should define its manner as a kind of spiritual romanticism. The earlier dramas, Elën, Morgane, are fixed at somewhat the same point in space; La Révolte, which seems to anticipate The Doll's House, shows us an artisocratic Ibsen, touching reality with a certain disdain, certainly with far less skill, certainly with far more beauty. But Axël, meditated over during a lifetime, shows us Villiers' ideal of his own idealism.
The action takes place, it is true, in this century, but it takes place in corners of the world into which the modern spirit has not yet passed; this Monastère de Religieuses-trinitaires, le cloître de Sainte Appolodora, situé sur les confins du littoral de l'ancienne Flandre française, and the très vieux château fort, le burg des margraves d'Auërsperg, isolé au milieu du Schwartzwald. The characters, Axël d'Auërsperg, Eve Sara Emmanuèle de Maupers, Maître Janus, the Archidiacre, the Commandeur Kaspar d'Auërsperg, are at once more and less than human beings: they are the types of different ideals, and they are clothed with just enough humanity to give form to what would otherwise remain disembodied
