Chapter VII), look at animals. Compare the fate of the pampered

race-horse with that of the tortured cab-horse: for all your talk of predestination, it is a case of injustice. But to the animals we work to death we are as the powers behind Nature are to us. Should we then expect more justice from Nature than we mete out to animals? Let us not condone our culpability by any appeal to Nature: Nature is not concerned with justice; her one aim, as was shown in _The Life of the Bee_, is to maintain, renew, and multiply life. Nature is not just with regard to us; but she may be just with regard to herself. When we say that Nature is not just, it comes to the same thing as saying that she takes no notice of our little virtues; it is our vanity, not our sense of justice, that is wounded. But because our morality is not proportionate to the immensity of the universe, it does not follow that we ought to give it up; it is proportionate to our stature and to our restricted destiny. Justice is identical with logic. It is in himself, not in Nature, that man must find an approbation of justice.

The second part of the book, which has much in common with _The Life of the Bee_, is devoted to the "reign of matter." Maeterlinck here (Chapter V) takes the opportunity of praising vegetarianism, which he is said to have tried. He says:

"It is not my intention to go deeply into the question of vegetarianism, nor to meet the objections that can be made to it; but it must be recognised that few of these objections withstand a loyal and attentive examination; and it may be asserted that all those who have tried this diet have recovered or fortified their health, and felt their mind grow brighter and purer, as though they had been freed from an immemorial, nauseating prison."

The admirers of Maeterlinck's mysticism were more astonished when, in 1902, _Monna Vanna_ appeared than they had been on reading those worldly-wise essays in _Wisdom and Destiny_. Why here was a real play! A play in the theatrical sense, with action, attempted murder, conflict, tension, "honour," and all the rest of it. A play with characterisation at least attempted; for, though Marco is that wise old man we know so well by this time (the most awful version of him was in reserve for _Mary Magdalene_), though Guido Colonna is Golaud _redivivus_; Prinzivalle is at all events a passable shadow of Othello, and Monna Vanna is a heroine who positively develops (let us admit that Selysette had developed too). A play rhetorical in style; pictorial even--a city lit up by fireworks, the Leaning Tower of Pisa all aflame "your Hugo-flare against the night," (William Watson might have jeered). A play with a situation which might have been written specially for that dear old lady, Mrs Grundy; a situation which makes a licence for its performance quite out of the question in Mrs Grundy's England.[5] And when the play proves a great success in Paris and Germany, and more especially when the great dramatist goes on tour with it and Mme Leblanc,[6] who plays the title-rôle, Maeterlinck's old guard call him a renegade to himself, to the Maeterlinck who had once held forth the exciting prospect of a stage without actors and without action. But why should a writer not change his views?

_Monna Vanna_ is written, partly, in the same kind of blank verse as _Sister Beatrice_--very poor stuff considered as poetry, and very troublesome to read as prose. From the point of view of style it is quite impossible to consider it as a great work of art. Dramatically, however, it is one of the most interesting plays produced so far in the twentieth century.

This is the first of Maeterlinck's plays which has not some legendary Weisznichtwo for its scene. These are not shapes seen vaguely through a gloaming of romance; they move in the full light of reality. _Monna Vanna_, in short, is a historical drama, a species of drama which, as we shall see, Maeterlinck rejects in a chapter of _The Double Garden_.

Perhaps, however, those critics are right who deny to _Monna Vanna_ the title of a genuine historical drama. It is at all events evident that the chief interest lies in the soul's awakening in love of Monna and of Prinzivalle. It is concerned, too, with truth: no marriage can be moral in which either party doubts anything the other party says--if you love, you must believe. Historically, the characters are untrue: Marco could not have read Maeterlinck at the time he lived, and, not having read Maeterlinck, he could not be so wise as he is; Monna Vanna could not have read either Maeterlinck or Ibsen, and therefore she could not have had such ideas as she has. But why should a modern play be truly historical? Friedrich Hebbel, a far greater dramatist than Maeterlinck, said something to the effect that a play may be historical if it keeps fresh long enough for our descendants to see from it how we, at our period of history, conceived the past.

However, when the curtain rises we find ourselves in Pisa at the end of the fifteenth century. The town is being besieged by Prinzivalle, the general of the army of Florence. The inhabitants are starving, and the city can hold out no longer. Guido Colonna, the commandant of the garrison, has sent his father, Marco, to Prinzivalle, and the envoy's return is awaited. He comes with this message: Florence has decided to annihilate Pisa. There is to be no question of a capitulation; the town is to be taken by assault, and the citizens butchered. Florence is pressing Prinzivalle to deliver the final assault; but he has intercepted letters by which it appears that he is unjustly accused of treachery. Death awaits him at Florence after his victory. He undertakes, therefore, to introduce a huge convoy of munition and provisions into the starving city, and to join the besieged army with the pick of his mercenaries. His condition is this: Monna Vanna, Guido's wife, shall come to his tent for the night, and she shall be naked under her cloak.

Guido is furious; but Monna Vanna decides to go. She has it in her power to save a whole city; and she thinks, as her father-in-law does, that two people have no right, by considering themselves, to ensure the destruction of so many thousands. There is no attempt on the dramatist's part to belittle the sacrifice she is willing to make; she has, at the time she makes up her mind, the time-honoured idea as to the importance of the sexual act. But she is an altruist, like the bees: it is not she, it is not her husband, it is the community that matters. Guido, however, is an egotist of the old school; he clings to his "honour" to such an extent that he thinks Pisa should be butchered to keep it intact. Monna Vanna goes....