Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/104

 : "La Fortune des Rougon" (with criminality attenuated to simple want of dignity) ; "Son Excellence Eugéne" (sacrifice of morality); the story of Lucien de Rubempré; a case of greed: "La Terre."

(2) — Parricidal Ambition: — "Tullia" by Martelli. Ambition, one of the most powerful of passions, if it be not indeed the passion par excellence will always affect the spectator strongly, for he feels and knows that, once awakened in a man, it will cease only with his death. And how many are the objects of its desire! Tyrannical power, high rank, honors, fortune (by inheritance, marriage, robbery, etc.), the conservation of riches (avarice), glory (political, scientific, literary, inventive, artistic), celebrity, distinction.

We have seen in Class A the ties which may unite the ambitious one and his adversary and the Situations which may result from them (XIX, XXIII, XXIV).

Here is one way among many to intensify the fury of C: mingle with it the sincerity of a faith, of a conviction; such a combination is found in the case of the Spaniards in Peru and in Flanders, and in the case of our own "gentle and intellectual" race under the League and under the Terror; in the case of Calvin, and of the Inquisition.