Queens of the French Stage Part 2

_Mademoiselle Moliere._--"'Faith! if I were to write a play, it would be upon that subject. I would justify women in many things of which they are accused, and I would make husbands afraid of the contrast between their abrupt manners and the courtesy of lovers."

Here, we are told by certain critics, the inference is unmistakable; Moliere clearly foresees the fate which awaits him. In our opinion, they are wrong. In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ Moliere and his wife do not, as in an ordinary play, represent fict.i.tious characters; they appear under their own names. In these circ.u.mstances, it is surely inconceivable that the dramatist should have introduced this dialogue, if he had for one moment imagined it applicable to his own affairs! The very fact that he was so ready to jest upon such a subject seems to us a conclusive proof that up to that time, at least, Armande's conduct had given him but scant cause for uneasiness.

The _Mariage force_ and _George Dandin_, the former produced early in the year 1664, when the difference of age and of character between Moliere and his wife was no doubt beginning to produce its fatal consequences, and the latter in the summer of 1667, after their separation, of which we shall speak in due course, had actually taken place, contain more direct allusions to their author's _menage_.

Sganarelle, like Moliere, had believed himself "_le plus content des hommes_," only to be roughly disillusioned when the carefully brought up Dorimene frankly avows her pa.s.sion for "_toutes les choses de plaisir_"--play, visiting, a.s.semblies, entertainments, and so forth--at the same time expressing a hope that he does not intend to be one of those inconvenient husbands who desire their wives to live "_comme des loup-garous_," since solitude drives her to despair, but that they may dwell together as a pair "_qui savent leur monde_." Angelique, in her turn, complains to George Dandin of the tyranny exercised by husbands "who wish their wives to be dead to all amus.e.m.e.nts, and to live only for them." She has no desire, she tells him, to die young, but "intends to enjoy, under his good pleasure, some of the glad days that youth has to offer her, to take advantage of the sweet liberties that the age permits her, to see a little of the _beau monde_, and to taste the pleasure of hearing her praises sung."

All this is certainly reminiscent of Armande, who, according to Grimarest, was no sooner married than she "believed herself a d.u.c.h.ess,"

affected a coquettish manner with the idle gallants who flocked to pay court to her, and turned a deaf ear to the warnings of her husband, whose lessons appeared to her "too severe for a young person who, besides, had nothing wherewith to reproach herself." But the resemblance in the situations goes no further. If Dorimene, in her craving for "_toutes les chases de plaisir_" and Angelique, in her imperious temper and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimene's brother, Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has nothing, save his age, in common with Moliere; while the aspiring farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position, and deservedly punished for his sn.o.bbishness, is as far removed from his creator as Tartuffe or Monsieur Jourdain.

When we come to the _Misanthrope_, the similarity between fiction and reality is too striking to admit of any doubt as to the author's intentions. It is true that a distinguished English critic[18] professes to see in this play, as in _Don Garcie de Navarre_--Moliere's one failure, produced the year before his marriage, and withdrawn after a run of five nights--the outcome of the actor-dramatist's "desire of indulging his humour of seriousness and a determination to example his elocutionary theories in verse that, without being actually tragic and heroic, should have something in it of the tragic and heroic quality."

But, though the large number of verses from _Don Garcie_ which Moliere has incorporated with his role of Alceste would seem to lend some confirmation to this theory, the fact remains that writers are practically unanimous in regarding the _Misanthrope_ as, primarily, a pathetic autobiography of its author under the cloak of fiction. "This Celimene, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive, this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a n.o.ble heart she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Bejart, embellished by all the love and all the genius of Moliere? And Alceste; who is he? At the first representations people believed that they recognised the Duc de Montausier, and the Duc de Montausier remarked, with good reason: 'I thank you; it is a great honour.' But we, for our part, recognise Moliere. This misanthrope is something more than an honourable gentleman at odds with the world. He is a great genius misunderstood, who endures and waits; he is a pa.s.sionate sage, an honest man with a great and excellent heart."[19]

In the _Misanthrope_, Moliere has given to Celimene all the coquetry, the egoism, and the caustic wit which belonged to Armande; to his own role all the weakness of a high-minded man struggling vainly against his pa.s.sion for an unworthy object. "The love I bear for her," says Alceste--

"Ne ferme point mes yeux aux defauts qu'on lui trouve; Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner, Le premier a les voirs, comme a les cond.a.m.ner.

Mais, avec tout cela, quoi que je puis faire, Je confesse mon foible; elle a l'art de me plaire; J'ai beau voir ses defauts, et j'ai beau l'en blamer, En depit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer; Sa grace est la plus forte, et, sans doute, ma flamme De ces vices du temps pourra purger son ame."

There are moments indeed in the play when it almost ceases to belong to the realm of fiction. The scene, for instance, in the fourth act, when Alceste, holding in his hand the proof of Celimene's perfidy, the letter written by her to his rival, Oronte, calls upon her "to justify herself at least of a crime that overwhelms him," and to do her best to appear faithful, while he, on his side, will do his best to believe her such; and Celimene tartly refuses--

"Allez, vous etes fou, dans vos transports jaloux, Et ne meritez pas l'amour qu'on a pour vous.

Allez, de tels soupcons meritent ma colere, Et vous ne valez pas que l'on vous considere: Je suis sotte, et veux mal a ma simplicite, De conserver, encor, pour vous, quelque bonte; Je devrois, autre part, attacher mon estime Et vous faire un sujet de plainte legitime,"

may well have had its parallel in their own lives. And few, again, can doubt the sincerity with which the lover must have uttered the lines,--

"Je fais tout mon possible a rompre de ce cur l'attachement terrible; Mais mes plus grands efforts n'ont rien fait jusqu'ici, Et c'est pour mes peches que je vous aime ainsi."

"We might well say without exaggeration of this Celimene," remarks August Wilhelm von Schlegel,[20] "that there is not a single good point in her whole composition." This may be so; but, as M. Larroumet is careful to point out, there is really nothing in the _Misanthrope_ which gives us the right to a.s.sume that Armande was anything worse than an incorrigible coquette. "Celimene is impeccable; she has neither heart nor feeling."[21] Nor do the remainder of Moliere's plays furnish any fresh proof against Armande; they, on the contrary, strengthen the impression that, while he suffered much from his wife's character, he never believed her to have been guilty of anything which might affect his honour.

This impression seems to have been that of the poet's contemporaries.

Moliere had, as we know, many enemies--unscrupulous enemies, who did not hesitate to launch against him the most hideous of accusations. We can hardly doubt that had there been any reasonable ground for believing Armande guilty of something more than coquetry, the Montfleurys, Le Boulanger de Chalussay and the rest, would have been only too ready to avail themselves of such an opportunity of humiliating the man whom they so bitterly hated. Yet though, like all the rest of the world, they were aware of Moliere's jealous nature, and made this weakness the object of their unsparing ridicule, none of them went so far as to accuse him of being that which he appears to have been in incessant dread of becoming.

At most, their works contain only vague hints and insinuations, to which little or no attention seems to have been paid; and it is probable that Armande's name would have gone down to posterity without any very serious stain upon it, had she not chanced to be made the victim of one of the most audacious and malignant libels ever penned.

Among the swarm of scurrilous brochures, fict.i.tious histories, and stupid romances in the French language which issued from the foreign press during the decade which followed the Protestant emigration of 1685, was a little book, or rather pamphlet, written for the delectation of those persons who are always ready to welcome anything calculated to gratify their curiosity about the private affairs of stage celebrities.

This book, published anonymously at Frankfort, in 1688, by one Rottenberg, a bookseller who made a speciality of such sensational works,[22] bore the t.i.tle of _La Fameuse Comedienne, ou Histoire de la Guerin_, Guerin being the name of Armande Bejart's second husband, whom she married in 1677. Although the demand for it was considerable, and five editions were printed within ten years of the date of its publication, the charges against Armande which it contained do not appear to have been taken very seriously, except among the cla.s.s of readers for whom it was written, until, in 1697, it occurred to Bayle, who had a weakness for piquant anecdotes about notable persons, to include certain pa.s.sages in his famous Dictionary, since which few of the biographers of Moliere have failed to borrow more or less freely from its pages, with most unfortunate results to the reputation of the dramatist's wife.

The authors.h.i.+p of the _Fameuse Comedienne_ remains a mystery to this day, though contemporary gossip, or historians in search of some new sensation, have attributed it successively to a number of persons: La Fontaine, Racine, Chapelle, Blot, the _chansonnier_ of the Fronde, Rosimont, an actor of the Rue Guenegaud, Mlle. Guyot, a member of the same company, and Mlle. Boudin, a provincial actress, who would appear to have been at one time on terms of intimacy with Armande. With regard to the first five of these suppositions, we will merely remark that neither La Fontaine, Racine, nor Chapelle were capable of committing such an infamy; that Blot had been in his grave more than thirty years at the time of the publication of the libel ascribed to him, and that the chief argument advanced by M. Charles Livet, the editor of the latest edition of the _Fameuse Comedienne_, in favour of Rosimont, namely, a resemblance between the style of the book and a theological work ent.i.tled _La Vie des Saints_, which he published in 1680, seems to us too fanciful to merit any serious consideration. In the cases of Mesdemoiselles Guyot and Boudin, there is again a total absence of anything like adequate proof; nevertheless, though they are both in all probability guiltless, strong grounds exist for believing the book to be the work of one of Armande's professional rivals, as the intimate acquaintance with theatrical life which it reveals precludes all doubt as to the vocation of the writer; while the preponderating place it allots to women, the manner in which it speaks of men, the jealous hatred which inspires it, the _finesse_ of some of its remarks, its style and method, all denote a feminine hand.[23]

Atrocious libel though the _Fameuse Comedienne_ undoubtedly is, it is very far from dest.i.tute of that literary merit in which even the works of the most obscure writers of the great epoch of French prose are seldom lacking, and, moreover, contains not a little interesting and authentic information about the public career of Moliere and his wife.

But that is all that can be said in its favour. "Possessed," remarks M.

Larroumet, "by a ferocious hatred against Armande, hatred of the woman and the actress, the writer has only one object--to render her odious.

What she knows of the actions of her enemy she perverts or, at any rate, exaggerates; what she does not know she invents. He who wishes to injure a man attributes to him acts of indecency or cowardice; he who wishes to injure a woman gives her lovers; these are the surest means. Thus our author makes of Armande a Messalina, and a Messalina of the baser sort, one who sells her favours."

Unfortunately for the object which the libeller has in view, she does not content herself with general charges; she makes formal accusations, which she endeavours to substantiate, and the book abounds in letters, conversations, details about matters which could not possibly have been known, save to the parties immediately concerned, with the result that her attack fails miserably, and the judicious reader very speedily perceives that the work is nothing but a collection of scandalous anecdotes, which, when not controverted by positive facts, sin grievously against probability.

However, as all readers are not judicious, and as the book has imposed on several historians of deservedly high reputation,[24] it may be as well for us, in the interests of truth, to follow the example of M.

Bazin and M. Larroumet, and devote some little s.p.a.ce to an examination of the charges which have brought so much unmerited odium upon the memory of Armande Bejart.

The first lover attributed to Armande is the Abbe de Richelieu, great-nephew of the famous cardinal, a gentleman of a very gallant disposition, with a marked predilection for actresses: "There was no one at the Court who did not endeavour to gain her favours. The Abbe de Richelieu was one of the first who determined to make her his mistress.

As he was very liberal, while the young lady was very fond of expenditure, the matter was soon concluded. It was agreed that he should give her four pistoles (about forty francs) a day, without counting clothes and entertainments. The abbe did not fail to send her every morning, by a page, the pledge of their treaty, and to go and visit her every afternoon."

Now, as M. Larroumet points out, if this story is to be accepted, we must either believe Moliere to have been ignorant of the comings and goings of the page and the abbe, or that he was aware of and tolerated them: two suppositions equally inadmissible. Moreover, if we consult the dates, the improbability becomes an impossibility. Armande was married on February 20, 1662, and on January 19, 1664, she bore Moliere a son.

The intrigue must then have taken place between these two periods--which is to make her infidelity begin at a very early date--since M. Bazin tells us that the Abbe de Richelieu left France in March 1664 with the expedition organised to defend Hungary against the Turks, and died at Venice on January 9, 1665. That, however, does not prevent the _Fameuse Comedienne_ from making his _liaison_ with Mlle. Moliere last until the production of the _Princesse d' elide_; a play which was not performed until May 8, 1664, some weeks after his departure.

On to the supposed intrigue between Armande and the abbe, the anonymous author next proceeds to graft a new and double adventure: "This affair lasted for some months without trouble; but Moliere having written the _Princesse d' elide_, in which the Moliere played the princess, which was the first important role she had filled, because Mademoiselle du Parc played them all and was the heroine of the theatre, she created such a sensation that Moliere had cause to repent of having exhibited her in the midst of the brilliant young men of the Court. For scarcely had she arrived at Chambord, where the King gave this entertainment, than she became infatuated with the Comte de Guiche,[25] while the Comte de Lauzun[26] became infatuated with her. The latter spared no effort to obtain her good graces, but the Moliere, who had quite lost her head over her hero, would listen to no proposition, and contented herself with visiting Du Parc and weeping over the indifference of the Comte de Guiche. The Comte de Lauzun, however, did not abandon hope, experience having taught him that nothing could resist him. He knew, moreover, that the Comte de Guiche was one who set but little store by woman's love, for which reason he doubted not that his indifference would end by repulsing the Moliere, and that his own star would then produce in her heart what it had produced in those of all the women whom he had sought to please. He was not deceived, for the Moliere, irritated by the coldness of the Comte de Guiche, threw herself into the arms of the Comte de Lauzun, as if desirous of seeking protection against further suffering at the hands of a man who failed to appreciate her."

Here again we have an impossibility and an improbability. In May 1664 the Comte de Guiche was at Warsaw, having been exiled the previous year, on account of his complicity in the "Spanish letter" plot against Mlle.

de la Valliere, and, therefore, could not have been making love--or being made love to--at Versailles. As for Lauzun, no mention of him is to be found among the persons who a.s.sisted at the fetes where the _Princesse d'elide_ was performed, while even if he were present, it is very unlikely that he had any attention to spare for Mlle. Moliere, as he was at this time desperately in love with the Princesse de Monaco, who afterwards jilted him for the King himself. The fact is that the malicious chronicler, having decided to give her victim some _grands seigneurs_ as lovers, not unnaturally selected those most celebrated for their gallantry, in the belief that, among their numerous mistresses, one more would pa.s.s without difficulty; but she had little acquaintance with the Court, and her ignorance has betrayed her.

Although the Abbe de Richelieu had, as we have mentioned, departed for Hungary, the _Fameuse Comedienne_ retains him on the stage and makes him play a particularly odious role. He intercepts a very tender letter written by Armande to the Comte de Guiche, and, furious at the lady's duplicity, "does not amuse himself by uttering reproaches, which never serve any good purpose; but, congratulating himself on having engaged her only by the day, resolves to break with her from that moment, which he does, after calling Moliere's attention to the fact that the great care he took to please the public left him no time for examining the conduct of his own wife, and that while he worked to divert every one, every one worked to divert her."

A bitter matrimonial quarrel naturally follows this confidence. Armande sheds floods of tears, confesses her _tendresse_ for Guiche, but protests that she is guilty in intention only, carefully refrains from saying a word about Lauzun, entreats her deluded husband's pardon, which she obtains with very little difficulty, and profits by his credulity to continue her intrigues "with more _eclat_ than ever." Wearying of sentimental or quasi-sentimental attachments, she resolves to profit by her charms, at the same time making a great pretence of chast.i.ty and "causing to sigh for her an infinity of fools who imagine her to be of unexampled virtue." However, in due course, Moliere is advised of her proceedings, and another painful scene takes place between husband and wife. Moliere falls into a violent pa.s.sion and threatens to have her shut up in a convent. Armande weeps, swoons away, and appears to be on the point of expiring; but eventually revives and, instead of entreating pardon, as on the previous occasion, takes a high tone, accuses her husband of keeping up his intimacy with Mlle. de Brie, who, by a singular arrangement, still continued to reside under the same roof as her former lover,[27] and also with Madeleine Bejart, declares that she "no longer has the courage to live with him, that she would rather die, and that everything between them must come to an end." In vain her family, that of Moliere, and their common friends endeavour to appease her. "She conceives henceforth a terrible aversion for her husband, she treats him with the utmost contempt; finally, she carries matters to such an extremity that Moliere, beginning to perceive her evil propensities, consents to the rupture which, since their quarrel, she has never ceased to demand; and, accordingly, without any decree of the Parliament, they agree that they will no longer live together."

Here, at last, the author of the _Fameuse Comedienne_ is on sure ground; for we know, on unimpeachable authority, that an "amicable" separation did actually take place between Moliere and his wife. Its precise date is a matter of some uncertainty, but it must have been subsequent to the month of April 1665, when Armande presented her husband with a second child, a daughter, to whom Madeleine Bejart and the Comte de Modene stood sponsors. "If," says M. Larroumet, "we admit that the _Misanthrope_ reflects something of the poet's state of mind and of his feelings towards his wife, the separation perhaps belongs to the moment when this play was produced, in June 1666, or later, about the month of August, after the _Medecin malgre lui_." M. Larroumet sees in the circ.u.mstance that the leading feminine parts in the three plays which followed the _Medecin malgre lui_: _Melicerte_, _Le Sicilien_, and _Amphitryon_, were allotted to Mlle. de Brie, and not to Armande--a distribution which must have been peculiarly galling to the latter, who had so long filled the most important or the most flattering roles--a natural effect of her husband's resentment.

From the moment of their rupture until their reconciliation, some five years later, husband and wife met no more, except at the theatre.

Armande remained in Paris, with her mother and sister; while Moliere pa.s.sed most of his rare leisure at a little country-house which he rented at Auteuil, then, as now, one of the most beautiful suburbs of Paris. One day, according to the _Fameuse Comedienne_, he was sitting in his garden, musing sadly upon his lost happiness, when his friend Chapelle broke in upon his solitude, and, finding him in a more than usually despondent mood, began to reproach him with betraying a weakness which he had so often turned to ridicule upon the stage.

"For my part," said he, "if I were unfortunate enough to find myself in like case to you, and that the person I loved granted favours to others, I should feel such a contempt for her as would infallibly cure me of my pa.s.sion. Moreover, there is a satisfaction open to you, which would be denied you if she were only your mistress; and that vengeance which commonly takes the place of love in an outraged heart can compensate you for all the mortifications your wife occasions you, since you can at once have her shut up in a convent. This would, indeed, be a sure means of placing your mind at rest."

Moliere, who had listened quietly to his friend, here interrupted him to inquire whether he himself had never loved.

"Yes," replied Chapelle, "I have been in love as a man of sense ought to be, but I should never have found any difficulty in following what honour prescribed; and I blush to find you in such a state of indecision in regard to this matter."

"I see well," rejoined Moliere, "that you have never truly loved. You take the semblance of love for love itself. I might give you many examples which would demonstrate to you the strength of this pa.s.sion; but I will merely give you a faithful account of my own trouble, that you may understand how little we are masters of ourselves when once it has acquired dominion over us. As for the consummate knowledge of the human heart which you say the portraits I am constantly offering to the public prove me to possess, I will acknowledge that I have endeavoured to understand its weakness. But, if my science has taught me that danger should be avoided, my experience convinces me but too thoroughly that to escape it is impossible. I judge daily by my own case.

"I am by nature of an excessively tender disposition, and all my efforts have never enabled me to overcome my inclinations towards love. I sought to render myself happy, that is to say, so far as might be with a sensitive heart. I was convinced that few women are deserving of sincere affection; that interest, ambition, and vanity are at the root of all their intrigues. I thought, however, to secure my happiness by the innocence of my choice. I took my wife, so to speak, from the cradle. I educated her with the care which has given rise to the rumours which have doubtless reached your ears. I had persuaded myself that I could inspire her by habit with sentiments that time alone could destroy, and I neglected nothing whereby this end could be attained. As she was still young when I married her, I was unaware of her evil propensities, and deemed myself a little less unfortunate than the majority of those who contract such engagements. Thus marriage did not lessen my affection; but she treated me with such indifference that I began to perceive that all my precautions had been unavailing, and that her feelings towards me were very far removed from what I desired for my happiness. I reproached myself with a sensitiveness which seemed ridiculous in a husband, ascribing to her disposition that which was really due to her want of affection for me. But I had but too many opportunities of perceiving my error; and the mad pa.s.sion which she contracted soon afterwards for the Comte de Guiche occasioned too much commotion to leave me even this appearance of tranquillity. I spared no endeavour, so soon as I knew the truth, to conquer myself, finding it impossible to change her. I employed all the strength of mind that I could command. I summoned to my aid everything that could help to console me. I considered her as a person whose sole merit had lain in her innocence, and whose unfaithfulness robbed her of all her charms. I resolved henceforth to live with her as an honourable man whose wife is a coquette, and who is well persuaded that, whatever may be said, his reputation is not affected by the misconduct of his spouse. But I had the mortification to discover that a woman without great beauty, who owed what little intelligence she possessed to the education which I had given her, could, in an instant, destroy all my philosophy. Her presence made me forget all my resolutions; the first words she said in her defence left me so convinced that my suspicions were ill-founded that I asked pardon of her for having been so credulous.

"However, my kindness effected no change in her, and, in the end, I determined to live with her as if she were not my wife; but if you knew what I suffer you would pity me. My pa.s.sion has reached such a point as to cause me to sympathise with her; and when I reflect upon the impossibility of suppressing what I feel for her, I tell myself, at the same time, that she has perhaps a similar difficulty in overcoming her inclination towards coquetry, and I find myself more disposed to pity than to blame her.

"No doubt you will tell me that one must be a poet to love in this manner, but, for my part, I hold that there is only one kind of love, and that those who have not felt such tenderness have never truly loved.

Everything in this world is a.s.sociated in my mind with her. So entirely are my thoughts occupied by her that in her absence nothing can give me pleasure. When I behold her, an emotion, transports which may be felt but not expressed, deprive me of all power of reflection. I have no longer eyes for her faults, but see only her lovable qualities. Is not this the last extremity of folly? And do you not marvel that all my reason serves only to convince me of my weakness without giving me the strength to master it?"

Quite a number of writers, including several who are inclined to place but little confidence in the rest of the _Fameuse Comedienne_, p.r.o.nounce unhesitatingly for the genuineness of the above conversation.

M. Edouard Fournier thinks that a letter from Moliere to Chapelle has been worked into the text,[28] while Mr. Gegg Markheim, in his very interesting preface to the Clarendon Press edition of the _Misanthrope_, is of opinion that a conversation between the two poets was repeated by Chapelle, "either thoughtlessly or to clear his friend from certain slanders," and reached the ears of the author. Mr. Markheim adduces two circ.u.mstances as proofs of the genuineness of the Auteuil confession: first, that the substance of it is confirmed by a similar conversation between Moliere and his friends, the physician Rohault, and Mignard, the celebrated painter, cited by Grimarest, in his biography of the dramatist; secondly, the very remarkable resemblance, not only in thought but in language, between certain pa.s.sages in the _Fameuse Comedienne_ and the _Misanthrope_, in which play Moliere is generally believed to have, in some measure, taken his audience into his confidence in regard to his domestic affairs. Thus--to cite only one instance of several which Mr. Markheim gives--in the book Moliere says: "_Je n'ai plus d'yeux pour ses defauts, il m'en reste seulement pour ce qu'elle a d'aimable_;" while in the play Alceste makes the same confession in almost the same words:--

"J'ai beau voir ses defauts, et j'ai beau l'en blamer, En depit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer."

Mr. Markheim's first argument may, we think, be dismissed, as the conversation in Grimarest would appear to be nothing more than a not too skilful imitation of that in the _Fameuse Comedienne_; but the second is deserving of more attention. The similarity between the several pa.s.sages Mr. Markheim cites is certainly too striking to be explained away on the ground of mere coincidence; yet, so far from proving his contention, it makes, in our opinion, for a diametrically opposite conclusion. Let us listen to what M. Larroumet, the best-informed and most impartial of all the recent biographers of Moliere, has to say upon the matter: "If we admit that the _Fameuse Comedienne_, in spite of its detestable inspiration, is not the work of a beginner, but of an actress endowed with the talent of a natural style, the simplest course would be to admit further that this fragment is as much her work as the rest of the book. Trained to the practice of the theatre, she combines certain portions of her story with as many little plays. Here she will have perceived the scene to construct and the pathetic tirade to write. Is not the situation one to inspire and stimulate? Sustained then by her recollections of the _Misanthrope_, her imagination stirred by the pa.s.sionate complaints of Alceste, her hatred of Armande coming to her a.s.sistance, she has been successful in the scene and the tirade."[29]

In a word, the whole Auteuil episode is pure fiction; yet fiction of such a kind--"one of the choicest morsels of French prose in its most glorious epoch"--as may well arouse a regret that the writer did not turn her undoubted talents to some worthier purpose than the composition of scandalous libels.

In the isolation in which he now found himself, Moliere, who was one of those who cannot live without woman's affection, turned for comfort to Mlle. de Brie, his former providence, who, it may be mentioned, had in the _Misanthrope_ played the part of eliante, the lady who endeavours to console Alceste for the caprices of Celimene. Her intervention, however, was of a less irreproachable kind than eliante's, and she appears to have pa.s.sed a considerable portion of her time at Auteuil. The poet's friends remonstrated, pointing out that, by renewing his intimacy with Mlle. de Brie, he was giving his wife but too much excuse for her own conduct, and endeavoured to persuade him to break with her. "Is it for virtue, beauty, or intelligence that you love this woman?" one of them is said to have asked him. "You know that Florimont and Le Barre are her lovers, that she is not beautiful, that she is a perfect skeleton, and that she has no common sense." "I know all that," replied Moliere; "but I am accustomed to her faults; for me to accommodate myself to the imperfections of another would be a task beyond my powers; I have neither the time nor the patience."

But Moliere adored his wife: about this all his contemporaries are agreed. Bold and courageous in his works, ever ready to castigate vice and ridicule folly, without troubling himself about the possibility of reprisals, he showed himself in regard to her feeble and irresolute to the last degree. His relations with Mlle. de Brie and other women were after all but pa.s.sing caprices; his pa.s.sion for Armande was the one serious love of his life; a love which survived indifference, ingrat.i.tude, it may be even infidelity, and to which he always returned, in spite of vows and good resolutions.