"At the age of seventeen I became attached to a young girl, to whom I owe the sort of life which I adopted. I was not uncomely then, I had a mild disposition and affectionate ways. The decorum which I noticed in the girl had drawn my attention to her beauty. I found in her, moreover, so much indifference to her charms, that I would have sworn she was ignorant of them. How simple minded I was at that time! What a pleasure, said I to myself, if I can win the love of a girl who does not care to have lovers, since she is beautiful without observing it, and hence is no coquette! I never left her without my affectionate surprise increasing at the sight of so many graces in a person who was not the more vain because of it. Were she seated or standing, speaking or walking, it always seemed to me that she was absolutely artless, and that she thought of nothing less than appearing to be what she was.
"One day in the country, when I had just left her, a forgotten glove caused me to retrace my steps to get it. I perceived the beauty in the distance, regarding herself in a mirror, and I noticed, to my great astonishment, that she was picturing herself to herself in all the phases in which, during our conversation, I had seen her face, and it turned out that the expressions of her countenance, which I had thought so unaffected, were, to name them correctly, only tricks; I judged from a distance that her vanity adopted certain ones, that it improved upon others; they were little ways that one might have noted down and that a woman might have learned like a musical air. I trembled for the risk which I should have run, if I had had the misfortune to experience again in good faith her deceptions, at the point of perfection to which her cleverness had carried them; but I had believed her natural, and had loved her only on that footing; so that my love ceased immediately, as if my heart had been only conditionally moved. She, in turn, perceived me in the mirror, and blushed. As for me, I entered laughing, and picking up my glove: 'Ah! mademoiselle, I beg your pardon,' I said to her, 'for having, up to this time, attributed to nature charms, the whole honour of which is due to your ingenuity alone.' 'What is the matter? What does this speech mean?' was her reply. 'Shall I speak to you more frankly?' I said to her: 'I have just seen the machinery of the Opera; it will still divert me, but it will touch me less.' Thereupon I went out, and it is from this adventure that there sprang up in me that misanthropy which has not left me, and which has caused me to pass my life in examining mankind, and in amusing myself with my reflexions."[13]
We could not have in miniature a more perfect sketch than this of the character of the man, with those peculiarities that were to make of him so original a writer, and little did Marivaux imagine that in the coquette of Limoges he "had seen the living and faithful image of his Muse,"[14] with all its archness, coquettishness, and ingenuity in style and expression. Marivaux had much of the feminine in his nature,—a rare intuition, a marked finesse in observation, an extreme sensitiveness with regard to his own and others' feelings, a dislike of criticism with a reluctance to reply to it, though never forgetting the attack, a certain timidity with men, a fondness for dress and luxury, an extreme love of conversation, generosity to the point of self-sacrifice, and a religious turn of mind in a sceptical century. His connection with the salons of Paris, where so much of his life was spent in the society of women, probably contributed largely to develop those traits that were doubtless innate.
With something of the coquette in his own nature, Marivaux had no patience with it in others. D'Alembert relates another incident, which will serve to show that not only affectation, but also everything that seemed to him too studied, received his condemnation. "One day, he went to see a man from whom he had received many letters, which were almost in his own style, and, which, as one may well imagine, had seemed to him very ingenious. Not finding him, he determined to wait. He noticed, by chance, on the desk of this man, the rough draughts of the letters which he had received from him, and which he supposed had been written off-hand. Here are rough draughts, said he, which do him no credit: henceforth, he may make minutes of his letters for whomsoever he likes, but he shall receive no more of mine. He left the house instantly, and never returned."[15]
At the age of eighteen[16] (1706), and shortly after leaving college, Marivaux made his début in literature as the result of a discussion in which he maintained that a comedy was not a difficult thing to write. Upon being challenged to prove his point, he set to work, and, a few days later, brought to the company a comedy in one act, entitled le Père prudent et équitable, ou Crispin l'heureux fourbe. It is the only one of Marivaux's comedies written in verse, which form of composition he adopted the better to test himself and to demonstrate his claim; but he took good care not to give to the public his comedy, "pour ne pas perdre en public," he said, "le pari qu'il avait gagné en secret,"[17] and it was not until nearly fifteen years later, when he had reached the age of thirty-two, that he entrusted a work to the stage. He did well to keep this comedy from the public, for it contained little that gave promise of genius, being juvenile in character, dull and faulty in versification, and largely, though poorly, imitated from Molière and Regnard.
It must have been shortly after this that Marivaux returned to Paris to continue his studies, and possibly to prepare himself for the life of a literary dilettante. His means were sufficient to enable him to indulge his taste in this way. Here we find him admitted to the salon of Mme. de Lambert, held in her famous apartments, situated at the corner of the rue Richelieu and the rue Colbert, and now replaced by a portion of the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was a rendezvous of select society on Wednesdays, and particularly of the literary set on Tuesdays, and among its habitués may be mentioned such men as Fontenelle, d'Argenson, Sainte- Aulaire, La Motte, and President Hénault. "It was," says Fontenelle, "with few exceptions, the only house which had preserved itself from the epidemic disease of gambling, the only one in which one met to converse reasonably and even with esprit upon occasion."[18] Its influence was inestimable upon literary questions of the time, and it might be considered almost as the antechamber of the French Academy. The envious dubbed it un bureau d'esprit, and its form of préciosité, lambertinage.
That Mme. de Lambert had a great influence in forming the mind of the young author no one can read his works and doubt. A "précieuse in the most flattering and most exact acceptation"[19] of the term, she promoted a similar turn of mind in Marivaux. His dislike for Molière may have received its encouragement from her, as she was never quite willing to forgive that great genius for his attack upon les femmes savantes. Marivaux, too, had, as Palissot expresses it, "un faible pour les précieuses,"[20] and for the author of those famous attacks, a contempt as unfeigned as absurd. The high moral character of his writings and his ideas on marriage and children may readily have found their origin with Mme. de Lambert.
Mme. de Tencin, to whose salon of the rue Saint-Honoré Marivaux was likewise welcomed, was as different a character from the kindly, serious, upright, and judicious Mme. de Lambert as can well be imagined, and it was only after the death of the latter, in 1733, that her salon was particularly brilliant. Her youth had been most disorderly. At an early age she had assumed the veil, but, through the efforts of her brother, the abbé de Tencin, and later cardinal, who, doubtless, saw in her a powerful factor for his own promotion, she obtained her secularization. Coming to Paris a short time before the death of Louis XIV, she was ready to welcome the gross immorality of the Regency, and, for personal advancement, entered into a series of liaisons with Prior, the friend of Lord Bolingbroke, René d'Argenson, the Regent himself, Dubois, and the Chevalier Destouches. The latter was the father of her son, whom she abandoned on the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond, and who, reared by a glazier's wife, became the celebrated d'Alembert. Another lover, Lafresnaye, whom she had induced to put all of his property in her name, shot himself, or was shot, at her house. Although imprisoned on suspicion at the Châtelet, and later at the Bastille, she soon gained her liberty by the intervention of powerful friends. That she could maintain her position in society as she did is a striking proof of its terribly corrupt condition. In her declining years she sought to veil the disorders of her youth by more serious pursuits, and gathered about her a number of literary spirits of whom she spoke as her bêtes or her ménagerie.
Marmontel gives the following description of the habitués of her salon and of the desire that pervaded all to show their wit: "L'auditoire était respectable. J'y vis rassemblés Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, le jeune Helvétius, Astruc, je ne sais qui encore, tous gens de lettres ou savants, et au milieu d'eux une femme d'un esprit et d'un sens profonds, mais qui, enveloppée dans son extérieur de bonhomie et de simplicité, avait plutôt l'air de la ménagère que de la maîtresse de la maison: c'était là Mme. de Tencin … je m'aperçus bientôt qu'on y arrivait préparé à jouer son rôle, et que l'envie d'entrer en scène n'y laissait pas toujours à la conversation la liberté de suivre son cours facile et naturel. C'était à qui saisirait le plus vite, et comme à la volée, le moment de placer son mot, son conte, son anecdote, sa maxime ou son trait léger et piquant; et, pour amener l'à-propos, on le tirait quelquefois d'un peu loin. Dans Marivaux, l'impatience de faire preuve de finesse et de sagacité perçait visiblement."[21]
Marivaux, in describing the feelings of Marianne upon being introduced into polite society at the home of Mme. Dorsin, makes an evident allusion to the salon of Mme. de Tencin, and shows how differently from Marmontel he regarded the spirit that marked those gatherings. As though to answer the latter's accusations, he exclaims: "On accuse quelquefois Ses gens d'esprit de vouloir briller; oh! il n'était pas question de cela ici." "Ce n'était point eux qui y mettaient de la finesse, c'était de la finesse qui s'y rencontrait; ils ne sentaient pas qu'ils parlaient mieux qu'on ne parle ordinairement; c'étaient seulement de meilleurs esprits que d'autres."[22] All that was said there, he adds, was uttered with so little effort, so naturally, so simply, and yet with so much brilliancy that one could see that it was a company of persons of exquisite taste and breeding. Society, as depicted here, was not "full of solemn and important trifles, difficult to learn, and, however ridiculous they are in themselves, necessary to be known under penalty of being ridiculous." [23] One was made to feel at home, and what one lacked in wit was supplemented by that of the company, without one's being made to feel that what he seemed to utter was not all his own.