I recognize in you your grandfather, who was a
miserable calumniator." "Repeat that word!" says Leopold. Bernard does
so, and the other strikes him across the face with his glove. For a
perceptible interval Bernard struggles with his rage in silence, and
then: "It is well for you," he cries, "that you are my brother!"
We need not follow the scene in the sentimental turning which it then
takes, whereby it comes about, of course, that Bernard, not Leopold,
marries Mile. Letellier. The point is that Augier has justified Sarcey's
confidence by making the scene thoroughly and specifically dramatic; in
other words, by charging it with emotion, and working up the tension to
a very high pitch. And Sarcey was no doubt right in holding that this
was what the whole audience instinctively expected, and that they would
have been more or less consciously disappointed had the author baulked
their expectation.
An instructive example of the failure to "make" a dramatically
obligatory scene may be found in _Agatha_ by Mrs.
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