So, with the emotions—I like them gentle, dreamy, melancholy, never bloody and horrible. Let the climax be veiled. I know there are some fools with mad imaginations—By the way, ladies, have you read the latest novel?

THE LADIES. Which one?

THE POET. The Last Day—

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. No more, sir, I beg! I know the book you mean. The title alone makes me nervous.

MADAME DE BLINVAL. It affects me in the same way. It is a frightful book. I have it here.

THE LADIES. Oh! let us see it. (The book is handed around.)

A GUEST (reading). The Last Day of a—

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. O madame, spare us!

MADAME DE BLINVAL. It really is a dreadful book, it gives one the nightmare and makes one ill.

A LADY (aside). I must read it.

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. We must admit that morality is growing more depraved every day. Great God, the horrible idea! to develop, study, and analyze, one by one, without an omission, every physical and moral sensation of a man condemned to die. Is it not dreadful? Do you understand, ladies, how any one could write such a thing, or how any one could read it if it were written?

THE CHEVALIER. It is the height of impertinence.

MADAME DE BLINVAL. Who is the author?

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. There is no name signed to the first edition.

THE POET. It is the same one who has already written other novels, the titles of which I forget just now. The first begins at the Morgue and ends at La Grève. In every chapter there is an ogre who eats a child.

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. Have you read it, sir?

THE POET. Yes, sir; the scene is laid in Iceland.

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN. In Iceland, how frightful!

THE POET. Besides these, he has written odes, ballads, and I don’t know what else, full of monsters who have corps bleus (blue bodies).

THE CHEVALIER (laughing). Corbleu! That would make a tremendous verse.

THE POET.