only retards
the action."

"On the contrary," I replied, "all this is just what is going to
interest you. You are impatient of these details, because you are
looking out for the scenes of passion which have been promised you.
But reflect that, without these preparations, the scenes of passion
would not touch you. That cactus-flower will play its part, you may
be sure; that dahlia-root is not there for nothing; that fox to
which you object, and of which you will hear more talk during two
more acts, will bring about the solution of one of the most
entertaining situations in all drama."

M. Sarcey does not tell us what his interlocutor replied; but he might
have said, like the hero of _Le Reveillon_: "Are you sure there is no
mistake? Are you defending Sardou, or attacking him?"

For another example of ultra-complex preparation let me turn to a play
by Mr. Sydney Grundy, entitled _The Degenerates_. Mr. Grundy, though an
adept of the Scribe school, has done so much strong and original work
that I apologize for exhuming a play in which he almost burlesqued his
own method; but for that very reason it is difficult to find a more
convincing or more deterrent example of misdirected ingenuity. The
details of the plot need not be recited. It is sufficient to say that
the curtain has not been raised ten minutes before our attention has
been drawn to the fact that a certain Lady Saumarez has her monogram on
everything she wears, even to her gloves: whence we at once foresee that
she is destined to get into a compromising situation, to escape from it,
but to leave a glove behind her. In due time the compromising situation
arrives, and we find that it not only requires a room with three
doors,[6] but that a locksmith has to be specially called in to provide
two of these doors with peculiar locks, so that, when once shut, they
cannot be opened from inside except with a key! What interest can we
take in a situation turning on such contrivances? Sane technic laughs at
locksmiths. And after all this preparation, the situation proves to be a
familiar trick of theatrical thimble-rigging: you lift the thimble, and
instead of Pea A, behold Pea B!--instead of Lady Saumarez it is Mrs.
Trevelyan who is concealed in Isidore de Lorano's bedroom. Sir William
Saumarez must be an exceedingly simple-minded person to accept the
substitution, and exceedingly unfamiliar with the French drama of the
'seventies and 'eighties. If he h