These pieces of evidence must be remembered when we consider the composition of _Salomé_. Mr. Ross says: "The play was passed for press by no less a writer than Marcel Schwob, whose letter to the Paris publisher, returning the proofs and mentioning two or three slight alterations, is still in my possession. Marcel Schwob told me some years afterwards that he thought it would have spoiled the spontaneity and character of Wilde's style if he had tried to harmonize it with the diction demanded by the French Academy." M. Merrill says: "Un jour Wilde me remit son drame qu'il avait écrit très rapidement, de premier jet, en français, et me demanda d'en corriger les erreurs manifestes. Ce ne fut pas chose facile de faire accepter à Wilde toutes mes corrections.... Je me rappelle que la plupart des tirades de ses personnages commençaient par l'explétif: _enfin!_ En ai-je assez biffé, des _enfin!_ Mais je m'apercus bientôt que le bon Wilde n'avait en mon gout qu'une confiance relative, et je le recommandai aux soins de Retté. Celui-ci continua mon travail de correction et d'émendation. Mais Wilde finit par se méfier de Retté autant que de moi, et ce fut Pierre Louys qui donna le dernier coup de lime au texte de _Salomé_." In comment, I shall do no more than notice that the play was written in 1891, and not published till 1893. The two stories do not necessarily contradict each other, for Marcel Schwob did not suggest that he saw the manuscript, and M. Merrill's reminiscence is concerned with _Salomé_ long before it was sent to the printers.
The question is not one of any great importance. It is sufficient for our purpose to observe that the French of _Salomé_, whether as Wilde wrote it or as it survived the emendations of his friends, is very simple in construction. Salomé, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa, did not use the finer subtleties of the language in which she loved Iokanaan. A perusal of Maeterlinck's "Les Sept Princesses" had taught her to use a speech whose power depends on its simplicity. She, Herod, Herodias and all their entourage, speak like children who have had a French nurse. Their speech is made of short sentences, direct assertions and negations, that run like pages beside the progress of the play. They show, these short sentences, what is happening, the more forcefully, because they are themselves aloof from it and busied with their own concerns. For example:--