Part 5

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.