It is curious to notice how, in almost every instance, the first
adapting dramatists transformed Balzac's tragedies into comedies,
softening the stern facts of life and its injustices, and meting out
the juster rewards and punishments which the novelist's realism
forbade.
In Antony Beraud's _Gars_, a play drawn from the _Chouans_ and
performed at the Ambigu-Comique in 1837, the hero and heroine, instead
of dying, are saved by a political amnesty decreed by Napoleon; and
the curtain falls to the cry of _Vive l'Empereur_. More than fifty
years later, in 1894, the same theatre gave a close rendering of the
dramatic portions of the _Chouans_, due to the collaboration of Berton
and Blavet, the tragic ending being preserved, with all the effects
properly belonging to it.
Commonplace, like the _Gars_, were the arrangements of the _Search for
the Absolute_, in 1837, and _Cesar Birotteau_ in 1838. The former was
staged under the bizarre title, _A+Mx=O+X, or the Dream of a Savant_.
The authors, Bayard and Bieville, concealed their identity under an
algebraic X as well; and their piece, which made Balthazar Claes a
Parisian chemist and a candidate to a vacant chair in the College de
France, failed to attract at the Gymnase, in spite of Bouffe's talent
and the redemption of Balthazar.
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