LA DEVINERESSE, a fairy comedy by Donneau de VisÉ and Thomas Corneille—the latter is usually called by his contemporaries Corneille de Lisle—was represented at Paris in 1679, the year of the great poison case.
In his reports to the king and the Secretaries of State Nicolas de la Reynie insisted on the necessity, not only of punishing the guilty, but of preventing the spread and, if possible, the recurrence of crimes like those which had been brought to light. We have shown how he had drawn up, in collaboration with Colbert, the decree registered in the Parlement on August 31, 1682, by which the magicians were expelled from France, and by which, more especially, the making and the sale of poisons necessary in medicine and in trade were placed under rigorous regulations. This was a masterly work: as we have mentioned, these regulations are in force to this day, after the lapse of two centuries.
La Reynie thought that it was advisable, apart from these preventive measures, to put the public on their guard against the dangerous infatuation which had thrown so many pretty and passionate women body and soul into the hands of the fortune-tellers. Let us recall the declarations of one of the latter: ‘Persons who look into the hand are the ruin of all women, women of quality as well as others, because their weakness is soon found out, and when discovered is taken advantage of, and they are driven to whatever length the witches please.’ As lieutenant of police La Reynie had a general control of the theatres; he revised and censored the manuscripts of the playwrights; he was in constant touch with them. He was the friend of more than one writer of talent, for the magistrate was doubled in him with the refined and delightful man of letters, who had both delicate taste and an excellent library. In this year 1679 he had particularly close relations with Donneau de VisÉ, founder and editor of the Mercure galant, and assuredly one of the most curious figures in our literary history. Boursault had just written his witty comedy, also entitled the Mercure galant, in which he directed lively and incisive satire upon the journalism then at its dawn, which had already taken, under the influence of Donneau de VisÉ, many of the characteristics of modern journalism.
The Mercure, said Boursault, is a delightful thing:—
VisÉ begged La Reynie not to authorise the representation of the piece under the same title as the journal; La Reynie acquiesced, and Boursault, putting a good face on the matter, called his piece La ComÉdie sans titre. Moreover, VisÉ was in high favour at Court. When Louis XIV saw the success of the Mercure, he hastened to award the editor-in-chief a pension of 500 crowns, gave him apartments in the Louvre, and appointed him his historiographer. VisÉ’s pen became an accommodating tool.
Donneau de VisÉ was not only a journalist; he was a dramatic author, and as a dramatic author he was, as he was in journalism, very modern. He had found means of achieving a noisy notoriety by beginning with an extremely violent attack on Corneille and MoliÈre. Against the latter he composed his comedy ZÉlinde, ou la vÉritable critique de l’Echole des Femmes et la critique de la critique, in which he has left a portrait of the poet that has become famous, and which is, in our eyes, not a criticism but a splendid eulogy. ‘I came down,’ says a lace merchant; ‘Elomire [an anagram on MoliÈre] did not say a single word. I found him leaning up against my shop in the attitude of a man in a dream. He had his eyes fixed on three or four persons of quality who were bargaining for lace; he appeared attentive to their words, and seemed by the movement of his eyes to be scanning the depths of their souls to see there what they did not say.’
La Reynie thought of utilising the talent and the notoriety of the dramatic author, and, not satisfied with granting him what he asked in regard to the title of Boursault’s comedy, he gave him in addition the subject for a piece which was destined to obtain the greatest success. To prove to demonstration in Paris, by means of a play to which the public, excited by the great poison case, would flock in crowds, that the pretended skill of magicians and sorceresses was only deception and trickery, seemed assuredly the best way to dissuade the ingenuous mob from dealing with them. From this idea issued La Devineresse ou les Faux enchantements, a comedy represented for the first time in Paris by the king’s company on November 19, 1679, and published in the following February. We have mentioned that Donneau de VisÉ was one of the pioneers of the modern literary life, and La Devineresse will be a fresh proof of the assertion. Let us note first that VisÉ was the father of a literary custom which is in these days highly popular, collaboration. One of the masters of dramatic criticism, Edouard Thierry, writes on this subject: ‘Collaboration, an unfamiliar term which existed at most as a term in jurisprudence, was nevertheless not absolutely unknown at the theatre. There had been the Psyche at the Palais-Royal, completed by Pierre Corneille on the plan and under the direction of MoliÈre; but this was considered only as work done to order; it belonged in the end to the person who hired the worker. There had been the Plaideurs of Racine, and some other successful parodies, composed by several hands, it was said; but this was only an amusement, a literary picnic of gay wits who stimulated each other to satire; nobody up to that time had thought of raising the game to the level of an industry.’ From the very first, collaboration as a business gave results which exceeded the most sanguine hopes. VisÉ, who had made his peace with the elder Corneille, entered into partnership with his younger brother. This Thomas Corneille, who was a remarkable vaudeville-writer and also a remarkable scholar, a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, has been unjustly thrown into the shade by the glory of his elder brother.
La Devineresse was not merely a modern piece in respect of this new trick of collaboration; it was the origin and doubtless the model of those spectacular pieces, with shifting scenery and mechanical effects, which give the ChÂtelet its success to-day. And we shall find, not only that the idea sprang from this, but that the comedy contains scenes and stage business which have come down to us in direct succession through a line of such pieces—such as the talking headless man, the dismembered man whose limbs rearrange themselves spontaneously, dropsy passing from one subject to another, the fairy, wizard or devil who comes into a room through the wall.
Finally, the Devineresse must occupy a select place in the annals of the modern stage from the manner in which the authors managed to float it. One of them, Donneau de VisÉ, was a journalist, and consequently a master of the advertising art. He had the idea, among others, of getting up for 1680 an almanac of the Devineresse, in which there was a large engraved plate representing the principal scenes in the piece, the features of the spectacle, grouped around a monstrous satanic figure; these of course were the principal tricks in false magic performed by the sorceress and her mate. These pictures are still in existence,[18] and present to our eyes a curious representation, not only of the theatrical scenes of the eighteenth century, but also of the interior of the houses in which the sorceresses received their clients. These circumstances, together with the striking actuality and the wit of the authors, secured to the Devineresse an unprecedented success, both financially and in arousing the curiosity of the public. All Paris ran to see it. Its representations extended over five months, and, what in those days appeared remarkable, it ran for forty-seven nights in succession; the first eighteen performances brought in double the usual receipts. Seconded by the skill and talent of the authors, the lieutenant of police had attained his end.
The fortune-teller who is the chief character in the piece was none other than La Voisin, whose name Corneille and VisÉ slightly disguised in calling their sorceress Madame Jobin. In the comedy are to be found echoes of the replies made by the sorceress before the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, a fact which indicates the share of La Reynie. The principal ally of La Voisin was called Du Buisson, that of Madame Jobin is called Du Clos. Their practices are the same, but turned to ridicule by the authors, who make their Madame Jobin a mere schemer with no other idea than to snap up the crown-pieces of the public. In the essentials of the character we are thus very far from the terrible sorceress of Villeneuve-sur-Gravois.
In the course of the second scene of the second act, Madame Jobin explains to her brother what her art consists in.
‘This is what the majority of men are. They swallow all the stupidities retailed to them, and when once they have let themselves go, nothing is capable of undeceiving them. See, my brother, Paris is the place in the world where there are most clever people and also most dupes. The sorceries I am accused of, and other things which would appear still more supernatural, want a lively imagination to invent them and skill to make use of them. It is through these that people have belief in us, and magic and devils have nothing to do with it. The fright people get into who are shown this sort of thing blinds them enough to prevent them from seeing they are deceived. As to my meddling with fortune-telling, as you will be told, that is an art in which the thousand folk who put themselves every day in our hands make our information easy to get at. Besides, chance accounts for the greater part of our success in this line. All you want is presence of mind, and boldness and intrigue, to know the world, to have people in your houses, to note carefully things that happen, to get information on their little love affairs, and especially to say a good many things when any one comes to consult you. There is always one of them true, and two or three, said quite haphazard, are enough to give you a vogue. After that it will be of no good to say that you know nothing; no one will believe you, and, good or evil, they make you talk.’
The comedy itself is far from being without merit. You will not see in it, to be sure, the breadth and the sureness of touch of that MoliÈre whom VisÉ had so much ridiculed, and the pleasure one may find in reading it is spoilt by the feeling that MoliÈre would have made so much more of such a subject, in which so many laughable and so many moving things are concentrated. Nevertheless, the majority of modern extravaganzas would have to yield in many respects to the Devineresse, as regards both construction and literary merit. In the course of the preface to the published edition of their piece, the authors are careful to speak of the famous rules ascribed to Aristotle without which no dramatic piece could be constructed in the time of Racine and Boileau. And in fact VisÉ and Corneille did observe them—these three famous unities of time, place, and action. In an extravaganza, mark! That, assuredly, is what an author of our day would consider the most extravagant feature of their work.
The preface states the subject of the comedy: ‘A woman mad after the sorceresses, a lover interested in opening her eyes about them, and a rival who wishes to prevent their marriage, form a subject which opens the plot in the first act, a plot only unravelled in the last act by the unmasking of the false devil. The other actors, or at least a part of them, are envoys of one or other of the two interested persons, who, by the reports they give, augment the credulity of the countess or make the marquis believe still more firmly that the sorceress is a knave. Thus these characters cannot be regarded as unnecessary. It is true that there are some who, knowing neither the countess nor the marquis, only consult Madame Jobin on their own behalf; but, being as famous as she is here depicted, was it likely that during twenty-four hours there only came to her persons who knew one another or furthered the principal action?’
From the outset the comedy is well constructed, and the character of the persons comes out clearly. The seasoning of the dialogue is a little strong, indeed; but the wit springs always from an acute and delicate power of observation. We may mention the scene in which the sorceress, who easily dupes persons of cultivated mind and even those who never relax their vigilance, is utterly nonplussed by the primitive simple-mindedness of a village girl. The dÉnouement is brought about by the presence of mind of the marquis, who seeks to undeceive the countess whom he loves. The sorceress has foretold frightful misfortunes to the countess if she should marry the marquis, being paid for so doing by a Madame Noblet who has fallen deeply in love with the latter. The marquis, armed with a pistol, springs at the throat of a devil whom the sorceress has summoned through the wall. The devil falls on his knees: ‘Mercy, sir; I am a good devil!’
It remains to inquire whether the lieutenant of police had as much success as the authors of the piece; that is, whether the practices he wished to extirpate in France disappeared under his efforts. La Reynie did succeed, as much as he could hope, in the struggle he had undertaken against the poisoners. Magic, however, was a hardy plant. ‘You would never believe how desperately silly they are at Paris,’ wrote Madame Palatine on October 8, 1701. ‘Everybody is anxious to become an adept in the art of invoking spirits and other devilries.’ Black masses were again said in the outskirts of Paris, in circumstances so horrible that ‘a beggar girl aged thirteen years, who had been taken there, died of fright': she was buried in her clothes by sub-deacon Sebault, and Guignard, curÉ of Notre Dame de Bourges, who had said the monstrous office. And according to M. Huysmans, black masses are said to this very day.
When, two thousand years before our era, the Chaldean mages and the high priests of Egypt on clear nights pierced the starry sky with their patient gaze, did they read there that after thirty centuries a grave magistrate and chief of police would fight their descendants by means of a fairy extravaganza, with trap-doors and puns and transformation scenes?
