His statement to the authorities served but to deepen the mystery. It transpired that he was a M. Lescot, a president of the Parliament of Grenoble, who was on a visit to Paris. He had fallen in love with Armande after seeing her play at the Théâtre Guénégaud, but, lacking courage to declare his passion directly, and having failed to secure an introduction in the ordinary way, had had recourse to the good offices of a woman called Ledoux, "dont le métier ordinaire était de faire plaisir au public," and promised her a liberal reward, if she could arrange a rendezvous. In this she had been successful; Mlle. Molière had accepted his proposals, and they had met repeatedly at Ledoux's house. The actress had, however, strictly forbidden him, for prudential reasons, to address, or even approach, her at the theatre, which instructions he had faithfully observed until that evening, when, as she had failed to keep an appointment to meet him after dinner, he had determined to ascertain the reason, thinking that "a little display of passion" might not be altogether displeasing to her. As for the necklace, which, it should be mentioned, was one of a common pattern, he had purchased it at a jeweller's shop on the Quai des Orfévres, the lady being with him at the time. Let them question the jeweller, who would, no doubt, be prepared to corroborate his statement.
Matters now began to look very unpleasant for Armande, and when the jeweller of the Quai des Orfévres, without a moment's hesitation, identified her as the lady who had accompanied the president to his shop, and Ledoux was found to have left the city, she was in despair. However, a few days later the affair was cleared up. Hunted down by the police, Ledoux confessed that she had palmed off on the credulous Lescot a young woman called Tourelle, who bore so extraordinary a resemblance to Mlle. Molière, both in appearance and voice, that it was almost impossible for any one not personally acquainted with the latter to tell one from the other, and who had already succeeded in duping quite a number of persons. This woman was also arrested, and a decree of the Parliament of Paris, dated October 17, 1675, sentenced the two delinquents "to be flogged, naked, with rods, before the principal gate of the Châtelet and the house of Mlle. Molière," and to be afterwards banished from Paris for three years. Président Lescot was condemned to pay a fine of two hundred crowns, and to make "verbal reparation," that is to say, he had to declare in court, in the presence of Mlle. Molière and any four persons whom she might select, that he had "raised his hand against her and used the insulting language mentioned in the indictment through error and inadvertence." Which done, we may presume, he lost no time in returning to Grenoble, a sadder and a wiser man.
"One is struck," observes M. Larroumet, "by the singular resemblance that this affair presents to that of the Diamond Necklace, which, in 1785, involved the name of Marie Antoinette in so resounding a scandal. After a lapse of a hundred years, the same rôles are resumed, that of Armande by the queen, that of the entremetteuse Ledoux by the Comtesse de la Motte, that of the woman Tourelle by the girl Oliva, finally, that of Président Lescot by the Cardinal de Rohan. And that nothing may be wanting to the parallel, just as the queen was bespattered by the infamous libel of Madame de la Motte, Armande had to submit to La Fameuse Comédienne."
Less than a year afterwards, Armande was the victim of another scandal, even more painful than the one recorded above. The scoundrelly Guichard, the attempted poisoner of Lulli, of whom we have already spoken, did not confine his attack upon the widow of Molière to repeating the hideous accusation of Montfleury: he calumniated her in the most shameful manner. "The Molière," he wrote, "is infamous both in law (i.e. by profession) and in deed. Previous to her marriage, she lived continually in wholesale prostitution; during her married life, continually in public adultery. In short, the Molière is the most infamous of all infamous women." The obvious extravagance of these charges, and the fact that Guichard assailed with equal violence the characters of most of the other witnesses for the prosecution, no doubt robbed them of much of their sting.[38] Nevertheless, they can hardly have failed to occasion the unfortunate woman great annoyance, and, following as they did so closely upon the affaire Lescot, had probably not a little influence upon a step which she took some months later.
In May 1677, Armande exchanged the glorious name of Molière for that of Guérin d'Estriché, one of her colleagues of the Théâtre Guénégaud, and, in earlier years, a member of the now defunct Théâtre du Marais. For this second marriage she was severely blamed by her contemporaries,[39] while it is the fashion among modern writers to refer to it as if it had been a species of sacrilege. In this, we are inclined to think, an injustice had been done Armande. Molière, as one of his recent biographers reminds us, was not, during the years which followed his death, regarded as the mighty genius which he is now admitted to have been. Save to a few, like Boileau, who fully comprehended the extent of the loss which literature had sustained, he was merely an amusing actor and an excellent author, whose premature death they deplored, but whom they never dreamed of apotheosizing.[40] As for Armande, she was still young and retained all her fascination; she had not been happy in her first marriage, and may very well have felt that life owed her some compensation. Besides, a second marriage would free her from the attentions of unwelcome admirers, of whom, we may be sure, the luckless Président Lescot was only one among many, and would provide her with a counsellor in business matters whose interests would be identical with her own, and of whom she must have long felt the need.
With Guérin, Armande appears to have lived very happily, and even the author of La Fameuse Comédienne is compelled to recognise that her conduct was exemplary, though she hastens to qualify this reluctant admission by declaring that her second husband was a veritable tyrant, who brooked no opposition to his will and did not hesitate to enforce obedience by blows. All disinterested witnesses, however, concur in representing Guérin as an excellent man, and we see no reason to believe that the anonymous author comes anywhere nearer the truth here than in other portions of her history.
At Easter 1679, Armande and La Grange succeeded in persuading the famous tragédienne Mlle. de Champmeslé, who had been for nineteen years the mainstay of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to transfer her services to the Théâtre Guénégaud, Armande, with rare self-denial, ceding to the illustrious recruit the place which she herself had so long occupied. The defection of their great actress was a paralysing blow for the players of the Rue Mauconseil, and, coupled with the death of La Thorillière, which occurred shortly afterwards, rendered their position so precarious that, by a lettre de cachet dated October 21, 1680, Louis XIV. directed that they should join forces with the Théâtre Guénégaud; and the Comédie-Française was founded. Thus, of the three great troupes in existence at the time of Molière's death, his own alone survived, fortified by the ruin of their rivals.
Armande continued her career as an actress for some years longer, perhaps her most successful impersonation being that of a young Italian girl in a play called Le Parisien, written by the husband of Mlle. de Champmeslé. At the Easter recess of 1694, she retired from the stage, with a pension of one thousand livres. From that time we hear but little of her. She appears to have lived a very quiet and uneventful life, for the most part, at a charming country-house which she owned at Meudon, and which still exists, very much as the actress left it.[41] She died at Paris, in the Rue du Touraine, on November 30, 1700, at the age of fifty-eight.
Of Armande's three children by Molière only one survived their father, a daughter, Madeleine, who, at the age of twenty, much to her mother's disgust, eloped with a M. de Montalant, a middle-aged widower with several children. Making a virtue of necessity, Madame Guérin gave her consent to her daughter's marriage, and Madeleine and her husband subsequently resided at Auteuil, where the former died in 1723. She left no children.
By Guérin, Armande had a son, to whom she seems to have been intensely devoted. In 1698, at the age of twenty, this young man published an edition of the Mélicerte of Molière, which he had rendered into verse, preceded by an introduction, in which he mentioned that in the Guérin household the memory of the dramatist was held "in respect and veneration."