Читать книгу Queens of the French Stage - H. Noel Williams - Страница 6

In the Misanthrope, Molière has given to Célimène all the coquetry, the egoism, and the caustic wit which belonged to Armande; to his own rôle all the weakness of a high-minded man struggling vainly against his passion for an unworthy object. "The love I bear for her," says Alceste—

"Ne ferme point mes yeux aux défauts qu'on lui trouve;

Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner,

Le premier à les voirs, comme à les condamner.

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 défauts, et j'ai beau l'en blâmer,

En dépit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer;

Sa grâce est la plus forte, et, sans doute, ma flamme

De ces vices du temps pourra purger son âme."

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 Célimène'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 Célimène tartly refuses—

"Allez, vous êtes fou, dans vos transports jaloux,

Et ne méritez pas l'amour qu'on a pour vous.

. … .

Allez, de tels soupçons méritent ma colère,

Et vous ne valez pas que l'on vous considère:

Je suis sotte, et veux mal à ma simplicité,

De conserver, encor, pour vous, quelque bonté;

Je devrois, autre part, attacher mon estime

Et vous faire un sujet de plainte légitime,"

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

À rompre de ce cœur l'attachement terrible;

Mais mes plus grands efforts n'ont rien fait jusqu'ici,

Et c'est pour mes péchés que je vous aime ainsi."

"We might well say without exaggeration of this Célimène," 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 assume that Armande was anything worse than an incorrigible coquette. "Célimène is impeccable; she has neither heart nor feeling."[21] Nor do the remainder of Molière'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. Molière 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 Molière'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, fictitious 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 title of La Fameuse Comédienne, ou Histoire de la Guérin, Guérin being the name of Armande Béjart'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 class 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 passages in his famous Dictionary, since which few of the biographers of Molière have failed to borrow more or less freely from its pages, with most unfortunate results to the reputation of the dramatist's wife.

The authorship of the Fameuse Comédienne 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 Guénégaud, 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 Comédienne, in favour of Rosimont, namely, a resemblance between the style of the book and a theological work entitled 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 Comédienne undoubtedly is, it is very far from destitute 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 Molière 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 space to an examination of the charges which have brought so much unmerited odium upon the memory of Armande Béjart.

The first lover attributed to Armande is the Abbé 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 Abbé 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 abbé 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 Molière to have been ignorant of the comings and goings of the page and the abbé, 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 Molière 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 Abbé 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 Comédienne from making his liaison with Mlle. Molière last until the production of the Princesse d' Élide; a play which was not performed until May 8, 1664, some weeks after his departure.

On to the supposed intrigue between Armande and the abbé, the anonymous author next proceeds to graft a new and double adventure: "This affair lasted for some months without trouble; but Molière having written the Princesse d' Élide, in which the Molière played the princess, which was the first important rôle she had filled, because Mademoiselle du Parc played them all and was the heroine of the theatre, she created such a sensation that Molière 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 Molière, 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 Molière, 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 Molière, 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 Vallière, 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 assisted at the fêtes where the Princesse d'Élide was performed, while even if he were present, it is very unlikely that he had any attention to spare for Mlle. Molière, 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 pass without difficulty; but she had little acquaintance with the Court, and her ignorance has betrayed her.

Although the Abbé de Richelieu had, as we have mentioned, departed for Hungary, the Fameuse Comédienne retains him on the stage and makes him play a particularly odious rôle. 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 Molière'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 éclat 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 chastity and "causing to sigh for her an infinity of fools who imagine her to be of unexampled virtue." However, in due course, Molière is advised of her proceedings, and another painful scene takes place between husband and wife. Molière falls into a violent passion 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 Béjart, 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 Molière, 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 Molière, 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 Comédienne is on sure ground; for we know, on unimpeachable authority, that an "amicable" separation did actually take place between Molière 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 Béjart and the Comte de Modène 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 Médecin malgré lui." M. Larroumet sees in the circumstance that the leading feminine parts in the three plays which followed the Médecin malgré lui: Mélicerte, 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 rôles—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 Molière passed 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 Comédienne, 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 passion. 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."

Molière, 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 Molière, "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 passion; 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 passion 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 passion 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 associated 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 Comédienne, pronounce unhesitatingly for the genuineness of the above conversation. M. Edouard Fournier thinks that a letter from Molière 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 circumstances as proofs of the genuineness of the Auteuil confession: first, that the substance of it is confirmed by a similar conversation between Molière 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 passages in the Fameuse Comédienne and the Misanthrope, in which play Molière 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 Molière says: "Je n'ai plus d'yeux pour ses défauts, 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 défauts, et j'ai beau l'en blâmer,

En dépit 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 Comédienne; but the second is deserving of more attention. The similarity between the several passages 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 Molière, has to say upon the matter: "If we admit that the Fameuse Comédienne, 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 passionate complaints of Alceste, her hatred of Armande coming to her assistance, 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, Molière, 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 Éliante, the lady who endeavours to console Alceste for the caprices of Célimène. Her intervention, however, was of a less irreproachable kind than Éliante's, and she appears to have passed 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 Molière; "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 Molière 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 passing caprices; his passion for Armande was the one serious love of his life; a love which survived indifference, ingratitude, it may be even infidelity, and to which he always returned, in spite of vows and good resolutions.

Under these circumstances, a reconciliation could be only a matter of time, and, thanks to the good offices of their common friends, Chapelle and the Marquis de Jonzac, it took place towards the end of the year 1671. The author of the Fameuse Comédienne is discreetly silent about this, fearing that it might weaken her indictment; and, between whiles, places a new intrigue of Armande; this time with a member of her husband's troupe.

Some years before, Molière had rescued a little boy named Michel Baron from the hands of some strolling players, and, perceiving in him the makings of an excellent actor, had attached him to himself and trained him for the stage. His confidence was justified, for Baron became in later years the greatest actor of his time and also a successful dramatist. Armande, however, was far from sharing Molière's liking for the boy; she detested him for his precocity and impertinent airs, and still more for the influence which she suspected him of exercising over her husband; and one day, during a rehearsal of Mélicerte, in which Baron had been cast for the title-part, carried her resentment to the point of dealing him a sound box on the ear. In high dudgeon, Baron forthwith took himself off and joined a strolling company; nor was it until four years later that, at the urgent entreaty of Molière, he consented to return. He was then a tall lad of seventeen, exceedingly handsome, full of assurance, and "already in great request among the ladies of the theatre and also among certain ladies of the fashionable world." It did not appear at first, says the author of the Fameuse Comédienne, that time had greatly modified the hostility with which Mlle. Molière and he regarded one another. But when they appeared together in Psyché, at the carnival of 1671, Armande in the title-part, Baron as Love, there came a change. "The common praises that they received compelled them to examine one another more attentively, and even with some degree of pleasure. He was the first to break the silence by complimenting her on the good fortune that had befallen him in being chosen to represent her lover, and observing that he owed the approbation of the public to this happy chance, and that it was not difficult to play the part of a person whose feelings one could so well understand. The Molière replied that the praises bestowed on a man like himself were the reward of merit, and that she had no share in them; but that gallantry on the part of one who was said to have so many mistresses did not surprise her, and that he must be as accomplished an actor outside the theatre as he was on the stage.

"Baron, to whom these kind of reproaches were not displeasing, told her that he had indeed some habits that one might call bonnes fortunes, but that he was prepared to sacrifice all for her, and that he would set more value on the smallest of her favours than on any which the ladies who had smiled upon him were able to bestow. And he mentioned their names, with a discretion which was natural to him."

Armande is, of course, enchanted by this proof of devotion, and, to cut a long story short, they resolve to continue their respective rôles off the stage.

We have related this supposed intrigue at far greater length than it deserves, since it furnishes a fair sample of the materials upon which M. Loiseleur and other historians have based their judgments of Armande. But, in point of fact, it is no more worthy of belief than the stories about Lauzun, Guiche, and the Abbé de Richelieu. Although the insufferable coxcomb whom La Bruyère has depicted under the name of Roscius, and who is said to have depicted himself in his comedy, L'Homme à bonnes fortunes, was not the kind of person to be deterred by any honourable scruples from making love to the wife of his benefactor, had he been so minded, we can hardly suppose that an intrigue between Armande and a member of his own troupe could have been carried on without Molière becoming aware of it, or that, when aware of it, he would have permitted Baron to retain his place in the company. Moreover, apart from the statement in the Fameuse Comédienne, there is no reason to believe that the old antipathy between Armande and Baron ever ceased to exist, far less that they became lovers. What is certain, is that no sooner was Molière dead than Baron quitted the Palais-Royal and went over to the Hôtel de Bourgogne, at a moment when Armande, become chief of the troupe, was urgently in need of his services. This, it must be admitted, was hardly the conduct of a friend, to say nothing of a lover.

By the side of these intrigues, apocryphal or doubtful, it is pleasant to be able to record a friendship of an altogether unexceptional nature. The great Corneille, in spite of his affection for his wife, Marie de Lemperière, whose hand Cardinal de Richelieu is said to have obtained for him, after her father had sent the poet about his business, was of a very gallant disposition and in the habit of offering incense at the shrine of any goddess of the theatre who was inclined to accept his devotion. At Rouen, in 1758, he had, like Molière at an earlier date, fallen desperately in love with Mlle. du Parc, but had fared no better at the hands of that haughty beauty than the chief of the Illustre Théâtre. This rebuff, which drew from the chagrined poet the well-known Stances à une marquise, seems to have brought home to Corneille the fact that he was no longer young, and to have somewhat damped his amorous ardour. At any rate, when Armande appeared upon the scene, he contented himself with offering her a platonic admiration, charmingly expressed in the third act of Psyché.

Psyché.—"Can one be jealous of the affection of relatives?"

Amour.—"I am so, my Psyché; I am so of all nature. The sun's rays kiss you too often; your tresses suffer too many caresses from the wind. The moment it toys with them, I murmur at it. The very air you breathe with too much pleasure passes between your lips. And, so soon as you sigh, I know not what affrights me, and makes me fear, among your sighs, some errant ones."

Not content with this tribute to the lady's charms, the old poet conceived the idea of writing for Armande a play in which she might impersonate the heroine, and he might portray himself in the character of a chivalrous old man in love with her. He, accordingly, composed his Pulchérie, which, as Molière, for some reason, could not see his way to accept it for the Palais-Royal, was produced at the Marais on November 2, 1672. It was a poor play, the dramatist having failed to endow either the plot with interest, or the characters, apart from the amorous old senator Martian, with any special individuality; and even Corneille's devoted admirer, Madame de Sévigné, was compelled to admit that "Pulchérie was not a success." Nevertheless the terms in which Martian speaks of the heroine were so very flattering that Armande must have regretted that circumstances had prevented her undertaking the latter part.

The reconciliation between Molière and Armande was in all likelihood facilitated by a serious illness with which the latter was seized in the early autumn of 1671, during the run of Psyché. Under such circumstances the most legitimate grievances are apt to be forgotten, and it must have needed but very little persuasion on the part of their common friends to induce Molière, with all his love for his wife revived at the sight of her suffering, to hasten her convalescence by an assurance of his full forgiveness. In the following February, Madeleine Béjart died, leaving the bulk of her property to Armande, and, towards the middle of that year, Molière removed from the Place du Palais-Royal, where he had lived for so long with the Béjarts and Mlle. de Brie, to a large house in the Rue de Richelieu, near the Académie des Peintres, which he furnished very sumptuously. Here, on September 15, Armande gave birth to her third child—a son—baptized as Pierre Jean Baptiste Armand on October 1, Boileau-Puimorin, brother of Boileau-Despréaux, and Mlle. Mignard, daughter of the celebrated painter, acting as sponsors. The little boy, however, only survived this ceremony a few days, thus preceding his illustrious father to the grave by rather less than four months.

The reconciliation with his wife, indeed, in itself so happy, was destined to prove fatal to Molière, and was undoubtedly one of the causes of his premature death. For some years, the poet had suffered from a chest affection, very possibly due to frequent exposure during his provincial tours. In the winter of 1665–1666, we learn from Robinet that he had had an illness which all but terminated fatally, and in the spring of 1667 he was again "tout proche d'entrer dans la bière," was absent from the theatre for two months, and was compelled to restrict himself to a milk diet, and speak as little as possible when not on the stage. The retired life he had led during his breach with Armande had, of course, favoured the adoption of this regimen, and under it his health had so much improved that, believing himself cured, and unwilling to impose on his wife the cheerless society of a valetudinarian, he abandoned his abstemious habits, entertained largely, and, in short, resumed his former mode of life. The result was a rapid aggravation of his complaint; his nights were sleepless, he was racked by a terrible cough, and, at the beginning of the year 1673, it became evident that his days were numbered. In this condition, by the irony of Fate, it fell to him to represent the folly of a man in perfect health who, imagining himself the victim of all manner of fell diseases, is ready to submit to any and every remedy that may be suggested to him—that is to say, the exact counterpart of his own state. On February 10, the Malade imaginaire, a happy conception in the composition of which the author had doubtless contrived to find some relief from his sufferings, both of body and mind—for there is some reason to believe that his relations with his wife were again becoming strained—was produced at the Palais-Royal, and played for three nights to crowded houses. On the morning of the fourth performance, February 17,[30] Molière was so weak that Armande and Baron united in urging him not to play, but their efforts were unavailing. "How," he asked, "can I refuse to appear when so many persons' bread depends upon it? I should reproach myself for the distress I might cause them, as I have sufficient strength to prevent it." This speech is often quoted as a proof of Molière's consideration for others, but though the great writer's unselfishness and generosity are happily beyond dispute, it would appear more probable that his plea was merely an excuse for disregarding the advice of his wife and friend, as he was sufficiently well off to have been able to compensate those who would have suffered by the temporary closing of the theatre without any very serious inconvenience.[31] No; Molière knew that his end was near, and, like the brave man he was, he preferred to die in harness, rather than, by taking to his bed, prolong his sufferings a few days longer.

Accordingly, when the play began at four o'clock, he again appeared in the high-backed arm-chair of the imaginary invalid, and acted the part with as much whimsical humour as on the three previous occasions, though it was obvious to those on the stage that every speech and movement cost him a terrible effort; and in the burlesque ceremony where Argan takes the oath as a new doctor, swearing to adhere to the remedies prescribed by antiquity and to ignore modern discovery, he was seized with a convulsion, which he endeavoured vainly to disguise by forcing a laugh. When the curtain fell, he made his way to Baron's dressing-room and complained that he was "perishing of cold." A chair was obtained, and the dying man conveyed to his home, where he was put to bed. Feeling that his last hour was at hand, he asked for the consolations of religion, and Armande and Baron hurried off to Saint-Eustache, where, however, the two priests in attendance, learning who it was who required their help, declined to leave the church. The next priest applied to had a better sense of his duty, and consented to administer the Sacraments. But, in the meanwhile, much precious time had been wasted, and when he reached the house, Molière had no further need of his services. He had died at ten o'clock, in the arms of two Sisters of Charity, to whom he had long given shelter during their Lenten visits to Paris, and who had but that day arrived in the capital.

Notwithstanding the assistance of these two nuns, and the fact that a priest had been summoned to his death-bed, Molière was none the less regarded as having died without the consolations of religion, and M. Merlin, the curé of Saint-Eustache, refused ecclesiastical burial to his remains.

Armande at once addressed a petition to the Archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Chanvalon, explaining the circumstances of the case, and laying stress upon the fact of her husband having communicated at the previous Easter. It has been stated that the archbishop's reply was an absolute refusal. This is incorrect; he confined himself to referring the petition to an official whose duty it was to inquire into such matters.

However, Armande, dreading an unfavourable answer, determined to seek the intervention of the King, and, accompanied by the curé of Auteuil, a liberal-minded ecclesiastic and a personal friend of Molière, she set off for Saint-Germain, where the Court then was. Even her enemies are compelled to admit that, in these trying circumstances, she showed both dignity and courage. "If," she exclaimed, when the King demurred to granting her request, "if my husband was a criminal, his crimes were authorised by your Majesty in person." This was certainly true, though to remind his Majesty of the fact was hardly calculated to further her cause, nor did the curé of Auteuil improve matters by embarking on a theological argument, apparently with the view of anticipating an attack upon his orthodoxy by his more bigoted brethren. Nevertheless, Louis XIV., though obviously much annoyed at such outspokenness, behaved with that tact which is one of his best claims to our respect. He dismissed the widow and the curé, telling them that the matter was one which concerned the archbishop and not himself; but, at the same time, he wrote to the prelate, bidding him "take steps to avoid éclat and scandal."

The archbishop, as became a good courtier, bowed to the royal commands, but, in order to save appearances, compromised the matter. He permitted "the curé of Saint-Eustache to give ecclesiastical burial to the body of the deceased in the cemetery of the parish, on condition, nevertheless, that it should take place without any ostentation, with two priests only, and after dusk had fallen; that there should be no solemn service on his behalf, either in the said parish of Saint-Eustache or even in any church of the regular clergy, and that our present permission shall be without prejudice to the rules of the ritual of our Church, which we desire shall be observed according to their form and tenor."[32]

Much has been written on the refusal of the curé of Saint-Eustache to accord Molière Christian burial, and on the conditions imposed by the Archbishop of Paris after the official intervention of the king; and the bigotry and inhumanity of both priest and prelate have been denounced in scathing terms. But the majority of those who have treated of the incident were better acquainted with the theatre than the Sorbonne, for, though the souvenirs of Tartuffe and Don Juan no doubt counted for much in the matter, Harlay de Chanvalon and his subordinate were, after all, only putting into force a rule of the Church which had existed for centuries, though in recent times it had, happily, been more honoured in the breach than the observance. As, however, the question is of great interest, and one, also, to which we shall have occasion to return more than once in the course of the present volume, it may be as well for us to give here a brief sketch of the doctrine of the Church in regard to the actor.

The hostility of the Christian Church to the theatre may be traced back to very early times. The Fathers of the Church—Tertullian, Saint-Cyprian, Saint-Chrysostome, and others—had been unsparing in their condemnation of the actor,[33] whilst Saint-Salvien, a priest of the fourth century, went so far as to declare that "comedy was worse than blasphemy, theft, homicide, and all other crimes, and that the spectator was the accomplice of the performer." Nor was this hostility by any means confined to treatises and sermons. The Council of Elvira, in 305, enacted that no actor was to be received into the Church unless he had solemnly engaged to renounce his profession; if he failed to keep his promise, he was to be immediately excommunicated. At the Council of Arles, held five years later, all circus-performers and actors were excluded from the Sacraments, so long as they exercised their profession; and the third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) denied them baptism or absolution. Henceforth, the Church regarded actors as beyond her pale, and, imitating the severity of the Roman Law, placed them on the same footing as prostitutes. She refused them baptism; she refused them absolution; she refused to marry them; she refused to accept them as sponsors at the baptism of the children of their relatives and friends; she refused them the Holy Communion, in public or in private, in life or on their death-beds; finally, she refused them even Christian burial.

Extravagantly severe as all these canons may, at first sight, appear, they were none the less perfectly logical. It was indeed only natural that the early Church should insist that actors who desired to participate in her Sacraments should forthwith abjure their profession, when we pause to consider the exceedingly licentious character of the Roman theatre and the powerful influence it exercised in perpetuating the memory of Paganism. It is to be remarked, however, that the censures pronounced against the actor emanated not from any Pope or ecumenical council, but from provincial synods, and when, in process of time, Paganism disappeared and practically the whole of civilised Europe became Christian, they naturally ceased to be enforced—though they were never formally abrogated—in every country, save one. The exception was France, where the old anathemas remained in force, as a natural consequence of the independent attitude adopted by the French clergy towards the Holy See.

In order to protect themselves against the encroachments of the Popes, and to resist the changes which they were incessantly striving to introduce into the discipline of the Church, the French bishops laid the foundations of Gallicanism, by declaring immutable all the canons promulgated by the early councils up to the eighth century which had passed into the customs of the Church of France. The adoption of these canons was a very serious matter for the theatrical profession in France, for among them was that of the Council of Arles, already mentioned, which expressly excluded the actor from the Sacraments, so long as he followed his calling. However, it was clearly understood that the penalties pronounced should not be applied to the regular actor, but only to mountebanks and other persons whose performances might serve to recall those of Paganism; and indeed down to the time of the Reformation, when the Catholic clergy, unwilling to show less austerity than those of the Reformed faith, began to proscribe severely all kinds of amusements, even these seem to have been treated with great indulgence.[34]

In 1624, the bigoted Jean de Gondy, Archbishop of Paris, declared in a pastoral letter that actors ought to be deprived of the Sacraments and ecclesiastical burial, and stigmatized their profession as "infamous and one unworthy of a Christian." Nevertheless, until the latter part of the seventeenth century, thanks in a great measure, no doubt, to the patronage bestowed on the stage by Richelieu and Mazarin, in practice the greatest tolerance prevailed, and the clergy accorded to the actor the same treatment as to all other good Catholics. Thus, on January 6, 1654, we find Molière appearing as godfather at a church at Montpellier, and, in 1670 and again in 1672, discharging the same duty at churches in Paris, while his marriage, in February 1662, at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was celebrated without the least difficulty being raised.

Strange as it may appear, it was the protection accorded the theatre, and the extreme indulgence shown to all connected with it, by a great party in the Church itself that was directly responsible for the termination of this happy state of affairs and the violent reaction, of which the conduct of Harlay de Chanvalon and the curé of Saint-Eustache towards Molière was but the beginning.

For some time, the Jesuits seem to have regarded the theatre with disfavour; but towards the middle of the seventeenth century, perceiving that it might very readily be made to serve as a vehicle for the propagation of their own ideas, their attitude changed, and they not only permitted all who came under their influence to attend the play, but even encouraged the pupils in their colleges to perform theological comedies, in which their enemies, the Jansenists, were held up to ridicule. This, naturally, had the effect of exasperating the zealots of Port-Royal and their numerous adherents, who, always hostile to the drama, quickly became bitterly antagonistic and required but very slight provocation to declare open war.

This provocation was not long in coming. In 1665, the clever but eccentric playwright Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, the author of Les Visionnaires, having passed "à la devotion la plus outrée," espoused the cause of the Jesuits, and, believing that he had received a call from Heaven to combat the heretics—that is to say, the Jansenists—made a violent attack upon them. The Jansenists replied by the pen of their famous publicist, Nicole, who stigmatized those who wrote for the theatre as "public poisoners, not of bodies, but of souls." Racine, believing his honour touched, joined in the fray and ridiculed the bigotry of Port-Royal. Nicole rejoined with a Traité de la Comédie, wherein, relying on the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, he condemned not only dramatic authors, but those who interpreted them. "The playhouse," said he, "is a school of Vice. The profession of an actor is an employment unworthy of a Christian," and much more to the same effect. Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, formerly a generous patron of the drama and of Molière, but now, for some time past, a Jansenist of the most advanced type, published a similar work, and gave it as his opinion that a troupe of actors was "a troupe of devils," and to amuse oneself at the play was to "delight the demon." So the war went on.

The attacks of Nicole and the Prince de Conti were not without their effect; they aroused the zeal of all who disliked the theatre and believed it prejudicial to morality; and a regular campaign was organised. All unconsciously, Molière himself forged a terrible weapon for the enemies of his profession. The production of Tartuffe aroused a perfect storm of indignation among all sections of the clergy; Jesuit and Jansenist united in denouncing the play, its author, and his calling. A curé of Paris, one Père Roullé, demanded that the writer, "this demon clothed with flesh and habited as a man, the most notorious blasphemer and libertine that has appeared for centuries past, should be delivered to the flames, the forerunners of those of hell;" Bourdaloue preached against it; Bossuet declared the works of the poet to be a tissue of buffooneries, blasphemies, infamies, and obscenities; and Hardouin de Péréfixe, the then Archbishop of Paris, issued an order forbidding people "to represent, read or hear Tartuffe recited under pain of excommunication."

All the old prejudices of the Church against the theatre awoke with redoubled force. All the old anathemas against the hapless actor, which had been allowed to slumber for centuries, were dug up by industrious theologians, and the clergy waited eagerly for opportunities of applying them. In 1671, Floridor, the famous tragedian of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, fell dangerously ill and sent for the curé of Saint-Eustache to give him absolution. The curé flatly refused, save on condition that the actor would engage, in the event of his recovery, never again to set foot on the stage. Floridor gave the required promise; nevertheless, when he died, he was buried without ecclesiastical rites. Molière himself, as we have just seen, was the next victim of priestly intolerance.

The funeral took place on February 21, at nine o'clock in the evening, in conformity with the orders of Chanvalon. By that hour, an immense crowd had gathered in front of the house, drawn thither, no doubt, merely by curiosity. Armande, however, "unable to penetrate its intention," became much alarmed, fearing that the enemies of her husband were organising a riot, and that some indignity to his remains was intended. She accordingly determined to endeavour to appease it, and going to a window, threw out handfuls of silver to the amount of one thousand livres, "at the same time, imploring the assembled people to give their prayers to her husband, in terms so touching that there was not one among those persons who did not pray to God with all his heart."

The body of Molière was not taken into the church, but conveyed direct to the cemetery of Saint-Joseph; the coffin, covered by a large pall, being preceded by two priests and six enfants bleus carrying lighted tapers in silver sconces, and followed by a considerable number of people, many of whom bore torches. Among the mourners were Boileau, La Fontaine, Chapelle, and the players of the Palais-Royal.

When the cortège reached the cemetery, which was situated in the Rue Montmartre, a long delay occurred, as the gate was closed and the keys had been forgotten. While awaiting their arrival, the mourners were able to read, by the light of the blazing torches, a placard posted on the wall, which bore the following verses:—

"Il est passé ce Molière

Du Théâtre à la bière;

Le pauvre homme a fait un faux bond;

Et ce tant renommé bouffon

N'a jamais su si bien faire

Le Malade imaginaire

Qu'il a fait la mort pour tout de bon."

At last, the keys arrived, and the ceremony was concluded without further incident. Molière was interred in the middle of the cemetery, at the foot of the cross. Not a word was spoken over his grave.[35]

Above the last resting-place of her husband Armande placed a large tombstone, which was still to be seen in 1745, when the brothers Parfaict published their Histoire du Théâtre Français. "This stone," writes Titon du Tillet, "is cracked down the middle, which was occasioned by a very noble and very remarkable action on the part of his widow. Two or three years after Molière's death, there was a very severe winter, and she ordered to be conveyed to the cemetery a hundred loads of wood, which were burned on her husband's tomb, to warm all the poor of the quarter; the great heat of the fire caused this stone to crack in two."

It is, as we have said elsewhere, an exceedingly difficult task to arrive at a definite conclusion in regard to the conduct of Armande. That she was the abandoned woman that the Fameuse Comédienne and the writers who follow it have depicted her we entirely decline to believe. If she had been, is it conceivable that Molière would have lived with her so long, or that, once having broken with her, he would ever have been brought to consent to a reconciliation? On the other hand, to pretend that she was an irreproachable wife seems as hazardous as to affirm her misconduct. There is no smoke without fire, and the separation between her and her husband—a separation lasting for five years—is a highly suspicious circumstance. Its immediate cause may, of course, have been merely incompatibility of temper—for the account of the matter given by the Fameuse Comédienne is utterly unreliable—but, at the same time, it may very well have been occasioned by a far graver reason. On the whole, the wisest course would appear to be to adopt a middle position, and, while refusing to accept the statements of her detractors, to be equally diffident about associating ourselves with the somewhat violent reaction in the lady's favour which has set in within recent years.

Whatever may have been Armande's sins or shortcomings, however, we should, in justice to her, remember that the responsibility for Molière's unhappiness did not rest entirely with her. If she was selfish, vain, and frivolous, greedy for pleasure, and impatient of contradiction, Molière possessed the nervousness and irritability so frequently associated with genius in a very marked degree, and which, in his case, were aggravated by ill-health and overwork. The servant of a public ever exacting and eager for novelties, the strain to which he was subjected, always very great, must, at times, have been well-nigh unbearable; for we must remember that he was not only a dramatist, but an actor, not only an actor, but a manager. The financial affairs of the troupe, it is true, were in the capable hands of La Grange; but Molière made himself responsible for its efficiency, and though the Impromptu de Versailles no doubt conveys an exaggerated idea of his difficulties in this direction, they were probably considerable. The jealousy between the two principal actresses, Armande and Mlle. de Brie, must have been alone a fruitful source of trouble. In these circumstances, it is not difficult to understand that the little trials of domestic life, which in the majority of men arouse but a passing feeling of annoyance, should have presented themselves to him as intolerable vexations, and that the sudden gusts of passion in which, we are told, he was wont to indulge on the most trifling provocation, should have widened the breach between himself and Armande, whose narrow mind was incapable of comprehending that in such outbursts men of her husband's temperament oft-times seek relief for long weeks of mental strain and anxiety. Add to all this the fact that Molière was of an excessively jealous disposition, and it becomes obvious that the marriage was doomed to failure from the very first; in fact, the only thing to occasion surprise is that the inevitable rupture did not take place at a much earlier date, and that it was ever healed.

Molière, as we have seen, had been buried on February 21, and three days later the theatre of the Palais-Royal reopened with a performance of the Misanthrope, Armande playing Célimène. Her conduct in thus resuming her place in the company so soon after her husband's death was commented upon very unfavourably;[36] but it would appear to have been dictated by stern necessity. In the face of the formidable competition of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the troupe of Molière, already terribly weakened by the death of its chief, could not possibly have afforded to lose its leading actress for even a brief period; and Armande, therefore, decided to sacrifice her own feelings to the interests of her colleagues.

Indeed, as matters stood, the continued existence of the "Comédiens du Roi" as a separate company was soon in imminent peril. During the Easter recess, the Hôtel de Bourgogne intrigued vigorously against them, with the result that four of the best players, with Baron at their head, resigned their places and passed over to the older theatre; while, shortly afterwards, Lulli obtained the king's permission to make the theatre of the Palais-Royal the home of French opera, and the unfortunate Moliéristes found themselves without a stage to act upon. This was a crushing blow; and when, very reluctantly, the troupe had made overtures to their old rivals in the Rue Mauconseil, with a view to an amalgamation, and had been met by a curt refusal, the position seemed almost desperate.

Well indeed was it for Armande and her colleagues that they numbered among them, in the person of La Grange, one of the shrewdest and most capable men of business who ever trod the boards of a theatre. Born, about 1640, at Amiens, of respectable Picard stock, La Grange, after two or three years' experience in the provinces as a strolling player, joined his fortunes to those of Molière; and, in May 1659, on the death of Joseph Béjart, stepped into his shoes as the jeune premier of the troupe. As an actor, he appears to have been altogether admirable, the type of the perfect lover, as understood in those days, and, according to the anonymous author of the Entretiens galants, to see him play with Armande in such a piece as the Malade imaginaire was a sight not easily forgotten: "Their acting continues still, even when their part is concluded; they are never useless on the stage; they play almost as well when they listen as when they speak. Their glances are never wasted; their eyes do not wander round the boxes; they know that the theatre is full, but they speak and act as if they see only those who are concerned in their rôle and action."

But, excellent actor as was La Grange, he was even better as an "orator"[37] and manager, posts which, at the time of Molière's death, he had occupied for some six years; and there can be no doubt that much of the success which had attended the troupe was due to his skill in gauging the public taste, his untiring energy, and his personal popularity. To him, too, we owe that wonderful Registre, a perfect mine of accurate and detailed information about the doings of Molière's troupe, the Hôtel Guénégaud, and the early years of the Comédie-Française; while it was under his auspices that the first complete edition of his old chief's works was given to the world.

On the advice of La Grange, Armande now resolved on a bold stroke. Some years before, a play-loving nobleman, the Marquis de Sourdéac, had built a theatre in a tennis-court in the Rue Mazarine, near the Luxembourg, where opera had been performed, until, in March 1672, the intriguing Lulli had succeeded in securing for himself the exclusive right of representing musical pieces. It was a fine house, fitted up with every convenience, "with a stage," says Samuel Chappuzeau, in his work on the Paris theatres of the time, "large enough to allow the most elaborate machinery to be worked." La Grange proposed that the troupe should acquire this theatre, and himself undertook the negotiations, which resulted in the Marquis de Sourdéac and his partner, a M. de Champeron, ceding to Armande their lease of the property for the sum of 30,000 livres, of which 14,000 was to be paid in cash and the balance by fifty livres on each performance given there.

An event of great importance was the immediate outcome of the acquisition of this theatre. For some years past, the popularity of the Théâtre du Marais had been steadily declining, a circumstance which seems to have been attributable rather to the mediocrity of the plays produced there and the fact that the district in which it was situated was no longer the centre of Parisian life, as it had been during the first half of the century, than to any lack of talent on the part of the company, which, indeed, comprised several excellent performers of both sexes; and the establishment of the Opera threatened to reduce its already diminished receipts still further. Accordingly, Louis XIV. decided that it should join forces with Mlle. Molière's troupe, and, on June 23, 1673, an ordinance issued by Colbert closed the old playhouse in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which had survived the theatrical vicissitudes of nearly eighty years, and granted permission to the two united companies henceforth to be known as the "Troupe du Roi," to perform comedies and other divertissements honnêtes in the Rue Mazarine.

The new theatre, which was usually called the Théâtre Guénégaud, the street of that name being close at hand, opened its doors on July 9 with a performance of Tartuffe. At first, it met with but indifferent success, and between that date and Easter 1674, the share of each player only amounted to 1481 livres, a striking contrast to the takings at the Palais-Royal during the last year of Molière's life; while, on one occasion, at the beginning of the second season, l'Avare was played to a house of 88 livres! However, matters steadily improved; by the following Easter the success of the company was assured, and the season of 1679–1680 was worth 1100 livres more to each of the old Moliéristes than the great and profitable year of Tartuffe itself.

Although the perennial comedies of Molière naturally figured frequently in the bills, Armande and La Grange had a keen eye for novelties, and did not disdain to tickle the public with melodramas and spectacular plays; and it was from these indeed that the theatre derived the greater part of its revenue. Thus Circé, a tragedy by Thomas Corneille, with changes of scenery, and music by Charpentier, brought in 24,000 livres in nine performances; while the Devineresse, a comic-melodrama, by the same playwright and Donneau de Visé, on the adventures of La Voisin, the poisoner, was played for forty-seven consecutive nights, almost a record for those days. Another success was achieved when Thomas Corneille turned Molière's Don Juan into verse, "eliminating the speeches which offended the scrupulous." Donneau de Visé, to whose "puffing" in the Mercure the Théâtre Guénégaud was probably indebted for not a little of its popularity, declared that in the process of transition the play "had acquired new beauties without losing any of the old," and though few will be found to agree with this pronouncement, the new version proved exceedingly popular.

The first of the above-mentioned plays, in which Armande secured a great personal triumph in the part of the beautiful sorceress, was associated with a singular incident.

One evening, a well-dressed man, who occupied a seat upon the stage, approached the actress, as she was standing in the wings awaiting her turn to go on, and addressed her in the manner of an ardent and favoured lover. "Never," said he, "have I seen you look so beautiful. Were it not that I am already your slave, I should be so from this moment."

Armande, who had never seen the gentleman before, turned haughtily away, without making any reply. But when the play was over, the stranger followed her to her dressing-room, and, having reproached her with her previous coldness, inquired why she had not kept an appointment which she had given him that afternoon. The lady, in profound astonishment, disclaimed all knowledge of her visitor, and angrily ordered him to leave the room. The stranger refused, insisting that she had given him "a score of rendezvous," and demanding how she could have the audacity to treat him thus after such an intimacy as had existed between them. Armande thereupon sent her maid to summon some of her colleagues, who arrived to find their leader and the stranger almost beside themselves with passion. As well as her outraged feelings would permit, the actress explained the situation to her friends, declaring that she had never set eyes on the gentleman before her in her life; while he, on his side, asserted in the most positive manner that he knew her intimately, and that she had repeatedly met him at a house of somewhat questionable repute. "Why," cried he, "the very necklace she is now wearing is one of the presents I have made her!" and he snatched it from her. Armande immediately sent for the guards attached to the theatre, who seized the stranger and held him until the arrival of a commissary of police, when he was conducted to prison.

His statement to the authorities served but to deepen the mystery. It transpired that he was a M. Lescot, a president of the Parliament of Grenoble, who was on a visit to Paris. He had fallen in love with Armande after seeing her play at the Théâtre Guénégaud, but, lacking courage to declare his passion directly, and having failed to secure an introduction in the ordinary way, had had recourse to the good offices of a woman called Ledoux, "dont le métier ordinaire était de faire plaisir au public," and promised her a liberal reward, if she could arrange a rendezvous. In this she had been successful; Mlle. Molière had accepted his proposals, and they had met repeatedly at Ledoux's house. The actress had, however, strictly forbidden him, for prudential reasons, to address, or even approach, her at the theatre, which instructions he had faithfully observed until that evening, when, as she had failed to keep an appointment to meet him after dinner, he had determined to ascertain the reason, thinking that "a little display of passion" might not be altogether displeasing to her. As for the necklace, which, it should be mentioned, was one of a common pattern, he had purchased it at a jeweller's shop on the Quai des Orfévres, the lady being with him at the time. Let them question the jeweller, who would, no doubt, be prepared to corroborate his statement.

Matters now began to look very unpleasant for Armande, and when the jeweller of the Quai des Orfévres, without a moment's hesitation, identified her as the lady who had accompanied the president to his shop, and Ledoux was found to have left the city, she was in despair. However, a few days later the affair was cleared up. Hunted down by the police, Ledoux confessed that she had palmed off on the credulous Lescot a young woman called Tourelle, who bore so extraordinary a resemblance to Mlle. Molière, both in appearance and voice, that it was almost impossible for any one not personally acquainted with the latter to tell one from the other, and who had already succeeded in duping quite a number of persons. This woman was also arrested, and a decree of the Parliament of Paris, dated October 17, 1675, sentenced the two delinquents "to be flogged, naked, with rods, before the principal gate of the Châtelet and the house of Mlle. Molière," and to be afterwards banished from Paris for three years. Président Lescot was condemned to pay a fine of two hundred crowns, and to make "verbal reparation," that is to say, he had to declare in court, in the presence of Mlle. Molière and any four persons whom she might select, that he had "raised his hand against her and used the insulting language mentioned in the indictment through error and inadvertence." Which done, we may presume, he lost no time in returning to Grenoble, a sadder and a wiser man.