followed when they refused to accept the conditions of the actual
theater; and they protested shrilly against these conditions when they
vainly essayed to fulfil them. "What a horrible manner of writing is
that which suits the stage!" Flaubert complained to George Sand. "The
ellipses, the suspensions, the interrogations must be lavished, if one
wishes to have liveliness; and all these things, in themselves, are very
ugly." In other words, Flaubert was concerned with the rhetoric of the
written word, and he had no relish for the rhythm of spoken dialog.

These French novelists refused to perceive that the drama is, of
necessity, the most democratic of the arts, since it depends, and has
always depended, and must ever depend, absolutely upon the public as a
whole. The strength of the drama, its immense advantage over other forms
of literature, lies in this, that it must appeal to the mass of men,
not to the intelligent more than to the unintelligent, not to the
educated more than to the uneducated, not to any sect or clique, or
cotery, but to men as men. The laws of the drama may be deduced, all of
them, from this principle, that in the theater the play-maker has to
interest a gathering of his own contemporaries, all sorts and conditions
of men. If he cannot hold their attention, move them, sway them, control
them, then he has failed frankly to do what he set out to do. And he can
do this, he can make them laugh, and make them weep, make them feel, and
make them think, only by accepting the conditions of the theater itself.
Daudet and Zola had more of the needful understanding of their fellow
creatures than Flaubert and Goncourt, more of the necessary sympathy;
but they had all of them not a little of the conceit of the self-made
man and they assumed the egotistic attitude of the cultivated
aristocrat. It would have been well if they could have taken to heart
what George Sand once wrote to Flaubert: "It seems to me that your
school does not consider enough the substance of things, and that it