Queens of the French Stage Part 1

Queens of the French Stage.

by H. Noel Williams.

I

THE WIFE OF MOLIeRE

Few women in French history have been the subject of more discussion than the young girl whom Moliere married, at the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, on February 20, 1662.

Armande Gresinde Claire Elisabeth Bejart, for that was the bride's name, is described in the marriage deed as the daughter of the late Joseph Bejart, _ecuyer_, sieur de Belleville, and of his widow, Marie Herve.

Joseph Bejart, it should be stated, had died shortly before, or shortly after, Armande's birth.

The Bejarts were very poor, for the only means which Joseph seems to have possessed wherewith to maintain his pretensions to n.o.bility were derived from a small government appointment (_huissier ordinaire du roy es eaux et forets de France_), and his wife had presented him with "at least eleven children." They lived in the Marais, then the theatrical quarter of Paris. On its northern outskirts, near the Halles, in the Rue Mauconseil, stood the old Hotel de Bourgogne, the first home of the regular drama; in the centre, in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, was the theatre which took its name from the quarter, the Theatre du Marais, where Corneille's _Cid_ was first performed; while nearer the Seine, the playgoer could make choice between the Italian troupes, the _Trois Farceurs_, Gaultier-Garguille, Gros-Guillaume, and Turlupin,[1] and open-air entertainments on the Pont-au-Change, the Pont-Neuf, and the Place Dauphine. It is, therefore, not surprising that the little Bejarts should have been in the habit of varying the monotony of their poverty-stricken lives by occasional visits to one or other of these spectacles, or that, dazzled by those well-known attractions, which were doubtless as potent in the seventeenth century as they are to-day, the two eldest, Joseph and Madeleine, should have decided, while still very young, to make the stage their profession.

What theatre witnessed their _debuts_ we do not know. The majority of authors are of opinion that they joined a company of strolling players which was at this time exploiting Languedoc; M. Larroumet hesitates between one of the unlicensed playhouses of the fairs in the neighbourhood of Paris and a troupe of amateurs, several of which were to be found in the capital; while another of Madeleine's biographers, M.

Henri Chardon, thinks that she obtained admission to the Theatre du Marais, though it appears very improbable that a young and inexperienced actress could have met with such good fortune.

However that may be, Madeleine seems to have prospered in her profession from the very outset, as on January 10, 1636, supported by her _curateur_, one Simon Courtin, her father, a paternal uncle, a "_chef du gobelet du roi_," and divers other relatives and friends, she appears before the Civil Lieutenant of Paris[2] to request permission to contract a loan of 2000 livres, wherewith to supplement a like sum of her own and enable her to acquire a little house and garden situated in the Cul-de-Sac Thorigny.

Two and a half years later (July 11, 1638), we hear of her again, under circ.u.mstances which perhaps explain her desire to secure a residence of her own--a desire, it must be admitted, not a little singular in a young lady of eighteen--for on that day is baptized at Saint-Eustache "Francoise, daughter of Esprit Raymond, chevalier, seigneur de Modene and other places, chamberlain of the affairs of Monseigneur, only brother of the King, and of the demoiselle Madeleine Bejart."

M. de Modene and Madeleine were not married; indeed, there was already a Madame de Modene, residing at Le Mans, who did not die until 1649. But this trifling accident, as it was regarded in those days, did not prevent the son of the former (by proxy)[3] and the mother of the latter (in person) standing as sponsors to the little Francoise, whose birth was fated to be the cause of much trouble, not to her guilty parents, but to two perfectly innocent persons, one of whom was as yet unborn.

A few words must here be said of the father of Madeleine Bejart's child.

Esprit Raymond de Mormoiron, Comte de Modene, who was then about thirty years of age, came of an old family in the Venaissin. His father, Francois Raymond de Mormoiron, had at one time held the office of Grand Provost of France and had also been employed on several diplomatic missions. Appointed page to Gaston d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., he became later one of the chamberlains of that prince, and seems to have done his best to imitate him in his dissipated and turbulent conduct. He early ranged himself among the enemies of Richelieu, joined the famous league "for the universal peace of Christendom," and fought on its behalf at the battle of La Marfee, at the head of a body of cavalry which he had raised at his own expense. In consequence of this, he was condemned to death, by a decree of the Parliament of Paris (September 6, 1641), but took refuge in Flanders, with the Duc de Guise, against whom a similar sentence had been p.r.o.nounced, and remained there until the death of Richelieu, followed by that of Louis XIII., left him at liberty to return to France. When, in 1647, Guise went to Naples, to endeavour to exploit the revolt of Masaniello to his own advantage, Modene accompanied him and greatly distinguished himself. He was eventually, however, taken prisoner by the Spaniards and held captive until 1650. On his return to France, he meddled no more with public affairs, but occupied himself with the care of his neglected estates and in the compilation of a valuable history of the revolution in Naples, reprinted, in 1826, under the t.i.tle of _Memoires du Comte de Modene_. It is to be noted here that from the early autumn of 1641 until the summer of 1643 the Comte de Modene was absent from France.

Some time in the early weeks of the year 1643, probably either in the last week in February or the first in March, Madeleine's father, Joseph Bejart the elder, died; and on March 10, Marie Herve, his widow, presented herself before the Civil Lieutenant of Paris, where, in the name, and as guardian, of Joseph, Madeleine, Genevieve, Louis, and _"a little girl not yet baptized," children under age_ (_i.e._ under twenty-five) of the said deceased and herself, she represented that "the inheritance of her deceased husband being charged with heavy debts without any property wherewith to acquit them, she feared that it would be more burdensome than profitable," and, accordingly, declared her intention of renouncing it. Her request was supported by her brother-in-law, Pierre Bejart, _procureur_ to the Chatelet, and other relatives, and on June 10 of the same year she was permitted to make the renunciation she desired.

Now who was this "little unbaptized girl"? Without a shadow of doubt, Armande Bejart, the future wife of Moliere; on this point all the poet's biographers are unanimous. Was she, as represented, the daughter of Marie Herve? That is the question which has afforded material for a controversy which has already lasted for nearly two hundred and fifty years and seems not unlikely to continue till the end of all things, for the most fantastic theories, for a small library of books and pamphlets, and for review and newspaper articles without number. For some see in this little girl a sister, others a _daughter_ of Madeleine Bejart, and the truth is of the most vital importance to the honour of the great man whose wife Armande became.

That the latter impression was almost universal amongst Moliere's contemporaries is beyond question, nor is the fact one that need occasion any surprise. Every one, that is to say, every one connected with, or interested in, the theatrical world, was aware that, early in life, Madeleine Bejart had had a little girl; while, on the other hand, the birth of Marie Herve's child, which was of no public interest, and which, moreover, probably took place not in Paris, but in one of the adjacent villages,[4] was known to very few. A young girl grew up with Madeleine, who was tenderly attached to her; it was Armande; but gossip confounded her with the child Francoise, of whom all trace seems to have been lost, and the wiseacres smiled the smile begotten of superior knowledge when any stranger to Paris chanced to refer to the girl as Madeleine's sister.

For over a century and a half this belief remained unchallenged. Hostile or sympathetic, all who wrote of Moliere--La Grange, Grimarest, Breuze de la Martiniere, Bayle, Donneau de Vise--shared the common opinion in regard to the origin of Armande Bejart. In 1821, however, there was quite a flutter of excitement in literary circles, for in that year Beffara discovered Moliere's _acte de mariage_, in which Armande is spoken of as the daughter of Joseph Bejart and his widow, Marie Herve.

Forty-two years later, the old scandal, which in the interim had been partly revived by M. Fournier (_etudes sur la vie et les uvres de Moliere_) and M. Bazin (_Notes historiques sur Moliere_), received another severe blow by Eudore Soulie's discovery of the deed of March 10, 1643, already mentioned, wherein Marie Herve requested permission to renounce the succession to her husband's property, and which confirmed the statement made in the _acte de mariage_. Such evidence, one would naturally suppose, would have been accepted as conclusive, and the matter set at rest once and for all. But tradition dies hard; not a few _Molieristes_ refused to renounce an opinion sanctioned by so many generations, and M. Jules Loiseleur, a writer who enjoyed a considerable, and not undeserved, reputation as an unraveller of historical mysteries, propounded, on behalf of his fellow-sceptics, the following theory.

The declarations made by Marie Herve, in the deed of March 10, 1643, and again in the _acte de mariage_, that Armande was her child, were, he maintains, deliberate falsehoods, conceived in the interests of her daughter, Madeleine. At the beginning of the year 1643, Madeleine was about to become a mother, for the second time, not, of course, by the Comte de Modene, who had been in exile for nearly two years, but by some new lover. Fearing that if Modene returned and learned the fact, he would refuse to resume the _liaison_, which she hoped might one day be regularised (M. Loiseleur was under the impression that Madame de Modene was dead, whereas she lived until 1649), she begged her mother to recognise the child as her own; a request to which that complacent old lady, whose husband was just dead, or on the point of death, readily consented.

Now this ingenious theory is based on the advanced age of Marie Herve--she was then about fifty-three--and the belief that she had not had a child since the birth of Louis Bejart, afterwards a prominent member of Moliere's troupe, who was born on November 14 or 15, 1630, that is to say, more than twelve years earlier, which facts rendered it highly improbable that she could have been the mother of Armande; and M.

Loiseleur supports his contention by pointing out that the two eldest children, Joseph and Madeleine, described in the deed of March 10, 1643, as minors, were over twenty-five, and that their age was purposely understated to make their mother appear younger than she was, and so facilitate the fraud. This point has been contested by Mr. Andrew Lang, in his admirable article on Moliere in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, but is really of no importance, as if M. Loiseleur had exercised a little more care, he would have found that so far from more than twelve years having elapsed between the birth of the last of Marie Herve's children and that of Armande, she had had a little girl _less than three and a half years before_ (November 30, 1639), baptized, in the parish of Saint-Sauveur, by the name of Benigne Madeleine, the second name being doubtless intended as a compliment to Madeleine Bejart, who acted as _marraine_.[5] Whereby M. Loiseleur's argument disappears, and his theory with it.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Armande's contemporaries saw in her not a sister, but a daughter of Madeleine Bejart, and, with this belief, they held another, to wit, that Moliere had been, previous to his marriage with the younger sister, the lover of the elder. From which two suppositions sprang one of the most hideous accusations that has ever sullied the reputation of a great man.

Moliere, like most successful men, had a good many enemies, and was accustomed to give and receive very hard knocks. With the company of the Theatre du Marais he appears to have been on tolerably amicable terms; but with the actors of the third great theatre, the Hotel de Bourgogne, his relations were decidedly strained, and whenever an opportunity arose of turning one or other of them into ridicule, he seldom failed to avail himself of it, though he made an exception in the case of Floridor, who was too great a favourite with the public for them to tolerate any attacks upon him. In his _Impromptu de Versailles_, played before the Court in October 1663, Moliere satirised several actors of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and, among them, one named Montfleury,[6] whose ponderous style of declamation he imitated with great success. To this, Montfleury's son, Antoine Montfleury, who was a prolific and successful dramatist, replied with another play, called _l'Impromptu de l'hotel de Conde_, in which he endeavoured to turn the tables on Moliere; but the vengeance of the father took a very different form.

In December 1663, Racine wrote to the Abbe Le Va.s.seur: "Montfleury has drawn up a memorial and presented it to the King. He accuses him [Moliere] of having married the daughter [Armande], and of having formerly lived with the mother [Madeleine]. But Montfleury is not listened to at Court."[7] From this pa.s.sage it is evident that Montfleury intended Louis XIV. to believe that Moliere had married his own daughter; which is the starting-point of the abominable calumny which so long weighed, and which still weighs, on the memory of the great dramatist.

Beyond what Racine tells us, we have no information about this memorial of Montfleury. That he advanced any proofs in support of his accusation is extremely improbable; although it is quite possible that he would have endeavoured to substantiate it had he received any encouragement from the King. Any way, Louis XIV. appears to have satisfied himself that the charge was merely the outcome of jealousy and spite, and when, in the following February, Moliere's first child was baptized at Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, he and his sister-in-law, the ill-fated Henrietta of England, stood sponsors. Than which the poet could have desired no more complete reparation.

Thirteen years later, in 1676, that is to say, three years after Moliere's death, Montfleury's accusation was repeated. A man of the name of Guichard, a sort of _entrepreneur_ for fetes and plays, coveted Lulli's post as director of the recently-established Opera, and, seeing no likelihood of realising his ambition by any legitimate means, had recourse to poison, the fas.h.i.+onable expedient for ridding oneself of professional rivals and other inconvenient persons at this period. One Sebastian Aubry, a connection of the Bejarts, was entrusted with the commission; but, instead of executing it, he informed Lulli, who promptly invoked the protection of the law. An inquiry was held and numerous witnesses called for the prosecution, among whom was the widow of Moliere. In order to discredit the testimony of these witnesses, Guichard drew up a memorial, in which, besides making the most infamous charges against Armande's moral character, of which we shall speak later, he alluded to her as "the orphan of her husband" and "the widow of her father." Unlike Montfleury, however, who was an old and respected member of his profession, Guichard appears to have been a consummate scoundrel, capable of any villainy to serve his ends; and we can hardly believe that a charge made by such a person could have excited any feelings, save those of indignation and disgust.

However, unhappily, other pens were not wanting to keep alive this hideous calumny. It is true that there are no further direct accusations; but there are allusions, which, as they appear in works that enjoyed, in their day, a considerable circulation, must have answered much the same purpose. In 1770, seven years after Montfleury had set the ball rolling, a certain Le Boulanger de Chalussay, of whom little or nothing seems to be known, attacked Moliere in a play called _elomire hypocondre, ou les Medicins venges_--elomire being, of course, an anagram of Moliere. This play, intended as a reply to the great dramatist's repeated attacks on the medical profession, was a fatuous production, dull, confused, and enc.u.mbered with an absurd number of characters; and the company of the Hotel de Bourgogne, to whom it was submitted, very prudently declined to accept it, notwithstanding which the author caused it to be printed and circulated. In one scene, elomire speaks of the care he is taking to train up his wife in the way he would have her go, in order to avoid all risk of finding himself numbered among deceived husbands. Thereupon, his confidant reminds him of the fate which befell Arnolphe in the _ecole des femmes_, in spite of all his precautions.[8] But elomire replies that he is better advised than Arnolphe:--

"Arnolphe commenca trop tard a la forger; C'est avant le berceau qu'il y devoit songer, Comme quelqu'un l'a fait."

Moliere demanded and obtained the suppression of _elomire hypocondre_; but this only had the effect of stimulating its circulation, as, in the following year, a new edition was clandestinely printed in the provinces, and, in 1672, a third was produced by the Elzevirs, in Holland.

Another allusion occurs in a scandalous work ent.i.tled _La Fameuse Comedienne_, published anonymously in 1688, of which we shall have a good deal to say hereafter: "She [Armande] was the daughter of the deceased Bejart, a provincial actress, who was making the _bonne fortune_ of numbers of young gentlemen in Languedoc at the time of the auspicious birth of her daughter. That is why it is very difficult, in the face of such promiscuous gallantry, to say who was the father." And the writer concludes: "She is believed to be the daughter of Moliere, notwithstanding the fact that he afterwards became her husband; however, one does not really know the truth."

It appears to be the tendency among modern writers, while indignantly repudiating the accusation of Montfleury, to accept with complacency the opinion of Moliere's contemporaries that his relations with Madeleine Bejart had been, at one time, on a closer footing than that of friends.h.i.+p. In this they show a singular want of consistency, for, as M.

Gustave Larroumet, than whom Moliere has no more ardent admirer, very justly observes, the two suppositions are inseparable, and those who admit the probability of the second cannot well deny the possibility of the first, provided, of course, that they hold, with M. Loiseleur, that Marie Herve had been guilty of fraud in the doc.u.ments discovered by Beffara and Eudore Soulie, and that Armande was the daughter of Madeleine.[9]

Let us, however, look at the facts as briefly as may be, since the subject is not one upon which it profits greatly to dwell.

Moliere's connection with the Bejart family is commonly believed to have begun some time in 1641 or 1642. In June 1643, Madeleine Bejart, with her younger sister Genevieve, and her brothers, Joseph and Louis, joined Moliere and several others in founding the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre. She remained faithful to Moliere's fortunes during those disastrous two years, when the receipts of the new theatre did not suffice to discharge the ordinary working expenses, and its chief was, on one occasion, imprisoned in the Chatelet, until the bill of an importunate candle-merchant had been settled. When the company left Paris, in the spring of 1646, on its twelve years' wanderings through the provinces, she accompanied it, and, in addition to playing in nearly every piece, appears to have superintended the costumes and scenery, and regulated the expenses, at least so far as concerned Moliere and the three other Bejarts. Finally, when Moliere returned to Paris, in 1658, and the company was installed, first, at the Pet.i.t-Bourbon and, afterwards, at the Palais-Royal, she retained her place and continued to play regularly down to the time of her death on February 17, 1678, exactly a year before that of Moliere himself.

An admirable actress, one of the best of her time, according to Tallemant des Reaux, ready to undertake almost any role in either tragedy or comedy, she excelled in depicting smartly-attired maids, who ridicule the follies of their employers with equal wit, impudence, and good sense, and, but for her, Moliere might never have created his inimitable _soubrettes_.[10] She was, moreover, remarkably handsome, tall and graceful, with hair of a peculiarly beautiful blonde hue, and La Fontaine, Loret, and other contemporaries speak of her in terms of unfeigned admiration; while she seems to have possessed some literary ability, having, when a girl of eighteen, addressed a quatrain to Rotrou, who had just produced his _Hercule mourant_ at the Hotel de Bourgogne--which so delighted the dramatist that he published it in an edition of his work--and also adapted an old comedy, which was performed by the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre in the provinces.

That a very warm friends.h.i.+p and regard existed between Madeleine and Moliere is certain, nor does what we know of the latter's relations with other ladies of his troupe render a closer connection improbable. In 1653, at Lyons, the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre was strengthened by the accession of two actresses, Mlle. du Parc and Mlle. de Brie,[11] both destined to rise to eminence in their profession. Moliere promptly fell in love with the former, who, however, rejected his addresses, as she subsequently did those of Pierre Corneille and La Fontaine, upon which the mortified dramatist transferred his attentions to the less attractive, but more sympathetic, Mlle. de Brie, and formed with her a _liaison_ which appears to have lasted until his marriage, and was resumed at a later date.

Under these circ.u.mstances, it is scarcely surprising that contemporary gossip should have coupled the names of Moliere and Madeleine together--"M. Despreaux [Boileau] told me," writes Brossette, "that Moliere had been in love with the actress Bejart, whose daughter he espoused,"--or that many modern writers should have taken the same view.

M. Larroumet, we may observe, is of the contrary opinion, but, though generally so correct, he appears in this instance to be arguing from a false premise. He a.s.sumes that the Comte de Modene returned to Paris in the summer of 1643 and resumed his former relations with Madeleine, which fact, he says, makes a _liaison_ between her and Moliere altogether improbable. But the count's biographer, M. Chardon, a.s.serts that at the time when M. Larroumet believes Modene to have been in Paris, he was residing on his estates in the Venaissin, and that he did not visit the capital until the autumn of 1646, that is to say, after the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre had left for the provinces. Shortly after this, the count set out with the Duc de Guise for Italy, where, as we have mentioned, he remained until 1650.[12]

But, after all, the nature of Moliere's relations with Madeleine Bejart subsequent to the birth of Armande is of very secondary importance; it is on the degree of intimacy existing between them _prior_ to that event that the whole question hinges. That they were at that time anything more than friends--possibly only acquaintances--there is not a shred of evidence to prove; for the rumours we have spoken of relate mainly to the early years of the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre. Indeed, so little is known about their movements previous to the establishment of that inst.i.tution that it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty whether their paths in life lay together or far apart at a particular date, much less to hazard an opinion upon so very delicate a matter as the one under discussion.

M. Larroumet says that from July 1638, when her little daughter, Francoise, was born, until June 1643, when the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre was founded, we lose all trace of Madeleine. This is not quite correct, as on November 30, 1639, she appears as _marraine_ at the baptism of her little sister, Benigne Madeleine, in the parish of Saint-Sauveur, and, six months later (June 5, 1640), we find her discharging the same duty to a child of one Robert de la Voypierre, described as a _valet-de-chambre_ at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.[13] After that, it is true, nothing more is heard of her for three years. Now, where was she during these three years? M. Chardon thinks that she was in Paris until the early summer of 1641, and during the remainder of the time--that is to say, for the eighteen months or more preceding Armande's birth--in the provinces, with a company of strolling players; and this is the reason he gives for his supposition.

In May 1641, a friend of the Comte de Modene, Jean Baptiste de l'Hermite, brother of Tristan de l'Hermite, author of the tragedy of _Mariamne_, together with his wife and a servant of the count, were arrested and imprisoned in the Chateau of Vincennes, apparently on a charge of treasonable correspondence with Modene. Thereupon, Madeleine, apprehensive of sharing their fate, her connection with Modene being well known, leaves Paris and joins a company in the provinces, and does not show her face in the capital again until Richelieu and Louis XIII.

are both dead, and all danger for the Count and his friends removed.[14]

As for Moliere, he is commonly believed to have spent the year 1642 in Paris, with the exception of the months of May, June, and July, when M.

Loiseleur is of opinion that he replaced his father as _tap.i.s.sier valet-de-chambre_ to the King, who was then returning by easy stages from the conquest of Roussillon.

Now, if these two theories are correct, as they probably are, it is obvious that, whoever was the father of Madeleine Bejart's child, supposing her to have been the mother of Armande, which few now will be found to maintain, it could not have been Moliere, unless Madeleine was a member of a troupe of strolling players, which performed several times before the Court at Montfrin, during its stay there in the latter part of June, a contingency so remote as to be hardly worth taking into account. With which observations, we hasten to take leave of this most unpleasant subject, and begin our history of Armande Bejart.

When the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre quitted Paris, in the spring of 1646, Marie Herve and her little daughter accompanied it. It does not appear probable, however, as some writers have supposed, that Armande's early years were pa.s.sed on the high roads. From what we know of her accomplishments, she must have received a far superior education to that which a little Bohemian could have obtained. According to one account, she lived for some years in Languedoc, "with a lady of distinguished rank in that province," and did not return to her family until 1653, when the company, relatively more stable, had made Lyons its headquarters. Thenceforward Armande's education was carried on under the immediate supervision of Moliere himself, who, as time went on, began to take something more than a friendly interest in the progress of his pupil, and ended by falling pa.s.sionately in love with her.

Nearly all the biographers of Moliere and Armande agree that Madeleine Bejart was much occupied by this marriage, though they differ widely in the part they a.s.sign to her, some a.s.serting that she laboured strenuously to prevent it, others that she did her utmost to bring it about. According to Grimarest, one of the oldest of the poet's biographers--who believed Madeleine to have been Moliere's mistress, and that she was, moreover, the mother of Armande, though he does not go so far as to attribute the girl's paternity to Moliere--Madeleine behaved _en femme furieuse_, threatened to ruin him, her daughter, and herself, if he persisted in his intention, and that in consequence the lovers were compelled to contract a secret marriage.

On the other hand, the anonymous author of _La Fameuse Comedienne_, who wrote nearer the event, gives a wholly different version of the affair.

According to him--or more probably her--it is Madeleine who prepared and concluded the marriage, by a series of patient and tortuous intrigues, her object being to recover, through Armande, the influence over Moliere of which Mlle. de Brie had deprived her. "She did not fail to exaggerate to Moliere the satisfaction he would derive from educating for himself a child whose heart he was sure of possessing, and whose disposition was known to him, and a.s.sured him that it was only at that innocent age that one could hope to meet with that sincerity which was found but rarely among persons who had seen the great world. These arguments she often repeated to Moliere, at the same time, adroitly calling his attention to that natural delight which her daughter showed whenever she observed him enter the room, and her blind obedience to his wishes. In a word, she conducted the affair so skilfully that he decided that he could not do better than marry the girl."

These two accounts, remarks M. Larroumet, would appear, at first sight, to be equally unworthy of belief, since they are in direct contradiction to one another. But when we come to examine them more closely, we shall find that, though the worthlessness of Grimarest's version is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Moliere's marriage had nothing secret about it, being indeed celebrated publicly in the presence of his family and Armande's, that of the author of _La Fameuse Comedienne_ has a basis of truth. Madeleine did, no doubt, play an important part in bringing about the marriage, but the reason which prompted her to do so was very different from that stated by the author. Sincerely attached to both her sister and Moliere, she honestly believed that a marriage between them would be to their common advantage, securing to the one an excellent settlement in life, and to the other a means of escape from the gallantries which served but to add fresh annoyances to the cares imposed upon him by his triple role of playwright, actor, and manager.

She committed a grievous mistake, it is true; but that she was animated by perfectly disinterested motives, and did everything in her power to make the marriage a happy one, there can be no question.[15]