slander that beset her. The court
and people resolve themselves into a kind of opera chorus, expressing
their various sentiments in song. The Queen next reviews her life with
Andrea, and concludes:--

"And it seemed to me noble and worthy of a queen to melt with a glance
the cold of the frost, to make the almond tree blossom with a smile, to
be amiable to all, affable, generous, and lead my people with a thread
of wool! Yes, all the thought of my mad youth was to be loved and to
reign by the power of love. Who could have foretold that, afterward, on
the day of the great disaster, all this should be made a reproach
against me! that I should be accused, at the age of twenty, of
instigating an awful crime!"

And she breaks down weeping. The page, the people, the pilgrim, and the
astrologer again sing in a sort of operatic ensemble their various
emotions. The Pope absolves the Queen, the pilgrim denounces the verdict
furiously, and is put to death by Galeas of Mantua. So ends the play.

_La Reino Jano_ is a pageant rather than a tragedy. It is full of song
and sunshine, glow and glitter. The characters all talk in the
exaggerated and exuberant style of Mistral, who is not dramatist enough
to create independent being, living before us. The central personage is
in no sense a tragic character. The fanatical Fra Rupert and the low,
vile-tongued Catanaise are not tragic characters. The psychology
throughout is decidedly upon the surface.

The author in his introduction warns us that to judge this play we must
place ourselves at the point of view of the Provencals, in whom many an
expression or allusion that leaves the ordinary reader or spectator
untouched, will possibly awaken, as he hopes, some particular emotion.
This is true of all his literature; the Provencal language, the
traditions, the memories of Provence, are the web and woof of it all.

It is interesting to note the impression made by the language upon a
Frenchman and a critic of the rank of Jules Lemaitre. He says in
concluding his review of this play:--

"The language is too gay, it has too much sing-song, it is too
harmonious. It does not possess the rough gravity of the Spanish, and
has too few of the _i_'s and _e_'s that soften the sonority of the
Italian. I may venture to say it is too expressive, too full of
onomatopoeia. Imagine a language, in which to say, "He bursts out
laughing," one must use the word _s'escacalasso_! There are too many
_on_'s and _