visiting cards and a piano score
...I have no desire to influence you, my dear.
Julie. Still —
Dupont [going to the mantelpiece] Still what? Wait until I light the lamp. [He strikes a match].
Julie. Why, it’s still quite light.
Dupont. When one receives visitors one does n’t wait till it is dark before — You are old enough to know — what the deuce is the matter with the oil — old enough to know what you are about. Damn the lamps! When they are never lighted it is the devil’s own job to make them burn. Yes, as I was saying, it is for you to weigh the pros and the cons. Marriage — There! [He looks round him] Is there anything else to be done to make things look better? What is that over there? That great stupid Caroline’s hat!
Mme. Dupont [coming in and bringing visiting cards and a piano score of an opera] Here are the cards and the music book.
ex Eugène Brieux, “The Three Daughters of M. Dupont” / Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont; Translated by St. John Hankin, in
Three Plays by Brieux, Member of the French Academy, with Preface by Bernard Shaw. English Versions by Mrs. Bernard Shaw, St. John Jankin and John Pollock.
(Brentano’s, New York 1912) : 91
U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link
U California copy/scan (one of several via hathitrust) : link
—
Eugène Brieux (1858-1932), bank clerk, reporter, newspaper editor, theater critic, prolific and well-regarded dramatist (but “whose didactic impetus was [after WW1] no longer considered up-to-date”)
wikipedia : link
from which —
“Brieux increasingly withdrew to the countryside. His villa in Agay, near Cannes, became a local tourist attraction, prompting him to move to an even more remote region in the Loire department, where he spent his time fishing and farming.”
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