Phil. Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more beautiful.
Bél. (to Henriette). What! my niece, you listen to what has been read without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!
Hen. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a wit does not depend on our will.
Triss. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.
Hen. No. I do not listen.
Phil. Ah! Let us hear the epigram.
But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epigram. They will relish, however, a fragment taken from a subsequent part of the same protracted scene. The conversation has made the transition from literary criticism to philosophy, in Moliére’s time a fashionable study, rendered such by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande resents the limitations imposed upon her sex:
Arm. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the beauties of lace, or of a new brocade.
Bél. We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely proclaim our emancipation.