The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1912-08-25
HORRIBLE PLOT OF
NEW PARIS DRAMA
Entire Regiment Is Shot to
Amuse Audience
HAVE HYDROPHOBIA
Trooper Changes Tubes and Many
Soldiers Are vaccfnated With
Deadly Germs-Other
Plays in Paris

FROM the New YORK gun.
The original little theatre, the Grand
Guignol. which IL not the first miniature
playhouse to exist was at least the first
to gain such recognition that It has set
a fashion for the world, has put on
new programme. Its composition shows
that NJ Max Maurey,. the manager, has
more difficulty in finding pieces that give
the audience a thrill OF terror than those
that make people laugh. for two only
are thrillers and four are joyous.
The chief piece of the evening is two
act drama, lie Beau Regiment" by Rob-
ert Franoheville. which is new and orig
insl and treated with ascertain sobriety
and restraint that do not generally mark
the Grand Guignols blood burdlers. The
action takes place in the infirmary of
where the reglmental surgeon, Major
Mauser, has been allowed to carry on his
search for virus capable of producing
hydrophobia in an animal within "a hours.
The carrying on of the work in the bar
racks is explained as due 10 a masons
strike which has prevented the proper
laboratory from being finished. The ex-
periments have been successful, the virus
has been found and 90 tubes have been
filled in readiness to send to the Pasteur
Institute in Paris to convince the sceptics
there OF the truth of the discovery.
A vlrulent smallpox epidemic has APP
peared in the town where the barracks
are situated and the colonel has deter
mined to vaccinate all his men, The
necessary tubes of vaccine have been
sent for. With these preliminaries 1t is
81 ~ 10 fl.a
fine regiment The two sets of tubes
are exchanged and the 1900 soldiers are
innoculated with the virus that produces
hydrophobia
The machinery which brings about the
substitution Is lngeniously devised. In
the regiment Is young conscript Miloch
Petrovich, who has been brought from his
Polish home by force to perform his mill
tary service. The regiment had few
months before been sent to the Poles ma
tive town to crush riot and his mother
and sister had been wounded by the SOL
diers. The young soldier on joining the
regiment had such a rough welcome that
he had to be sent to the infirmary.
Scarcely recovered from his injuries the
medical officer ordered him back to duty,
and he sought the shelter of the hospital
once more. Craving for revenge and urged
by his anti-militarist anarchist principles,
set of tubes for the other, and the fine
regiment to a man was vaccnated with
the virus of hydrophobia.
In the second act, few days later. the
poison has done it's work. The officers
are at their wits end to know what has
befallen the men. The barrack gates are
locked and no man is allowed to go out.
The soldiers wander round the court and
plot to break out and escape from the
place of death The town is alarmed and
the mayor comes to the infirmary to ask
IL 1t is true that a revolt has taken place,
for another regiment has been summon
ed to surround the barracks.
While the mayor is there new pa
tient is brought in, and he gives a rep
resentatlon of the suffering of victim of
hydrophobia so true to nature as to sug-
gest that the actor must have carefully
studied his part at the Pasteur Institute.
The scientist to whose work the disaster
is indirectly due is present. He recognizes
the symptoms and informs the officers
of what has happened
There is but one course to follow, the
officers decided. Rather than let those
1900 men escape and carry their raging
madness all over the country, or keep
them to die in fortunes one by one, they
are shot down to a man by the newly ar
rived soldiers. The colonel begs to be
allowed to give the command to fire and
ito do so stands up at the infirmary win
down where he is in the direct line of fire.
Thus he falls with his men.
The Polish soldier has deserted, but is
recaptured and dragged to the infirmary
where a summary courtmartial condemns
him to death--to the same death to which
the homeless hydrophobiac have some
times been condemned. suffocation be-
tween two mattresses.
No feminine interest lightens the drama.
The only feminine touch is a little Incl
dent in which a peasant woman brings
In n basketball of live rabbits in answer
to an advertisement When she learns
that her rabbits are to be used for scien-
tific experiments she Indignantly takes
them away unsold.
The other serious piece is named Dob
sede" CThe Possessed). A young man has
learned from q discharged servant that
his father died, q suicide In a madhouse.
He Is obsessed with the idea that he, too.
is becoming insane and cannot avoid his
fathers fate.
His mother. on the advice of the family
doctor. brings herself to tell her son that
his fears ares groundless. that she was
married to a cruel and brutsj maniac
whom she never loved, but that there had
come into her life man whom she loved
truly, who was the father of her son.
The son, half convinced, demands some
proof, but the mother has none to offer;
she can only say that the doctor knows
and had advised her to tell him. The son