The Lemoine Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

of my botanical researches,
     very timidly—all the better—never stopped giving me courage: “Have confidence, fear
     nothing, you are still in the midst of life, in history.”

VI    IN THE WEEKLY THEATER REVIEW BY M. ÉMILE FAGUET
    The author of
Le Détour
and
Le Marché
—namely M. Henri Bernstein—has just had a play, or rather an ambiguous combination
     of tragedy and vaudeville, performed by the actors of the Gymnase, which may not be
     his
Athalie
or his
Andromaque
[Racine], his
L’Amour Veille
[Henry Roussel] or his
Les Sentiers de la Vertu
[Robert de Flers], but yet is something like his
Nicomède
[Corneille], which is not at all, as you may have heard, a completely contemptible
     play and is not at all entirely a disgrace to the human spirit. Although the play
     has reached, I will not say beyond the heavens, butat least up to the highest clouds, where there is some exaggeration, it has done so
     with legitimate success, since M. Bernstein’s play abounds with improbabilities, but
     on a background of truth. That is where
The Lemoine Affair
differs from
La Rafale
, and, in general, from all of M. Bernstein’s tragedies, as well as from a good half
     of Euripides’ comedies, which abound in truths, but on a background of improbability.
     What’s more, this is the first time a play by M. Bernstein involves actual people,
     from whom he had held back till now. The swindler Lemoine, then, wanting to dupe people
     with his alleged discovery of how to make diamonds, goes to see … the greatest diamond-mine
     owner in the world. As implausibility goes, you will agree that that is a rather considerable
     one. This is one thing. At the very least, you expect that that magnate, who has all
     the greatest affairs in the world to occupy him, will send Lemoine packing, just as
     the prophet Nehemiah said from atop the ramparts of Jerusalem to those who held out
     a ladder for him to come down,
Non possum descendere, magnum opus facio
. That would have been the perfect response. But not at all, he hurries to use the
     ladder. The only difference is that instead of going down, he climbs up it. A bit
     youthful, this Werner. This is not a role for M. Coquelin the younger, but rather
     for M. Brulé. And now for another thing. Note that Lemoine does not make a gift of
     this secret, which naturally is nothing but a trifling quack recipe. He sells it to
     him for two million francs, and still makes him think it’s a steal:
    Admire my kindnesses and the little sold to you The wonderful treasure my hand dispenses
     to you
.
    O great power
    Of the Panacea!
        (see Molière,
L’Amour Médecin
.)
    Which doesn’t change much, all in all, of the implausibility of No. 1, but doesn’t
     make the implausibility of No. 2 much worse. But finally, anything goes! My God, note
     that until now we have been following the author who is a pretty good dramatist. We
     are told that Lemoine discovered the secret of diamond-making. We know nothing of
     that, after all; we are just told it, we want to go along with it, we’re game. Werner,
     the great diamond expert, was taken in, and Werner, the crafty financier, paid up.
     And we are taken in right along with him. A great English scholar, half-physicist,
     half-nobleman, an English lord, as they say (but no, Madame, all lords are English,
     so an English lord is a pleonasm; don’t start that again, no one heard you), swears
     that Lemoine has genuinely discovered the philosopher’s stone. We can’t go any further
     than we’ve gone. Boom! Suddenly the jewelers recognize Lemoine’s diamonds as the very
     stones they sold him, and that they come
precisely from Werner’s own mine
. A bit much, that. The diamonds
still have the marks the jewelers had put on them
. Worse and worse:
    In the marked diamond that comes thus out of the oven,
    I no longer recognize the author of
Le Détour
.
    Lemoine is arrested, Werner demands his money back, the English lord doesn’t say one