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To draw from this youthful jeu d'e'sprit, a theory of Bruno's attitude towards women is a grotesque absurdity. We have his fine sonnets written in England, especially the one "Inscribed to the most Virtuous and Delightful Ladies," in which he celebrates the beauty, sweetness, and chastity of our English "spouses and daughters of angelic birth."
The sparkling jeu d'esprit had only sobered down into the quiet sarcasm; and if his wit rippled less freshly to the breeze of the present moment, it was coloured more richly by the glittering sands which rolled down from the experience that over shadowed the current.
He had not, no doubt, what I see described as "le jeu simple et terrible" of Antoine, a dry, hard, intellectual grip on horror; he had the ready abandonment to emotion of the average emotional man. Mr. Warner has an irritating voice and manner, but he has emotional power, not fine nor subtle, but genuine; he feels and he makes you feel.
"It differs hugely from the old temple of chance on the edge of the Continent that enfer sur terre set amid a paradis. There is no ornate concert-room here, or theatre or opera house. There is not even a salon for gossip and smoke and exercise. The whole is one enormous salle de jeu, and the clink of gold against yellow gold is the only instrumental music.
Written in half the time Ibsen usually devoted to a play, it is an outburst of humorous indignation, a jeu d'esprit, one might almost say, though the jeu of a giant esprit.
His Aramintes, his Silvias, his Lucidors are purged of the grossnesses of existence; their minds and their hearts are miraculously one; in their conversations the subtleties of metaphysicians are blended with the airy clarities of birds. Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard is perhaps the most perfect example of his work.
Each player who is prevented has to join the opposite side or camp, and so on till one camp is "ruined" by losing all its occupants. There is a very popular game among Belgian working-men called the jeu de balle. There are five players on each side, who stand on two large courts marked on the ground. The ball must not touch the ground, and is taken full pitch.
Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still shrouded in smoke. 'I wonder what he thinks of it? thought Soames, who knew well enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of the last generation. There was no longer any sale at Jobson's for such works of art. Swithin's answer came at last.
"Going to be murdered, think of it " "Ah! there it is! You would have the grand jeu; but don't take on so, all the folk that are murdered on the cards don't die." "But is it possible, Ma'am Fontaine?" "Oh, I know nothing about it, my pretty dear! You would rap at the door of the future; I pull the cord, and it came." "It, what?" asked Mme. Cibot.
That such a lusty juvenile will, by favor of the mellowing effect imposed on all creeds by early years of toil, trouble and experience, reach a middle age of presentable decency, is not a more unlikely supposition than the worthy Vermont clergyman would have pronounced, half a century ago, the idea that his jeu d'esprit would become the Bible of sixty thousand industrious, well-ordered English-speaking people in the heart of the American continent.
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