Bébé (play)

By the 1870s Émile de Najac and Alfred Hennequin were established writers for the Parisian stage. Both were used to writing in partnership with co-authors, but this was the first time they worked together. Hennequin had recently enjoyed two considerable successes with Le Procès Veauradieux (1875) and Les Dominos roses (1876), both written with Alfred Delacour. Bébé was presented at the Théâtre du Gymnase on 10 March 1877, and ran for 214 performances,^[1] a considerable run at a time when a run of 100 performances was regarded as a success for a Parisian theatre.^[2]

• Le Baron d'Aigreville – Émile Francès
• Gaston, his son – Frédéric Achard
• De Kernanigous – Alexandre Joseph Landrol
• Pétillon – Saint-Germain
• Arthur de Beauvert – Corbin
• Coiffeur – Revel
• La Baronne d'Aigreville – Mme Bode
• Diane de Kernanigous – Eugénie Worms
• Aurélie de Villecouteuse – Mme Lebon
• Toinette – Mlle Dinelli
• Rosita – Mlle Giesz

There were cast changes during the run. After eighty performances, Mme Prioleau took over the role of the Baronne and Mme Délia that of Diane.^[3] In August 1877 Saint-Germain, reported to be "so fatigued by his one hundred and sixty consecutive representations of Pétillon" handed the part over to his colleague M. Bernès.^[4]

Gaston is a genial, strapping young man of twenty-two, but he is still called "Bébé" by his doting parents, Baron d'Aigreville and his wife. Gaston has been indulged all his life, and in consequence is ill-educated and amoral. The Baronne views him through the eye of love as a paragon of perfection, a model of virtue and innocence. He is engaged to be married to Mathilde, a rich heiress, whose guardian, a country cousin named Kernanigous, has just arrived in Paris with his wife, Diane. Usually Kernanigous' trips to Paris are unaccompanied, so that he can visit the cocotte Aurélie de Villecouteuse. When he hears Gaston's mother boasting of the perfect purity of her son, he cannot restrain himself from declaring that in his opinion no man can be a good husband unless he has sown his wild oats before marriage. In Kernanigous's view, before marrying, a young man should have been on intimate terms with three distinct categories of the opposite sex: chambermaids, demi-mondaines and married women.

Unknown to his adoring mother, Gaston has already attended to the first two of the items on Kernanigous' list – having slept with his mother's maid, Toinette, and moved on to Aurélie de Villecouteuse – and he is looking forward to engaging in the third. Kernanigous' attractive wife Diane seems to him an ideal subject. She, having discovered her husband's relationship with Amélie, is disposed to take her revenge by a liaison with Gaston.

Gaston and a friend are being coached for the legal profession by an eccentric tutor called Pétillon. When he should be lecturing, he encourages his students and their girlfriends to dance a cancan of the wildest kind. The Baron suddenly makes an appearance to demand what is the meaning of the music. The women are bundled out of sight and Pétillon convinces the Baron that he has discovered "une méthode mnémotechnique", an infallible way of cramming legal facts into the heads of his students: he has set the legal code to music, and he gives the Baron an example, singing some dry legal dictums to the tunes of popular songs.

Gaston's exploits lead to a frantic farcical sequence in Hennequin's customary manner: the characters rush in and out, hide, and are mistaken for others. Finally it turns out that Aurélie is Pétillon's estranged wife, and he is delighted to find that her infidelities mean that he can discontinue his ruinous maintenance payments to her. The Baron reproaches his erring son when the latter's affairs are revealed, but Gaston successfully bids his father remember his own misspent youth, and all is forgiven. Kernanigous gives his consent to Gaston's marriage with Mathilde.