e hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.

So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common
people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made
notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and
kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or
two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast
success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La Duchesse de la Vauballiere."
The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the
first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible
roue, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe
d'Orleans, the Regent of France.

Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in
his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
compelled the pair to marry and make it up.

Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
husband and herself.

Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner:
he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters
into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he
determines to make away with her altogether.

For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor
turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that
he has been thus committing murder on his true love!

Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the
heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and,
accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth,
through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.

And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who,
after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge
in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous
notary, and there receives such a lesson as he w