Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/163

150 understand. However, thanks to some explanations by Marguerite between the acts, I made out the following story.

There are two sorts of heroes on the French stage; a popular ruffian who sticks at nothing, and never makes love for an honest purpose; and a spoony hero who gains the prize in a school of design, or can ride without stirrups; who does all the honest love in the play, and whose fate in the end is generally matrimony. There are two heroes in Les Parents,—a spoony and a vagabond.

An old Monsieur Dubois is married to a young wife, and they have one son, but they live separate, in consequence of her having given him cause to be jealous of a Count de Champsey. During the first revolution, Dubois escapes with his child to England, and afterwards settles in one of the West India Islands, where he dies and leaves his property to his son, provided he never speaks to his mother, to whom he also leaves a small annuity, which she loses if she speaks to her son. The ship in which the boy is returning to France is wrecked, and all hands are lost except young Dubois, and another boy of the same age, and a black woman, by whose means the two children are saved.

Fifteen years are supposed to have elapsed between the first and second acts, which opens with Madame Dubois, rather low in the world, and longing all the more to see her son, because she is forbidden to do so.

The old black nurse, who is the mysterious character in the play, hints at having something on her conscience, and excites the curiosity of Madame Dubois by asking if she would know her son if she met him.

Madame says she would, by a mole on his neck.

Young Dubois, who is the spoony hero, is in love with Marie, the daughter of the very Count de Champsey already mentioned, and he has a rival in Auguste, the vagabond hero and the other boy who was saved from the wreck. But as the latter has nothing but lieutenant’s pay, she is betrothed to Dubois, although her heart is naturally with Auguste, who is rather a fine fellow with all his faults.

Madame Dubois watches her son’s door till she sees him, but she cannot rest till she has also seen the mole on his neck, which must be done without his knowledge. She manages to get into his house by being employed to make some alterations in the curtains of his bed; and a fine scene takes place between the son and the agitated mother, as she endeavours to look for the mole on his neck while he is dressing. The mother’s doubts and love, and the son’s absence of all expression, except a little impatience, made a good contrast, and were well acted; and the whole scene, in which not twenty words were spoken, commanded great attention.

Auguste, who does everything compatible with noble ruffianism, tries all methods to get possession of Marie, and, on one occasion, would have carried her off, if it had not been for a very fine dog, whose clever performance on the stage is, no doubt, one of the causes of the success of the piece.

He has now to join his regiment in Spain, whither we follow him through two rather long acts, in which he performs wonders on a grey charger, also produced on the stage.

Among other feats, he rides through an embrasure of a field-work, sabres all the gunners, and is only prevented carrying off the colours of an English regiment, by their having been captured the week previous in a victory, the name of which is not mentioned.

In the sixth act, Dubois and Marie are about to be married, when his mother enters. She tries to get near him to whisper something in his ear, but he will not listen, and she is put out. But, after the marriage, she contrives to meet him alone, about ten o’clock at night, Marie having gone to her bed-room, when she tells him that she is his mother, that he is the son of the Count de Champsey, and therefore married to his half-sister. Dubois, very naturally, is not a little startled, but a discussion takes place—which is fairly argued on both sides—whether he ought to proceed further or jump out of the window. He comes to the conclusion that the latter is the correct thing to do under the circumstances; so, tearing himself from his mother, he throws himself with a run from a window at the back of the stage. Madame faints, and Auguste—who has returned from the wars a colonel covered with glory—here enters. She recognises her real son from his likeness to the Count de Champsey; he shows the mole on his neck, and the black nurse confesses that, to make her old master’s child rich, she changed the children at the wreck.

Madame sends Auguste to tell Marie what has happened, and the scene changes. The audience have been very attentive, and now become quite silent. A pin would have been heard to drop when Marie appears in her night-dress (and very nice she looked) and passes into the bridal chamber. But when Auguste crosses the stage, and follows her into the bed-room—knowing, as we all do, that he is capable of any mortal thing—I felt Marguerite’s heart thumping against my arm, and when I looked round the girl was as white as a sheet.

Two years are supposed to have elapsed, and in the last tableau Marie and Dubois (who, of course, was not killed by the jump from the window) appear in a drawing-room with the rest of the characters. She is dressed in a drab moire, with one deep flounce trimmed with crimson velvet. This is her eighth change during the piece—one more beautiful than another. There is no applause, but you are aware, by a low murmur, that the dress is creating a sensation. She announces that Dubois, not being her half-brother, is still her husband, and that she has presented him with a son and heir—also produced on the stage in the arms of the black nurse. Each of the characters now repeats a couplet, and the curtain falls.

Marguerite, who realised every situation in the play, is silent all the way home. All her sympathies were with Dubois, and she firmly believed that Marie was en chemise behind the scene when Auguste went into her bed-room, and she cannot shake off the idea. By the time we reach home she is more cheerful, and comes quite round at the