e. All this is admirably shown in "Bataille
de dames;" but there is something more and better here, and that
something is due to Legouve, whose unaided talent sufficed to produce no
work of enduring quality.

Ernest Legouve was born in February, 1807, and died in 1903 as the
_doyen_, or senior member, of the French Academy. Except for the plays
that have been named, he owed his success less to his novels, dramas, or
poems, than to his patriotic activity and to journalistic work, aided by
most amiable social qualities, and a delicate, almost feminine
psychological observation,[F] with which he inspired the lively but
unspiritualized creations of Scribe. In the marriage of true minds that
produced the "Bataille de dames" and those other plays, his was the
feminine part. The working up of the dramatic conception, the contrast
of political and social antagonisms, the "characters," if we may call
them so, of Henri and Montrichard, the farcical caricature of De
Grignon, these are all Scribe's, and they make up the skeleton, perhaps
even the flesh and blood, of the comedy: but its spirit, its soul, lies
in the delicate touches that give a sympathetic charm to the conquest of
De Grignon's timidity by his love; it lies in the gracious magnanimity
of the countess, who has read her niece's heart long before Leonie knows
her own, who follows with a generous jealousy every phase of her
passion, and yet guards her own loyalty to her niece in the true spirit
of _noblesse oblige_, even while she sees that that loyalty is costing
her own happiness. But most of all the soul of this little play is in
that triumph of simple girlish _naivete_, Leonie, so true, so artless,
disarming all rivalry, and winning every spectator's heart, as she all
but loses and then gains her lover's. These traits are Legouve's. They
are not qualities that will stand on the stage alone. They need the
setting of Scribe's stage-craft, the facile ingenuity of his intrigue,
to give them corporeal reality. Hence Legouve's other dramas were
unsuccessful, while the four in which he joined with Scribe are among
the best of their generation. Each author gave to the common stock what
the other lacked and needed. The one gave fertile invention, lively wit,
and technical skill, the other gave delicacy, instinct, and charm. Each
was the better for the other's partnership; and perhaps no child of
their communion is more fascinating to gentle hearts, or will bear
better to be r