eforth the predominant partner in his business,
and that, if you do not behave yourself, I shall see that your allowance
is withdrawn, and that you have no longer the means to lead an idle and
dissolute life." This would have been an ungracious but not unnatural
way of going about the business. Had Augier chosen it, we should have
had no right to complain on the score of probability; but it would have
been evident to the least imaginative that he had left the specifically
dramatic opportunities of the scene entirely undeveloped. Let us now see
what he actually did. Marie Letellier, compromised by Leopold's conduct,
has left the Fourchambault house and taken refuge with Mme. Bernard.
Bernard loves her devotedly, but does not dream that she can see
anything in his uncouth personality, and imagines that she loves
Leopold. Accordingly, he determines that Leopold shall marry her, and
tells him so. Leopold scoffs at the idea; Bernard insists; and little by
little the conflict rises to a tone of personal altercation. At last
Leopold says something slighting of Mile. Letellier, and Bernard--who,
be it noted, has begun with no intention of revealing the kinship
between them--loses his self-control and cries, "Ah, there speaks the
blood of the man who slandered a woman in order to prevent his son from
keeping his word to her. I recognize in you your grandfather, who was a
miserable calumniator." "Repeat that word!" says Leopold. Bernard does
so, and the other strikes him across the face with his glove. For a
perceptible interval Bernard struggles with his rage in silence, and
then: "It is well for you," he cries, "that you are my brother!"

We need not follow the scene in the sentimental turning which it then
takes, whereby it comes about, of course, that Bernard, not Leopold,
marries Mile. Letellier. The point is that Augier has justified Sarcey's
confidence by making the scene thoroughly and specifically dramatic; in
other words, by charging it with emotion, and working up the tension to
a very high pitch. And Sarcey was no doubt right in holding that this
was what the whole audience instinctively expected, and that they would
have been more or less consciously disappointed had the author baulked
their expectation.

An instructive example of the failure to "make" a dramatically
obligatory scene may be found in _Agatha_ by Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mr.
Louis Parker. Agatha is believed to be the child of Sir Richard and Lady
Fancour