With wings that flap and beaks that flay:
This is King Louis' orchard close!

ENVOI.

"Prince, where leaves murmur of the May,
A tree of bitter clusters grows;
The bodies of men dead are they!
This is King Louis' orchard close!


Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to
recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the
ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to
finish his supper. This the king grants, and in the end, after
Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he receives his life and
a fair bride with a full dowry.

Gringoire is a play very different from M. De Banville's other
dramas, and it is not included in the pretty volume of "Comedies"
which closes the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often
declared, with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin,
that "comedy is the child of the ode," and that a drama without the
"lyric" element is scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains
either the choral ode in its strict form, or its representative in
the shape of lyric enthusiasm (le lyrisme), comedy is complete and
living. Gringoire, to our mind, has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but
M. De Banville seems to be of a different opinion. His republished
"Comedies" are more remote from experience than Gringoire, his
characters are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like