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.