melodrama, so cleverly does he engage the interest of his audience, that we have no time to criticize a roughness here and there, but are rather intent to follow the next turn of the tale.
Immediately upon the furore created by Nodier’s Le Vampire at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1819 vampire plays of every kind from the most luridly sensational to the most farcically ridiculous pressed on to the boards. A contemporary critic cries: “There is not a theatre in Paris without its Vampire! At the Porte-Saint-Martin we have le Vampire; at the Vaudeville le Vampire again; at the Variétès les trois Vampires ou le clair de la lune.”
Jean Larat[41] further mentions a play by Paul Féval, Le fils Vampire. The version by John Wilson Ross of The Loves of Paris, a romance, published by G. Vickers, 3, Catherine Street, Strand, 1846, is said to be “Translated from the French of Paul Féval, author of ‘The Vampire,’ ‘The Loves of the Palais-Royal,’ ‘The Receipt at Midnight,’ ‘Stella,’ ‘The Son of the Devil,’ etc., etc.”, but it does not appear whether “The Vampire” mentioned here is a play or a romance. Probably it is the latter but no such translation is known.
Le Vampire which was produced at the Vaudeville, 15 June, 1820,[42] is a comédie-vaudeville in one act by Scribe and Mélesville. The scene is laid in Hungary, “une salle d’un château gothique,” and the characters are as follows: Le Comte de Valberg, feld-maréchal, M. Guillemin; Adolphe de Valberg, son néveu, M. Isambert; le Baron de Lourdorff, M. Fontenay; Saussmann, concierge du château, M. Hippolyte; Charles, valet du comte, M. Fichet; un Notaire, M. Justin; Hermance de Mansfred, Madame Rivière; Nancy, sa soeur, Madame Lucie; Péters, filleul de Saussmann, Madame Minette; with attendance of domestics and wedding guests. This elegant little piece opens with nuptials of Hermance de Mansfred at the castle of the Baron de Lourdorff, to whom she is betrothed. It appears that she has something trifled with the affections of Adolphe de Valberg, now supposed dead. Her sister, Nancy, acknowledges that she loved Adolphe, but kept silence owing to his courtship of Hermance. Adolphe’s uncle, the Count de Valberg, who knows nothing of the two ladies, fearing his nephew is unworthily entangled has had him held in military detention at Temesvar, whence
