relationship of one country with those that surround it, or even with distant countries, especially when the latter are the homes of letters, art, and science, and when relations between them are easy, frequent, and exist during centuries.

In their ideas of a future judgment the Greeks certainly took over something from the Egyptians. Like the Egyptians, they believed in the existence and immortality of a winged soul. On Egyptian monuments and in the tombs, the soul has often been represented in the form of a bird with a human head. The Greeks must also have found the prototype of Elysium in the realm of the dead where Osiris reigned. Even the Greek name for it is curiously like the Egyptian word: Ialou, Aalou, or Ailou. Certainly there is no denying that there is a resemblance and almost a similarity of sound between a number of Egyptian words and a number of Greek words which stand for the same objects. Moreover, the Nile and the canals which the Egyptians imagined in the other world, in imitation of the real Nile and its earthly canals, served as models for the infernal rivers of the Greeks. The Egyptian origin of the Greek name for the dead, 'Rhadamanthus,' can hardly be doubted. It is exactly the Egyptian phrase 'Ra in Amenti'- that is to say, Ra, the Sun-God, in Amenti, the Egyptian future life. The Greek word, 'Charon,' for the infernal boatman on the Styx, is derived from the Egyptian word, 'Karon,' and it means a boat or a boatman. The judgment of the dead

before the tribunal of Osiris and the stage properties of the judgment inspired similar beliefs which one discovers again among the Greeks. Above all, the weighing of the souls seems to have echoes in Homer.

The decorations on the shield of Achilles seem to have been suggested by Egyptian bas-reliefs. Numerous Greek legends seem to have been made out of elements borrowed from Egypt, such as the legend of Hercules, where the Egyptian sources are clear, or the legend of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders - an idea whose origin seems to turn up again among the chief myths of the Egyptians.

The Greeks in their travels through Egypt had perpetually before their eyes the scenes painted or carved on the monuments, especially the temples. These representations were all they needed to exercise their imaginations, always so keen, so rich, and so plastic.

If from legends and religious beliefs we pass to more philosophic ideas, we shall still find traces of Egyptian influence over the Greeks. The idea of a justice above, which we find in Hesiod, is a highly Egyptian conception. The Greek Themis is nothing but the Egyptian Ma, the goddess of Truth and Justice, personification of the moral law and the rules that govern all society, the goddess to whom Pharaoh himself must yield obedience as to a transcendent and imperious will. Hesiod also makes us think of Egypt when he praises the life of toil, the practice of virtue, and when he advises brave and persevering endeavor.

Un fourbe renommé Dont sous un autre nom l'on était informé. Et c'est un long détail d'actions toutes noires Dont on pourrait former des volumes d'histoires.

(A scoundrel known before by other names, Whose horrid crimes, detailed at length, might fill

A long-drawn history of many volumes.)

'Under this scrutiny of Tartufe's past, does n't one remember the life of an escaped galley-slave who has borrowed the trappings of the most ardent piety that he may avoid the hand of the law all the more easily? And is n't this whiff of the prison singular in an eighteenth-century work?

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'It is certain that the plots of this Tartufe, of this demon, arouse almost supernatural agony. He is an octopus that wraps his tentacles, little by little, around an entire family. You watch this slimy process of enlacement. The sight is appalling, to the point of physical oppression. The suckers are applied, one by one, with inexorable sureness. The impostor first takes possession of the father, he wins his promise for the hand of his daughter, he attempts to seduce his benefactor's wife. He gets his host to present him with all his goods. And the octopus, logically, definitely victorious, ought to drag down his prey.

'But it appears that Molière wanted to play on the nerves of the audience. He conceded them a happy ending so as not to keep them under the obsession of a horrible nightmare.

"That is the extraordinarily picturesque and dramatic theme that has to be set forth when Tartufe is put on the stage. It is a question of bringing out the romanticism that tinges this play and sets it apart, on the outskirts of the classic drama whose colors seldom stand out so fiercely.'

When I asked Gémier what end he thought Molière wished to achieve when he wrote this play, he said: 'It

has been widely discussed. And people will discuss it for a long time to come, Comedy h don't forget that.

'Did he only wish to combat hypoc risy? Did he even go so far as to throw in the question of religion?

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"The second opinion, you know, was-w held by many of his contemporaries. Ad group was formed in opposition to him, and the protestations of the religious party determined Louis XIV to forbid for five years public performances of Tartufe, which he had himself ap plauded at Versailles.

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"The monarch finally came to the te conclusion that this comedy could do no harm to religion and confined itself to attacking fraud.

'None the less, judgment of the question has always been suspended; and people have not yet stopped asking whether the author of Tartufe was religious, or whether, as it was said at the time, he was a powerful free spirit, what we call a freethinker.

'When you want to understand a writer's ideas, I think that the best thing to do is to question the writer himself. We should, therefore, consult Molière on the subject with which we are occupied.

'His mildest adversaries blame him for having put religion on the stage. They think that it was a matter that should be confined to the church and rigorously forbidden in the theatre.

'In the preface of the 1669 edition, Molière replied to them in one of the most beautiful essays that have ever been written on the social mission of dramatic art.

'You will read there about the holy origins of the theatre, and about its rôle as a moral force, in a passage that attests to Molière's lofty ambition in his profession.'

Gémier picked up a book of Molière's that was lying on a table and read the following extract:

Tar

THE performance of Tartufe at the Odéon was just coming to an end; Gémier, who had acted the leading rôle, had gone to his dressing-room.

It overlooked the Luxembourg - it was the second window on the façade

a thick curtain concealed it because it would not be fitting to have people in the street see an actor making faces in a mirror.

He had taken off his maroon costume, removed his wig, and was rubbing from his cheeks the vermilion paint with which he had given the impression of the 'vermilion mien' of Tartufe.

He did not speak. He was panting, as he generally does after most of his great rôles, in which the intellectual tension exhausts him at least as much as the mimicry of the drama. He asked, briefly, 'Did it go all right?'

For he is always afraid that he has not come up to the expectations of the public.

We reassured him.

Some time passed before he had entirely come back to earth. He throws himself so completely into his acting, he gets so deeply under the skin of the character, that it always takes him a

little while after the play to shake himself free from this borrowed personality. Having regained his breath, he explained his interpretation.

'I did not want to play Tartufe in a costume that reminded people of the clergy. Some actors have done this. Furthermore, they have been able to call to witness the intention of the author himself, who originally clothed his impostor in the fashion that many laymen who were affiliated with religious bodies used to affect. In one of his petitions to the King, Molière said that in order to pacify the susceptibilities of devout people he had changed the knave's appearance and had disguised him as a man of the world, with a little hat, long hair, a broad collar, sword at his side, and lace on his clothing.

"That new decking-out of a character was simply a concession of Molière's to his opponents.

'But I think that this generalizing of the Tartufe type amplifies the character much more than it weakens him.

'Because Tartufe is not to be found only among the devout. He is everywhere, in all conditions, in every path of life. How much do people in every

'His true nature, which he reveals in spite of himself and which acute observers never miss, lies in his bestial instincts, his gluttony, his sensuality, and his avarice.

"The actor should take on a vile and coarse expression.

"He is "gross and fat." "He has a red ear and a florid complexion." Dorine makes fun of his repulsive "muzzle." He stuffs his mouth with food, he is a hard drinker. The outspoken serving girl gives us some even less savory details of his physiology.

'In order to give a better impression of his vileness, from time to time, when he sees his schemes succeeding and when his host lets himself be taken in by his mummery more and more, I turn around from the side of the room and then present the real face of Tartufe to the audience a face in which the habitual kindly smile is suddenly replaced by an expression of ferocious rapacity. The public takes in these oblique glances almost at once and it understands what they mean.

"These double-faced rôles are always very interesting to the actor because they allow him to show his skill in

changing, almost without transition, from one facial expression to another entirely opposite one.'

'I noticed,' I told him, 'your interpretation of the scene where Orgon is looking for a stick to beat his son with. You see a cudgel in one corner of the stage. You hasten to go and take it and hide it behind your back to prevent the father's seeing it in his anger. And when Orgon passes near you, turning lightly about, you allow him to see this club that he seizes from you in spite of the efforts that you pretend to make to keep hold of it.'

'If you like that detail, it is undoubtedly because the general idea of the part is latent in it: the character of a fraud who always gives his evil actions the appearance of being good. That is the whole point of which the actor should never lose sight and which should prompt his smallest movements.'

He continued: "There is an altogether new romantic touch to this play that we also find in Don Juan, written a short time later, a touch that will remain unique in the theatre of Molière.

"Tartufe is der Teuffel- the Devil. 'Molière has conceived in this case of a being who is greater than man, a being who is the very incarnation of evil. It is the Sin that entices human creatures away from virtue.

'Undoubtedly there would be no need of exaggerating this impression, for the art of our great genius of comedy blends reason and moderation and achieves a colossal effect in much the same way that Shakespeare, for instance, does the same thing by joining together mystery and terror.

'One can only deny, however, by referring to his antecedents, that Tartufe is an unforeseen character in the comedies of Molière. The law-exempt ecclesiastic who collars him says that he recognizes in this humbug