Part 3

But, after all, we can hardly wonder at the young actress's success, since she had only to be perfectly natural to realise the author's whole idea of his heroine. For what is Célimène but a finished portrait of Armande herself? Célimène is "_la grande coquette par excellence_," surrounded by a crowd of admirers wherever she goes. Armande, unhappily for Molière's peace of mind, seems to have enjoyed very much the same reputation. Célimène depends for her fascination not so much on beauty of face or form as on her expression, her smile, her manners, her conversation; "_elle a l'art de me plaire_," says the infatuated Alceste. Armande possessed the same kind of attractions, and was "very affecting when she wished to please." Célimène is haughty and imperious. "It is my wish; it is my wish," she cries when Alceste hesitates to comply with her demands. "Armande," says a contemporary, "could not brook contradiction, and pretended that a lover ought to be as submissive as a slave." In fact, so perfect is the resemblance that even if the circumstances, of which we shall presently speak, did not preclude all reasonable doubt about the matter, few would be found to deny that the heroine of the _Misanthrope_ was drawn from life.

Among Armande's other rôles may be mentioned the capricious and charming Lucile of the _Bourgeois gentilhomme_, in which Molière drew the well-known portrait of his wife which we have already cited; the title-part in the famous "tragedy-ballet" of _Psyché_, one of the most remarkable instances of collaboration in dramatic history,[17] in which she appeared in a different costume in each of its five acts--a very unusual extravagance in those days--and is described by the enthusiastic Robinet as "marvellous" and "playing divinely"; Henriette in the _Femmes savantes_, "the model of an honest, sensible, and well-brought-up young lady;" and finally, Angélique in Molière's swan-song, the _Malade imaginaire_, perhaps, next to Célimène, her most finished impersonation.

* * * * *

But great as were the dramatic talents of Armande Béjart, they count for comparatively little in the curiosity which her name arouses. It is her moral character, her private life, her relations with her famous husband, which have exercised the minds of the biographers of Molière for upwards of two centuries. On these matters even more ink has been expended than on the vexed question of her birth, and with far less satisfactory results. To the great majority of writers Armande was an unworthy wife, who repaid the kindness and affection lavished upon her by the great man whose name she bore with ingratitude and contumely; while there are not wanting those who go so far as to accuse her of the grossest infidelity, and to assert that her misconduct was in some measure responsible for the dramatist's untimely death. When, however, we come to sift the evidence against her, we shall find that these extreme views are based on very insufficient or very suspicious testimony, and that one thing only has been clearly established, namely, that she rendered Molière's later years very unhappy. But what was the true cause of his unhappiness, whether occasioned by actual misconduct on the part of Armande, or merely by an ever present dread that such must be the inevitable termination of one or other of the very imprudent flirtations in which she appears to have been continually indulging, is very difficult, nay, well-nigh impossible, to determine.

It has always been a favourite practice with biographers of Molière and historians of the French theatre to affect to discover more or less direct allusions to the dramatist's relations with his wife in several of his plays: the _École des femmes_, the _Impromptu de Versailles_, the _Mariage forcé_, _George Dandin_, and, of course, the _Misanthrope_. That this is true of the last-named play cannot, we think, be disputed; but in regard to the others, we are inclined to believe that the significance of the passages and episodes on which their contention rests have been a good deal exaggerated.

Let us begin with the _École des femmes_, the first in chronological order. Here, as in the _École des maris_, Molière turns to the ethics of marriage for his materials. Arnolphe, a middle-aged bachelor, disgusted by the lack of fidelity among the married women he sees around him, comes to the conclusion that the only safeguard of a wife's honour is extreme ignorance. No young woman should know anything beyond her household and religious duties; her reading is to be confined to the Bible and the Maxims of Marriage; her only objects in life are to be the salvation of her soul and the comfort and happiness of her husband. In order to put his theory to the test, he adopts a little girl called Agnès, and has her carefully brought up in the most complete seclusion, with the intention of making her his wife when she shall have reached a suitable age. But, unfortunately for him--for he falls genuinely in love with his ward--the damsel's very simplicity proves his undoing; she bestows her affections upon a young gallant, Horace by name, and poor Arnolphe is left lamenting the downfall of his hopes.

We have outlined this plot of the play, which is doubtless familiar to many, as several writers have assumed that Molière has depicted himself in the role of Arnolphe and Armande in that of Agnès; but beyond the fact that both Molière and his hero themselves supervised the education of their intended wives, there does not seem to be the slightest ground for such a supposition. In the first place, Molière espoused the woman of his choice; while Arnolphe sees his cherished scheme come to nothing, through the appearance on the scene of the youthful Horace. In the second, the brilliant and witty Armande bears as little resemblance to the unsophisticated Agnès as does her liberal-minded husband to the tyrannical guardian. And, lastly, to ask us to believe that only ten months after his marriage, with the glamour of the honeymoon still upon him, Molière could have intended an unsympathetic character like Agnès to represent his wife, is to make too great a call upon our credulity.

In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ a good deal has been made of the little quarrel between the author and his wife, which the former introduces at the beginning of the play. The company is supposed to be rehearsing a new comedy, commanded by the King at two hours' notice, and to be causing its chief no little trouble.

_Mademoiselle Molière._--"Shall I tell you what it is? You ought to have written a play which you could have acted all alone."

_Molière._--"Be silent, wife; you are a fool."

_Mademoiselle Molière._--"Thank you, my lord and husband; that just shows what it is to be married, and how strangely wedlock alters people. You would not have said that eighteen months ago."

_Molière._--"Pray be silent."

_Mademoiselle Molière._--"It is an odd thing that a trifling ceremony should be capable of depriving us of all our good qualities, and that a husband and a lover should regard the same person with such different eyes."

_Molière._--"What loquacity!"

_Mademoiselle Molière._--"'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; Molière clearly foresees the fate which awaits him. In our opinion, they are wrong. In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ Molière and his wife do not, as in an ordinary play, represent fictitious characters; they appear under their own names. In these circumstances, 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 forcé_ and _George Dandin_, the former produced early in the year 1664, when the difference of age and of character between Molière 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 _ménage_. Sganarelle, like Molière, had believed himself "_le plus content des hommes_," only to be roughly disillusioned when the carefully brought up Dorimène frankly avows her passion for "_toutes les choses de plaisir_"--play, visiting, assemblies, 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_." Angélique, in her turn, complains to George Dandin of the tyranny exercised by husbands "who wish their wives to be dead to all amusements, 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 duchess," 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 Dorimène, in her craving for "_toutes les chases de plaisir_" and Angélique, in her imperious temper and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimène's brother, Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has nothing, save his age, in common with Molière; while the aspiring farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position, and deservedly punished for his snobbishness, 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_--Molière'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 Molière 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 Célimène, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive, this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a noble heart she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Béjart, embellished by all the love and all the genius of Molière? 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 Molière. 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 passionate sage, an honest man with a great and excellent heart."[19]

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 coeur 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.