'Let us read it to-night,' I said.
'By all means,' said Madame de Tocqueville; 'though we know it by heart it will be new when read by M. Ampère.' Accordingly Ampère read it to us after dinner.
'The tradition of the stage,' he said, 'is that Célimène was Molière's wife.'
'She is made too young,' said Minnie. 'A girl of twenty has not her wit, or her knowledge of the world.'
'The change of a word,' said Ampère, 'in two or three places would alter that. The feeblest characters are as usual the good ones. Philinte and Eliante.
'Alceste is a grand mixture, perhaps the only one on the French stage, of the comic and the tragic; for in many of the scenes he rises far above comedy. His love is real impetuous passion. Talma delighted in playing him.'
'The desert,' I said, 'into which he retires, was, I suppose, a distant country-house. Just such a place as Tocqueville.'
'As Tocqueville,' said Beaumont, 'fifty years ago, without roads, ten days' journey from Paris, and depending for society on Valognes.'
'As Tocqueville,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law first married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to see it again.'
'Whom,' I asked, 'did Célimène marry?'