Molière, at the height of his career, had married Armande Béjart, he being forty years of age, she "aged twenty years or thereabout," in the words of the marriage contract, signed January 23, 1662. No one knows now, very few knew then, whether the bride was the sister or the daughter of Madeleine Béjart, Molière's friend and comrade for many years, who doubled her rôle of versatile actress with that of provident cashier of the company. She was devoted to Armande, whom she had taken to her home from the girl's early schooling in Languedoc, and over whom she watched in the coulisses. She fought against the marriage, which she saw was a mistake, finally accepted it, and at her own death in 1672 left all her handsome savings to the wife of Molière.
In the cast of the "École des Maris," first produced in 1661, appears the name of Armande Béjart, and, three months after the marriage, "Mlle. Molière"—so were known the wives of the bourgeoisie, "Madame" being reserved for grandes-dames—played the small part of Élise put for her by the author into his "Critique de l'École des Femmes." Henceforward she was registered as one of the troupe, the manager receiving two portions of the receipts for his and her united shares. She was a pleasing actress, never more than mediocre, except in those parts, in his own plays, fitted to her and drilled into her by her husband. She had an attractive presence on the boards, without much beauty, without any brains. Her voice was exquisite, opulent in tones that seemed to suggest the heart she did not own. For she was born with an endowment of adroit coquetry, and she developed her gift. She was flighty and frivolous, evasive and obstinate, fond of pleasures not always innocent. Her spendthrift ways hurt Molière's thrifty spirit, her coquetry hurt his love, her caprices hurt his honor. His infatuation, a madness closely allied to his genius, brought to him a fleeting happiness, followed by almost unbroken torments of love, jealousy, forgiveness. In his home he found none of the rest nor comfort nor sympathy so much needed, after his prodigious work in composing, drill-work in rehearsing, and public work in performing at his theatre, and at Versailles and Fontainebleau. He got no consolation from his wife for the sneers of venomous rivals, enraged by his supremacy, and for the stabs of the great world, eager to avenge his keen puncturing of its pretence and its priggishness. And while he writhed in private, he made fun in public of his immitigable grief, and portrayed on the stage the betrayed and bamboozled husband—at once tragic and absurd—that he believed himself to be. These eleven years of home-sorrows shortened his life. On the very day of his fatal attack, he said to the flippant minx, Armande: "I could believe myself happy when pleasure and pain equally filled my life; but, to-day, broken with grief, unable to count on one moment of brightness or of ease, I must give up the game. I can hold out no longer against the distress and despair that leave me not one instant of respite."
The church ceremony of their marriage had taken place on February 20, 1662, at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, as its register testifies. He had already left his bachelor quarters on Quai de l'École, and had taken an apartment in a large house situated on the small open space opposite the entrance of the Palais-Royal, the germ of the present place of that name. His windows looked out toward his theatre, and on the two streets at whose junction the house stood—Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and Saint-Honoré. The first-named street, near its end on Quai du Louvre, held the Hôtel de Rambouillet, which was a reconstruction of the old Hôtel de Pisani, made in 1618, after the plan and under the eye of the Marquise de Rambouillet. She is known in history, as she was known in the salons of her day, by her sobriquet of "Arthénice"—an anagram coined by Malherbe from her name Catherine. Hither came all that was brilliant in Paris, and much that pretended to be brilliant; and from here went out the grotesque affectations of the Précieuses Ridicules. The mansion—one of the grandest of that period—having passed into other hands, was used as a Vauxhall d'Hiver in 1784, as a theatre in 1792, and was partly burned in 1836. The remaining portion, which served as stables for Louis-Philippe, was wiped away, along with all that end of the old street, by the Second Empire, to make space for the alignment of the wings of the Louvre. The buildings of the Ministry of Finance cover a portion of the street, and the site of Molière's residence, in the middle of the present Place du Palais-Royal, is trodden, almost every day of the year, by the feet of American women, hurrying to and from the Museum of the Louvre or the great shop of the same name.
After a short stay in their first home, Molière and his wife set up housekeeping in Rue de Richelieu. It is not known if it was in the house of his later domicile and death. Their cook here was the famous La Forêt, to whom, it is said, Molière read his new plays, trying their effect on the ordinary auditor, such as made up the bulk of the audiences of that time. Servants were commonly called La Forêt then, and the real name of this cook was Renée Vannier. Within a year, domestic dissensions came to abide in the household, and it was moved back to its first home, where Madeleine had remained, and now made one of the ménage. To it came a new inmate in February, 1664, a boy, baptized at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, having the great monarch for a godfather, and for a godmother Henrietta of England, wife of the King's brother, Philippe d'Orléans, and poisoned by him or his creatures a few years later, it is believed. These royal sponsors were represented at the christening by distinguished State servants, the whole affair giving ample proof of this player's position at the time.
A little later, we have hints that the small family was living farther east in Rue Saint-Honoré, at the corner of Rue d'Orléans, still near his theatre, in a house swept away when that street was widened into Rue du Louvre. From this house was buried, in November, 1664, the child Louis, the burial-service being held at Saint-Eustache, their parish church, Molière's baptismal church, his mother's burial church. Here, too, in the following year, August, 1665, he brought to the font his newly born daughter, Esprit-Madeleine. In October of this same year he took a long lease of an apartment in their former house on the corner of Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and there they stayed for seven years, removing once more, and for the last time, in October, 1672, to Rue de Richelieu.
Where now stands No. 40 of that street, René Baudelet, Tailor to the Queen by title, had taken a house only recently builded, and from him Molière rented nearly every floor. His lease was for a term of six years, and he lived only four and a half months after coming here. The first floor was set apart for his wife, whose ostentatious furnishing, including a bed fit for a queen, is itemized in the inventory made after her husband's death. He took for his apartment the whole second floor, spaciously planned and sumptuously furnished; for he, too, was lavish in his expenditure and loved costly surroundings. His plate was superb, his wardrobe rich, his collection of dramatic books and manuscripts complete and precious. His bedroom, wherein he died, was on the rear of the house, and its windows looked over the garden of the Palais-Royal, to which he had access from his terrace below, and thence by steps down to a gate in the garden wall. Thus he could get to his theatre by way of those trim paths of Richelieu's planning, as well as by going along the street and around the corner. You must bear in mind that the galleries of the Palais-Royal, with their shops, were not constructed until 1784, and that Rues de Valois and Montpensier were not yet cut; so that the garden reached, on either side, to the backs of the houses that fronted on Rues de Richelieu and des Bons-Enfants. Many of the occupants had, like Molière, their private doors in the garden wall, with access by stone steps. One of these staircases is still left, and may be seen in Rue de Valois, descending from the rear of the Hôtel de la Chancellerie d'Orléans, whose Doric entrance-court is at No. 19 Rue des Bons-Enfants.
The house now numbered 40 Rue de Richelieu and 37 Rue Montpensier was erected soon after 1767, when the walls that had harbored Molière were torn down to prevent them from tumbling down. The present building has an admirable circular staircase climbing to an open lantern in the roof. The houses on either side, numbered 37 bis and 35 Rue Montpensier, retain their original features of a central body with projecting wings, and so serve to show us a likeness of Molière's dwelling. Their front windows look out now on the grand fountain of the younger Visconti's design, erected to Molière's memory in 1844, at the junction of Rue de Richelieu and old Rue Traversière, now named Rue Molière. This fountain, flowing full and free always, as flowed the inspiration of his Muse, is surmounted by an admirable seated statue of the player-poet by Seurre, the figures of Serious and of Light Comedy, standing at his feet on either side, being of Pradier's design. And in Rue de Richelieu, a little farther south, at the present Nos. 23 and 23 bis—once one grand mansion, still intact, though divided—lived his friend Mignard, and here he died in 1795. The painter and the player had met at Avignon in 1657-8, and grew to be life-long friends, with equal admiration of the other's art. Indeed, Molière considered that he honored Raphael and Michael Angelo, when he named them "ces Mignards de leur âge." Certainly no such vivid portrait of Molière has come down to us as that on the canvas of this artist, now in the gallery at Chantilly. It shows us not the comedian, but the man in the maturity of his strength and beauty. His blond perruque, such as was worn then by all gallants, such as made his Alceste sneer, softens the features marked strongly even so early in life, but having none of the hard lines cut deeper by worry and weariness. The mouth is large and frank, the eyes glow with a humorous melancholy, the expression is eloquent of his wistful tenderness.
The Molière Fountain.