to the Holy Places, and the elder daughter, Violaine, answers the call of her Lord as well: she comforts a young man sick with leprosy and in pain, and presses on his face a kiss of pure love and compassion; the contagion steals into her, and she is accused of sin. Her betrothed and her family cast her off, and she withdraws to a cave far from the world, spending her hours in prayer and devotion. One day her sister comes to her crying for help, sobbing — her little girl has died, and she is on the live coals of a grief that will not be consoled. It was Christmas Eve, and the bells were ringing in the villages and the surrounding districts. The virgin Violaine takes the child's cold body in her sick hands and sits pleading and sup-plicating while her sister reads the prayers of the feast — and behold, the child stirs trembling in her hands: life has returned to her. She gives her back to her mother, and the color of her eyes has changed and become blue, like the color of Violaine's eyes. The two sisters bow down rejoicing: "Unto us this day a child is born... Hallelujah. Glory to Thee, O God."

When Claudel was asked, with astonishment, about his belief in miracles, he would answer that his own Christian life began with a miracle, the day the Lord spoke to him in the church of Notre-Dame. And why not?

He expresses this feeling in verse freed from rhyme, in which every

word has its magic and its weight — and how could it be otherwise, when he is a pupil of symbolism at the hands of its greatest master, Mallarmé. If we look attentively at his plays, we find in

them certain fundamental common elements, which may be summed up as follows:

Man is the creature of God. Woman is the tree of good and evil. Suffering is the purifier of souls. Woman belongs to God before she belongs to man. Deprivation is the key of salvation. Humility and acceptance are the road to sanctity.

(In the next issue: "The Existentialist Theater")

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