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La Princesse Maleine, it is said, was written for a theater of marionettes, and it is, certainly, with the effect of marionettes that these sudden, exclamatory people come and go. Maleine, Hjalmar, Uglyane—these are no characters, these are no realizable persons; they are a mask of shadows, a dance of silhouettes behind the white sheet of the "Chat Noir," and they have the fantastic charm of these enigmatical semblances—"luminous, gem-like, ghost-like"—with, also, their somewhat mechanical eeriness. Maeterlinck has recorded his intellectual debt to Villiers de l'Isle Adam, but it was not from the author of Axel that he learned his method. The personages of Maeterlinck—are only too eloquent, too volubly poetical. In their mystical aim Villiers and Maeterlinck are at one; in their method there is all the difference in the world. This is how Sara, in Axel, speaks:—

Songe! Des coeurs condamnés à ce supplice de pas m'aimer! ne sont-ils pas assez infortunés d'être d'une telle nature?

But Maleine has nothing more impressive to say than this:—