia, handed this play to M. Henri de Noussanne to finish—­heaven knows why!  M. de Noussanne has written novels entirely bereft of importance, and he is the editor of Gil Blas, a daily paper whose importance it would not be easy to underestimate; and his qualifications for finishing a play by Becque are in the highest degree mysterious.  The finished play was to be produced at the Francais.  The production would have been what the French call a solemnity.  But M. Robaglia suddenly jibbed.  He declared