Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/45

TWELFTH SITUATION 43 One of the cases unused in the theater, notwithstanding its frequency, is Temptation, already introduced as a part of the preceding situation. The irritated adversary is here the Defiant; the solicitor, now the Tempter, has undertaken an unusual negotiation, one for the obtaining of an object which nothing can persuade the owner to part with; consequently the aim must be, gently, little by little, to bewilder, charm or stupefy him. Eternal role of woman toward man! — and of how many things toward the project of being a man! Does it not call to mind the hieratic attitude of the Christian toward Satan, as Flaubert has illuminated it, with a thousand sparkling lights, in his "Temptation of Saint Anthony?"