Tar. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the interest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself with them.
Elmire. The impostor!
Dor. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all that men revere!...
Tar. (to the Officer). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all this noise, and to act according to the orders you have received.
Officer. I have certainly put off too long the discharge of my duty, and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order, follow me immediately to the prison in which a place is assigned to you.
Tar. Who? I, sir?
Officer. Yes, you.
Tar. Why to prison?
Officer. To you I have no account to render. (To Orgon.) Pray, sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under a king [Louis XIV.] who is an enemy to fraud—a king who can read the heart, and whom all the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great mind, endowed with delicate discernment, at all times sees things in their true light.... He annuls, by his sovereign will, the terms of the contract by which you gave him [Tartuffe] your property. He moreover forgives you this secret offense in which you were involved by the flight of your friend. This to reward the zeal which you once showed for him in maintaining his rights, and to prove that his heart, when it is least expected, knows how to recompense a good action. Merit with him is never lost, and he remembers good better than evil.