Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/12

6 his father's assassin; he makes a vain effort to rally the forces of the opposition, and at last, free from all that is vile in life, he throws himself from the window. Le Triomphe de la Raison belongs, so far as the subject is concerned, to the Revolutionary plays. As an afterpiece to Le 14 Juillet, Danton, and Les Loups, it shows the Revolution "devouring itself"—to translate literally the author's own comment. So far as it depicts the excesses into which faith can lead men, it is a tragedy, but there is an implication of progress in the characters whose fate is bound up with that of the Revolution, even those who fell prey to the blood-lust of the Girondist massacres.

The Théâtre de la Révolution includes the three Revolutionary plays I have just mentioned. They were written not as experiments for some vague stage dreamed by the author, but for theatrical production before the people, the masses of France. That they were not wholly successful matters little; Romain Rolland might well refer us to the "moral" of Saint Louis: he has opened a new field and laid before his countrymen—perhaps the world—an ideal which may well require half a century to bear fruit. The idea of writing a series of plays on the French Revolution was suggested to M. Rolland by a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, dated March 10, 1794:

1. That the Théâtre-Français shall henceforward be solely dedicated to productions given by and for the people at stated intervals each month:

2. That the building shall bear the following inscription on its façade:, and that the various