The same arrangement reappears in many a picture intended for grownup persons.  In the “stories without words” sketched by humorous artists we are often shown an object which moves from place to place, and persons who are closely connected with it, so that through a series of scenes a change in the position of the object mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes in the situation of the persons.  Let us now turn to comedy.  Many a droll scene, many a comedy even, may be referred to this simple type.  Read the speech of Chicanneau in the Plaideurs:  here we find lawsuits within lawsuits, and the mechanism works faster and faster--Racine produces in us this feeling of increasing acceleration by crowding his law terms ever closer together—­until the lawsuit over a truss of hay costs the plaintiff the best part of his fortune.  And again the same arrangement occurs in certain scenes of Don Quixote; for instance, in the inn scene, where, by an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, the mule-driver strikes Sancho, who belabours Maritornes, upon whom the innkeeper falls, etc.  Finally, let us pass to the light comedy of to-day.  Need we call to mind all the forms in which this same combination appears?  There is one that is employed rather frequently.  For instance, a certain thing, say a letter, happens to be of supreme importance to a certain person and must be recovered at all costs.  This thing, which always vanishes just when you think you have caught it, pervades the entire play, “rolling up” increasingly serious and unexpected incidents as it proceeds.  All this is far more like a child’s game than appears at first blush.  Once more the effect produced is that of the snowball.

It is the characteristic of a mechanical combination to be generally reversible.  A child is delighted when he sees the ball in a game of ninepins knocking down everything in its way and spreading havoc in all directions; he laughs louder than ever when the ball returns to its starting-point after twists and turns and waverings of every kind.  In other words, the mechanism just described is laughable even when rectilinear, it is much more so on becoming circular and when every effort the player makes, by a fatal interaction of cause and effect, merely results in bringing it back to the same spot.  Now, a considerable number of light comedies revolve round this idea.  An Italian straw hat has been eaten up by a horse. [Footnote:  Un Chapeau de paille d’Italie (Labiche).] There is only one other hat like it in the whole of Paris; it must be secured regardless of cost.  This hat, which always slips away at the moment its capture seems inevitable, keeps the principal character on the run, and through him all the others who hang, so to say, on to his coat tails, like a magnet which, by a successive series of attractions, draws along in its train the grains of iron filings that hang on to each other.  And when at last, after all sorts of difficulties, the goal seems in