MONDE (LE) Oil L'ON S'ENNUIE, le mond oo loit sOn'nwe ('The Society that Bores' 1881) by Edouard Pailleron, is still, what after 15 years it seemed, "on the whole the most brilliant comedy of modern days" (Athena'um, 27 Jan. 1906). It is not only an extremely keen and witty satire on the modern Parisian blue-stocking, the counterpart for its day of MoPre's 'Femmes savantes,' hut its individual characters stand out so clean-cut that `keys* to it • were once in vogue, and many thought to recognize unmistakably some at least of the originals. The outstanding characters are all types easily recognizable in modern counterparts of this society of literary, intellec tual, political and social pretense. First is Be).. lac, the complacent object of admiring adula•. tions, such as the would-be intellectual Parisi cnnes were then bestowing on Professor Caro, who vapors of Platonic love, the bettef, in his own phrase, to "enjoy life and avoid mar riage." Then there is the soldier-senator bore,
General de Briais; the transcendental bore, Saint-Reault; the sentimental, yet shrewdly tart Duchess de Reville, who insists: "The older I grow the more I see that there is no happiness else in the world than love"; her niece, Madame de Ceran, the hostess, busybody of intrigue for reputation, and Lucy Watson, the may-pole Englishwoman, who translates Schopenhauer. The better to set these off and spice the whole come the recently-married, gaily sensible Paul and Jeanne Raymond and the delightfully ingenuous young girl Suzanne, vivacious yet tender, sensible yet gamine, whose hand one grudges a little to her guardian, the right-hearted but rather slow-witted Roger. Consult Claretie, 'Edouard Pailleron' (Paris 1883).