"Topaze", a four-act play, was first presented on Wednesday, October 9, 1928 at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. Performed from 9 p.m. to midnight, it was an immediate triumph. The traits of humanity that Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) depicted have retained a strange relevance nearly a century later. And even ten thousand kilometers away. Topaze is that shabby teacher, in "a very high stiff celluloid collar, a miserable tie, a worn frock coat, button shoes under white cotton socks and shiny trouser legs", who solemnly had sad pupils of the improbable Pension Muche and its "puritanical décor", "five or six cellars around a well", read a series of proverbs: Poverty is no vice; It is better to suffer evil than to do it; Idleness is the mother of all vices; A good reputation is worth more than a golden belt; Money does not bring happiness.
Yet Topaze, having become a "business agent", would have held quite another discourse to them: "My children, the proverbs you see on the walls of this classroom may once have corresponded to a reality that has disappeared. Today, it seems they only serve to send the crowd down a false path, while the clever ones divide up the spoils; so that in our time, contempt for proverbs is the beginning of fortune".
Mocking a former colleague who remained faithful to teaching, Topaze scoffs: "The rich are very generous with intellectuals: they leave us the joys of study, the honor of work, the holy pleasure of duty fulfilled; they keep for themselves only the pleasures of the second order, such as caviar, partridge stew, Rolls-Royce".
Yet did not the former Topaze still say: "Teaching, a highly respected profession, not very tiring and quite lucrative. Twelve hundred francs a month". As a figurehead, he will be offered much more, "a fixed salary and a small commission for each deal", twenty-five hundred. And immediately a first commission with a month's advance: "Pay to the order of Albert Topaze the sum of five thousand two hundred francs".
Because a figurehead is just as precious as it is dangerous. "There is nothing as delicate as choosing a figurehead. If you take a man of morbid honesty, he refuses most of the deals you propose to him. And if you take a man of modern spirit, he risks pushing modernism to the point of stealing from us ourselves. You need someone who conducts dishonest business honestly". Probity comes at a high price, because it is rare.
Topaze owes his fortune to the departure of Roger de Berville, dismissed by Castel-Bénac—although the particle has its value and one cannot deny that it is superior to the hyphen. A final choice then, a fortunate choice.
After reviewing Malaval, Fernet, Faubert, Picard. Or Ménétrier, unfortunately embarked for Madagascar: "they gave him a very beautiful mountain range on the Tananarive side... He went there to sell it to the people who live there".
A truthful absurdity of a colonial situation that could be made into a joke in 1928. Nevertheless, visits from the former queen Ranavalona III must have impressed the Marseillais greatly for Marcel Pagnol's work to flourish with allusions to Madagascar. Like "Cigalon", "Marius" or "Jean de Florette", "Topaze" is no exception.
Marcel Pagnol thought he had written a tragedy. It was his "master", André Antoine, who convinced him that "Monsieur Topaze" is a comic play. "The discovery of the adulterated world of politics and business is probably, for your sympathetic and naive tutor, an awful drama. But for the spectator, you have written a comic play, a very comic play".
The play ends with the "chimpanzee trick" of which the defrauded swindler complains: "You were so imprudent as to give him advice on his costumes. And even that would only be ridiculous, but you did worse. You taught him to eat. You revealed to him great foods and now, by Jove, he has the intelligence and energy of a well-fed man". The shabby tutor has just damned... the tutor turned corrupt municipal councillor by taking him at his own game. Morality is (more or less) saved.
Nasolo-Valaivo Andriamihaja