AU THEATRE DU GRAND GUIGNOL 93
Horror holds one from the outset: but when from
words we go to deeds, the formulation of the Logos in
the plastic, alas! the element of music-hall supervenes—
O Catulle Mendés! didst thou say, forced like Galileo to
thy knees by an iniquitous tribunal; Personne ne croit
aces cadavres!”? Yet wedoso. The director's murder
is done magnificently; better than Macbeth, better than
the Cenci ; better than the Mother’s Tragedy. No! this
praise is too fulsome, too indiscriminate; but any way,
better than the other two. He groans like laurelled
Martial in Burns’s poem ; yet his assassin does not tickle
the ears of the groundlings with a coarse “ Crévé, nom
de D !” but in supreme self-mastery, the iron con-
trol of a lunatic whose sanity is at stake, enters stern
and silent, his eyes glittering with fiendish joy —
Baviére, thy poster is superb!—and develops with calm
and scientific precision his system to the raving crowd
of madmen and madwomen. Peer Gynt! ay! but
Peer Gynt with a tang! Peer Gynt vital, real,
terrible.
What is the system? That is fine; but remember,
my friends, that our own system comes first! Charity
begins at home and ends in the workhouse: so the
new method must absorb our space—ay! and infinite
space!—to the exclusion of our unworthy imitators,
Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume. To Montmartre
then, reader! to the Grand Guignol! To the Madhouse,
1 We have discovered too late that this is a despicable effort of our cor-
respondent’s jejune graphomania. Had we suspected that he was a poetaster
as well as a degenerate and imbecile, we should not have printed this
rubbish.—ED.