This peculiar dramatic satire, a burlesque of an entire tragedy, the volatile genius of the Parisians accomplished.  Whenever a new tragedy, which still continues the favourite species of drama with the French, attracted the notice of the town, shortly after uprose its parody at the Italian theatre, so that both pieces may have been performed in immediate succession in the same evening.  A French tragedy is most susceptible of this sort of ridicule, by applying its declamatory style, its exaggerated sentiments, and its romantic out-of-the-way nature to the commonplace incidents and persons of domestic life; out of the stuff of which they made their emperors, their heroes, and their princesses, they cut out a pompous country justice, a hectoring tailor, or an impudent mantua-maker; but it was not merely this travesty of great personages, nor the lofty effusions of one in a lowly station, which terminated the object of parody.  It was designed for a higher object, that of more obviously exposing the original for any absurdity in its scenes, or in its catastrophe, and dissecting its faulty characters; in a word, weighing in the critical scales the nonsense of the poet.  Parody sometimes became a refined instructor for the public, whose discernment is often blinded by party or prejudice.  But it was, too, a severe touchstone for genius:  Racine, some say, smiled, others say he did not, when he witnessed Harlequin, in the language of Titus to Berenice, declaiming on some ludicrous affair to Columbine; La Motte was very sore, and Voltaire, and others, shrunk away with a cry—­from a parody!  Voltaire was angry when he witnessed his Mariamne parodied by Le mauvais Menage; or “Bad Housekeeping.”  The aged, jealous Herod was turned into an old cross country justice; Varus, bewitched by Mariamne, strutted a dragoon; and the whole establishment showed it was under very bad management.  Fuzelier collected some of these parodies,[295] and not unskilfully defends their nature and their object against the protest of La Motte, whose tragedies had severely suffered from these burlesques.  His celebrated domestic tragedy of Inez de Castro, the fable of which turns on a concealed and clandestine marriage, produced one of the happiest parodies in Agnes de Chaillot.  In the parody, the cause of the mysterious obstinacy of Pierrot the son, in persisting to refuse the hand of the daughter of his mother-in-law, Madame la Baillive, is thus discovered by her to Monsieur le Baillif:—­

Mon mari, pour le coup j’ai decouvert l’affaire,
Ne vous etonnez plus qu’a nos desirs contraire,
Pour ma fille Pierrot ne montre que mepris: 
Voila l’unique objet dont son coeur est epris.

                              [Pointing to Agnes de Chaillot.

The Baillif exclaims,

Ma servante!