Le Procès Veauradieux

Overview

Le Procès Veauradieux is a three-act farce by Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour. It opened at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris, on 19 June 1875, in the middle of a heatwave and while the house was officially closed for the summer (the company staged it on its own initiative), and ran for 175 performances, a success by the standards of the day (Wikipedia, "Le Procès Veauradieux", citing Noël and Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, 1875).

Per the Wikipedia synopsis, the lawyer Fauvinard and his colleague Tardivaut invent a case, the "Veauradieux trial", as an alibi for their extramarital affairs; the plot gathers all the principal characters in the flat of Fauvinard's mistress Césarine, with frantic entrances and exits and false identities, until the men are returned to their wives' supervision. Auguste Vitu in Le Figaro wrote that the authors had "won the Veauradieux trial, with interest, damages and costs" (quoted in Wikipedia). It was adapted by Dion Boucicault as Forbidden Fruit (Broadway, 1876); the first London version was The Great Divorce Case (1876), later Once Bitten (2010) (Wikipedia). A full text could not be located in the public libraries checked (Gallica, Internet Archive, Wikisource); a printed edition of the period should exist at the BnF.

Marie and this work

In Marie's diary the play is chiefly a source of catchphrases for her campaign against Émile d'Audiffret in the autumn of 1875.

• 29 August 1875, Paris. She goes to the Vaudeville to see it and makes the "fatale idée" to wear white (040.0150). On 4 September she asks whether she may see it and is told no (041.0135).
• 26 September 1875, Nice. A plan is made to go and see it (045.0044).
• 28 September - 6 October 1875, Nice. The scene of the lawyer at his mistress Césarine's, caught by the police "en bonnet grec et robe de chambre" and calmly drinking tea (a scene she calls "désopilante", 045.0165), becomes the girls' running joke about Audiffret's visits to Gioia. They compose anonymous verses, one to be sent to "M. Léon d'Audiffret, Tour Audiffret": "Malheureux ! Avec la robe de chambre et le bonnet grec, Tu pourriras !" (045.0196, 045.0245, 045.0433-0434, 046.0166, 046.0179, 050.0390, 050.0415). On 1 October she retells the plot, quoting "un journal de Paris" (045.0435-0436), and says the two phrases are on everyone's lips as they leave the theatre, like the conspirators' air in La Fille de Madame Angot (045.0437).
• 26 October 1875. When Audiffret asks, "Avez-vous vu le Procès Veauradieux ?", she says it was forbidden to her (048.0086-0087; compare 040.0150 above, which says she went in Paris), and notes next day his serious look (048.0125).
• 3 November 1875, Nice. The play is given in Nice and she attends, keeping a good face "pendant l'acte de la robe de chambre, du bonnet grec" while Audiffret does not even look (048.0490-0493).

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Le Procès Veauradieux".