page_title: Business is business
section_title: Main character
hierarchical_section_title: Business is business / Main character
caption_attribution_description: Les affaires sont les affaires, d'Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917)
context_page_description: Business is business is a French comedy in three acts, by the novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, performed in April 1903 on the stage of Comédie-Française, in Paris, and worldwide acclaimed, especially in Russia, Germany and United States.
  An English-language adaption by Sydney Grundy was produced in London in 1905. An English translation, by Richard Hands, has been published by Intellect Books: Two Plays: "Business is Business" and "Charity", January 2012, 147 pages.
context_section_description: The fable is built around the main character, symbolically named Isidore Lechat. He is a predator without any scruples, predecessor of the modern masters of business intrigue, a "brasseur d'affaires" and money-grubber, who is a product of the new world, a figure who makes money from everything and spreads his tentacles out over the world. He sacrifices his children in his obsession to get more and more money and power: Lechat insists upon purchasing an aristocratic husband for his daughter Germaine, and upon making his corrupted son Xavier the leader of Parisian society, paying for him fabulous gambling debts. Can there be anything that money will not buy? 
  But almighty Lechat, in spite of his 50 million francs, is powerless in front of death (his son is killed in a motor car accident), as well as in front of love (his daughter Germaine rejects the "beautiful" marriage he arranged and runs away with her moneyless lover, Lucien Garraud). Lechat, in a Shakespearian final scene, is overwhelmed by the shattering of his plans, but even more so by the mortal blow to his vanity.
caption: Business is business, Comédie-Française, April 1903
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