HERVIEU, PAUL (1857-1915), French dramatist and nov elist, was born at Neuilly (Seine) on Nov. 2, 1857. He was called to the bar in 1877, and, after serving some time in the office of the president of the council, qualified for the diplomatic service, but resigned on his nomination in 1881 to a secretaryship in the French legation in Mexico. He contributed novels, tales and es says to the chief Parisian papers and reviews, and published a series of clever novels, of which the most famous are Peints par eux-memes (1893), an ironical study written in the form of let ters and L'Armature (1895), dramatized in 1905 by Eugene Brieux. But his most important work consists of a series of plays: Les Paroles restent (Vaudeville, Nov. 17, 1892) ; Les Tenailles (Theatre Francais, Sept. 28, 1895) ; La Loi de l'homme (Theatre Francais, Feb. 15, 1897) ; La Course du flambeau (Vaudeville, April 17, 1901) ; Point de lendemain (Odeon, Oct. 18, 1901), a dramatic version of a story by Vivaut Denon; L'Enigme (Theatre Francais, Nov. 5, 1901) ; Tlzeroigne de Meri court (Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, Sept. 23, 1902) ; Le Dedale (Theatre Francais, Dec. 19, 1903) ; and Le Revell (Theatre Fran cais, Dec. 18, 1905). These plays, which are nearly all pieces a these, are built upon a severely logical method, the mechanism of which is sometimes so evident as to destroy the necessary sense of illusion. The closing words of La Course du flambeau—"Pour ma fine, j'ai tug ma mere"—illuminate the Hervieu method. The riddle in L'Enigme (staged at Wyndham's Theatre, London, March 1, 1902, as Caesar's Wife) is, however, worked out with great art, and Le Dedale, dealing with the obstacles to the remarriage of a divorced woman, is reckoned among the masterpieces of the mod ern French stage. His last play was Le Destin est Maitre (1914). He was elected to the French Academy in 1900, and died in Paris on Oct. 25, 1915.
See A. Binet, in L'Annee psychologique, vol. x.; and Portrait psychologique de Paul Hervieu (1914) ; H. Burckhardt, Studien zu Paul Hervieu (19'7).