Part 4

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."