Molière’s life, apart from its work, was more than incomplete; it was a cruel one. The wife he had chosen, Madeleine Béjârt, the daughter of an actress of his company, was a silly, ignorant little coquette, in no way worthy of him, and constantly giving him cause for jealousy.
On the production of Tartufe, the plaudits rang again and again from floor to ceiling. Veluti in speculum. The cap fitted many heads so admirably, so entirely, that the comedy created the author a host of enemies among the bigots and the hypocrites whom his satire so vigorously lashed. Orgon, who has seen at church a young man who conducts himself with such a devout air that he believes in its genuineness, and receives him into his own family, which he neglects in his great admiration for Tartufe. He is on the point even of proposing to give him his daughter in marriage, when, hidden under a table, concealed by a deep, trailing tablecloth, he overhears his protégé’s declaration of passion for Elmire, his own wife. “Mais, madame, après tout, je ne suis pas un ange,” says Tartufe. The scene is inimitable, with its crowning picture of Orgon’s face of mingled rage and smiling satisfaction, peering up from the folds of the tablecloth at the discomfited scoundrel, whom he forthwith turns out of the house. Tartufe’s endeavour to circumvent Orgon only brings condign punishment on the impostor, who is sent to expiate his misdeeds in prison. Shallow pretence and profession of piety, shibboleths the world has always with it; and the truth of the picture struck home with such a shock, that the piece ran in perilous risk of being condemned. The king, however, commanded a representation of it at Versailles. “Le roi le veut, and unfading laurels crown Tartufe.”
Louis was delighted with this comedy; although it had been Mazarin’s deplorable policy to leave his higher intelligence and taste so little cultivated, these were naturally capable of appreciating the wit and humour of Molière’s work, and it formed a shield of protection against the dramatist’s many bitter enemies. The king gave him a pension from his own private purse, and Molière was an honoured guest at his table. The money accruing from his own labour, alone brought competence. He had a country house at Auteuil, where he entertained many distinguished persons, and found a little rest from the arduous demands of his profession. The Prince de Condé also took great delight in his society. Many a munificent act to youthful or struggling efforts of genius the popular and admired dramatist and comedian performed in secret, and ever without ostentation. Perhaps but for him Racine would never have been heard of. The poet was nineteen when Molière encouraged him to carry through his Thêagène et Chariclée, a piece too weak for stage production, but for which Molière made him a present of a hundred louis, and further gave him the scenario for Les Frères Ennemis.
The actor Baron was another star in the dramatic firmament owing its brilliancy to Molière. Baron, like Garrick, excelled in both tragedy and comedy; and Molière loved him as if he had been his own son. One day Baron pleaded with him for a poor country actor, who wanted enough money to take him to rejoin his troupe. He was an old fellow-comedian of Molière’s; his name was Mondorge. “How much does he require?” asked Molière. Baron thought four pistoles would meet the case. “Give him four pistoles from me then,” said Molière, “and here are twenty besides, which you can say are from you.” To this he added a handsome suit of clothes; and in such ways shone the worth of the actor-dramatist in a naughty world.
It was Molière who exclaimed—“Où la vertu, va-t’-elle se nicher?” one day, when he gave alms to some poor creature, and the man, finding it to be a louis d’or, thought that it had been given in mistake, and ran after him to give it back.
The Duchesse de Montpensier, who had inherited the palace of the Luxembourg from her father, was now spending some months in it, chiefly occupied in endeavouring to bring the king to consent to her marriage with Monsieur de Lauzun. She invited Ninon to go and stay with her, and in all good faith, and unsuspicious of any special significance attaching to the visit, Ninon went; and as far as Mademoiselle was concerned, no treachery was intended. Nevertheless, the duchesse had been drawn into a deep-laid scheme for humbling Ninon to the dust, by trying to make her the means of bringing her to draw her own daughter into the ways of life which she herself had followed, but from which, more and more as time passed, the sense of its evil revolted her. Sixteen years had flown since she had lost sight of the child; after making but a half-hearted endeavour to find it. The whirl of gaiety and excitement in which she was then living, had quickly dragged her back into its vortex; but Madame de Fiesque, though she had affected ignorance, knew where the young girl was, and artfully cultivating herself into the graces of La Grande Mademoiselle, she had now contrived to introduce her into the palace, in the guise of a young female dependant, of whom she made a sort of humble companion or waiting-maid. The girl was evidently as unhappy as she certainly was very beautiful; and Ninon, interested and touched with pity for her, entered into conversation with her, which elicited the fact that she had a lover—one, however, so far above her in station, that any honourable alliance was not to be dreamed of, for all the young girl’s heart was pure, and young Monsieur de Perceval was no profligate. Finding that it was intended, or rather said to be intended, that a marriage was to be effected between Clotilde and one of the palace cooks, Ninon took her under her protection and shelter to the rue des Tournelles. This was precisely falling in with the designs of Madame de Fiesque, whose idea was that Ninon would lead Clotilde, ignorant of who she was, into the free courses of living she herself had followed, and indeed still followed; but herein lay the mistake of Madame de Fiesque. Little by little, suspicion that Clotilde was no other than her own daughter grew to certainty; and that the girl should be exposed to, or made the victim of, the many miseries and evils underlying the glitter of her own career, was the one thing the bitterly-repenting mother determined should never be. And she devised a counterplot, which she confided to the Duchesse de Montpensier, who warmly lent her countenance to its carrying out. Monsieur de Perceval was a relative of Madame de Montausier, whose sincere friendship for Ninon, her sympathy with her in the distress of mind she was suffering, and lastly, and perhaps not least, the splendid dot of the Loches estate, worth 300,000 livres, which Ninon was prepared to bestow on Clotilde, smoothed the way to the marriage of the two lovers. They were wedded quietly, and then travelled abroad for two years; so that the plotters found no chance of interfering with their happiness. As to who Clotilde really was, those interested were content with the supposition that she was some connexion of an illustrious family, about whom it was nobody’s affair to inquire more nearly. From time to time in after years Ninon saw Clotilde again, but she put a strong curb on her natural feelings, and never disclosed her identity.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Disastrous Wooing—Fénelon—“Mademoiselle de L’Enclos”—The Pride that had a Fall—The Death of the Duchesse d’Orléans—Intrigue—The Sun-King and the Shadows—The Clermont Scholar’s Crime—Monsieur de Montespan—Tardy Indignation—The Encounter—The Filles Répenties—What the Cards Foretold.
The episode of Clotilde could but forcibly remind Ninon of the son whom his father, Monsieur de Gersay, had taken away so shortly after his birth, to rear as his own exclusively, but of whom, unlike Clotilde, she had not entirely lost traces. On the contrary, she knew that the Marquis de Gersay lived the most of his time on his own estates in Brittany, and that therefore Charles, as the child had been named, was likely to be with him; and Ninon wrote to the marquis, begging for some intelligence of the young man—for he was now two-and-twenty. De Gersay informed her that he had taken the necessary steps for legitimatising him, and that he was called the Chevalier de Villiers. He added that the secret of his birth was entirely unknown to the young man, who was a fine, handsome fellow, and very amiable and intelligent, only needing to rub off the little corners of his provincial rearing to be perfection. The marquis added that it would please him very well to bring him to Paris and introduce him into the circle of Ninon’s friends, so famous for its refinement and elegance; but it was on the condition that the origin of his birth should be religiously concealed.