Better even than _La Boule_ is _Tricoche et Cacolet_, which is the name of a firm of private detectives whose exploits and devices surpass those imagined by Poe in America, by Wilkie Collins in England, and by Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and impersonations of the two partners when seeking to outwit each other are as well-motived and as fertile in comic effect as any of the attempts of Crispin or of some other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is not even the _Légataire Universel_, Regnard's masterpiece, overrated? To me it is neither higher comedy nor more provocative of laughter than either _La Boule_ or _Tricoche et Cacolet_; and the modern plays, as I have said, are based on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in comic power to that in the final act of the _Réveillon_--a situation Molière would have been glad to treat.
Especially to be commended in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ is the satire of the hysterical sentimentality and of the forced emotions born of luxury and idleness. The parody of the amorous intrigue which is the staple of so many French plays is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method of Meilhac and Halévy in sketching this couple is not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ and _The Pirates of Penzance_. Especially to be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft--in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ at the swapping of children in the cradle, and in _Tricoche et Cacolet_ at the "portrait de ma mère" which has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halévy, having made one success, did not further attempt the same kind of pleasantry--wiser in this than Mr. Gilbert, who seems to find it hard to write anything else.
As in the _Château à Toto_ MM. Meilhac and Halévy had made a modern perversion of _Dame Blanche_, so in _La Cigale_ did they dress up afresh the story of the _Fille du R'egiment_. As the poet asks--