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Every morning the retired merchant every ex-tradesman is a retired merchant spent two hours in the Rue des Saussayes to attend to business, and gave the rest of his time to Mademoiselle Zaire, which annoyed Zaire very much. Orosmanes-Crevel had a fixed bargain with Mademoiselle Heloise; she owed him five hundred francs worth of enjoyment every month, and no "bills delivered."
He protested that he could not have conceived it possible for the powers of any actress upon earth to interest him for the English Zara; "but you, madam," said he, "have done the impossible; and now I should die content, if I could see your genius do justice to Zaire. How you would shine in the divine original, when you could do such wonders for a miserable translation!"
If plays are written expressly to be acted, how is it that the best of them can be always read?" And he awaited Dumouchel's reply. According to the professor, the immediate fate of a play proved nothing. The Misanthrope and Athalie are dying out. Zaïre is no longer understood. Who speaks to-day of Ducange or of Picard?
The first, under the conduct of Captain Tuckey, proceeded up the Zaire; the other ascended the Nunez in north Africa, in order, if possible, to reach the navigable part of the Niger by a shorter course than that followed by Park, and with the design of proceeding down the river till it reached its termination.
Voltaire, probably by way of apology for the poor success which the piece had on its representation, says, "This piece is perhaps in the English taste." Heaven forbid! We return to the earlier tragedies of Voltaire, in which he brought on the stage subjects never before attempted, and on which his fame as a dramatic poet principally rests: Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Semiramis, and Tancred.
We were now on the sources of the Loangwa of the Maravi, which enters the Zambesi at Zumbo, and were struck by the great resemblance which the boggy and sedgy streams here presented to the sources of the Leeba, an affluent of the Zambesi formerly observed in Londa, and of the Kasai, which some believe to be the principal branch of the Congo or Zaire.
The tenth chapter of this work is entitled "De Animalibus quae in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief passage to the effect that "in the Songan country, on the banks of the Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures."
Hastily the bonds were loosed, and the gag removed, and the groaning Cabinet Minister led, half carried to the Zaire. He recovered sufficiently to take dinner that night, was full of his adventures, inclined perhaps to exaggerate his peril, pardonably exasperated against the man who had led him through so many dangers, real and imaginary. But, above all things, he was grateful to Sanders.
As a rule it is rash to prophesy; but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of them hundred years hence a literal translation of Zaïre will not be holding the English boards. It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of Voltaire's tragedies.
The brilliant success of the tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional drama, though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the severity of the old forms. But the drama had become even less like Sophocles and Euripides in Zaïre than in Phédre or Iphigénie. Voltaire intended to constitute the French drama into an independent form.