Queens of the French Stage

In the Misanthrope, Molière has given to Célimène all the coquetry, the egoism, and the caustic wit which belonged to Armande; to his own rôle all the weakness of a high-minded man struggling vainly against his passion for an unworthy object. "The love I bear for her," says Alceste-

There are moments indeed in the play when it almost ceases to belong to the realm of fiction. The scene, for instance, in the fourth act, when Alceste, holding in his hand the proof of Célimène's perfidy, the letter written by her to his rival, Oronte, calls upon her "to justify herself at least of a crime that overwhelms him," and to do her best to appear faithful, while he, on his side, will do his best to believe her such; and Célimène tartly refuses-

may well have had its parallel in their own lives. And few, again, can doubt the sincerity with which the lover must have uttered the lines-

"We might well say without exaggeration of this Célimène," remarks August Wilhelm von Schlegel,[20] "that there is not a single good point in her whole composition." This may be so; but, as M. Larroumet is careful to point out, there is really nothing in the Misanthrope which gives us the right to assume that Armande was anything worse than an incorrigible coquette. "Célimène is impeccable; she has neither heart nor feeling."[21] Nor do the remainder of Molière's plays furnish any fresh proof against Armande; they, on the contrary, strengthen the impression that, while he suffered much from his wife's character, he never believed her to have been guilty of anything which might affect his honour.

This impression seems to have been that of the poet's contemporaries. Molière had, as we know, many enemies-unscrupulous enemies, who did not hesitate to launch against him the most hideous of accusations. We can hardly doubt that had there been any reasonable ground for believing Armande guilty of something more than coquetry, the Montfleurys, Le Boulanger de Chalussay and the rest, would have been only too ready to avail themselves of such an opportunity of humiliating the man whom they so bitterly hated. Yet though, like all the rest of the world, they were aware of Molière's jealous nature, and made this weakness the object of their unsparing ridicule, none of them went so far as to accuse him of being that which he appears to have been in incessant dread of becoming. At most, their works contain only vague hints and insinuations, to which little or no attention seems to have been paid; and it is probable that Armande's name would have gone down to posterity without any very serious stain upon it, had she not chanced to be made the victim of one of the most audacious and malignant libels ever penned.

Among the swarm of scurrilous brochures, fictitious histories, and stupid romances in the French language which issued from the foreign press during the decade which followed the Protestant emigration of 1685, was a little book, or rather pamphlet, written for the delectation of those persons who are always ready to welcome anything calculated to gratify their curiosity about the private affairs of stage celebrities. This book, published anonymously at Frankfort, in 1688, by one Rottenberg, a bookseller who made a speciality of such sensational works,[22] bore the title of La Fameuse Comédienne, ou Histoire de la Guérin, Guérin being the name of Armande Béjart's second husband, whom she married in 1677. Although the demand for it was considerable, and five editions were printed within ten years of the date of its publication, the charges against Armande which it contained do not appear to have been taken very seriously, except among the class of readers for whom it was written, until, in 1697, it occurred to Bayle, who had a weakness for piquant anecdotes about notable persons, to include certain passages in his famous Dictionary, since which few of the biographers of Molière have failed to borrow more or less freely from its pages, with most unfortunate results to the reputation of the dramatist's wife.

The authorship of the Fameuse Comédienne remains a mystery to this day, though contemporary gossip, or historians in search of some new sensation, have attributed it successively to a number of persons: La Fontaine, Racine, Chapelle, Blot, the chansonnier of the Fronde, Rosimont, an actor of the Rue Guénégaud, Mlle. Guyot, a member of the same company, and Mlle. Boudin, a provincial actress, who would appear to have been at one time on terms of intimacy with Armande. With regard to the first five of these suppositions, we will merely remark that neither La Fontaine, Racine, nor Chapelle were capable of committing such an infamy; that Blot had been in his grave more than thirty years at the time of the publication of the libel ascribed to him, and that the chief argument advanced by M. Charles Livet, the editor of the latest edition of the Fameuse Comédienne, in favour of Rosimont, namely, a resemblance between the style of the book and a theological work entitled La Vie des Saints, which he published in 1680, seems to us too fanciful to merit any serious consideration. In the cases of Mesdemoiselles Guyot and Boudin, there is again a total absence of anything like adequate proof; nevertheless, though they are both in all probability guiltless, strong grounds exist for believing the book to be the work of one of Armande's professional rivals, as the intimate acquaintance with theatrical life which it reveals precludes all doubt as to the vocation of the writer; while the preponderating place it allots to women, the manner in which it speaks of men, the jealous hatred which inspires it, the finesse of some of its remarks, its style and method, all denote a feminine hand.[23]

Atrocious libel though the Fameuse Comédienne undoubtedly is, it is very far from destitute of that literary merit in which even the works of the most obscure writers of the great epoch of French prose are seldom lacking, and, moreover, contains not a little interesting and authentic information about the public career of Molière and his wife. But that is all that can be said in its favour. "Possessed," remarks M. Larroumet, "by a ferocious hatred against Armande, hatred of the woman and the actress, the writer has only one object-to render her odious. What she knows of the actions of her enemy she perverts or, at any rate, exaggerates; what she does not know she invents. He who wishes to injure a man attributes to him acts of indecency or cowardice; he who wishes to injure a woman gives her lovers; these are the surest means. Thus our author makes of Armande a Messalina, and a Messalina of the baser sort, one who sells her favours."

Unfortunately for the object which the libeller has in view, she does not content herself with general charges; she makes formal accusations, which she endeavours to substantiate, and the book abounds in letters, conversations, details about matters which could not possibly have been known, save to the parties immediately concerned, with the result that her attack fails miserably, and the judicious reader very speedily perceives that the work is nothing but a collection of scandalous anecdotes, which, when not controverted by positive facts, sin grievously against probability.

However, as all readers are not judicious, and as the book has imposed on several historians of deservedly high reputation,[24] it may be as well for us, in the interests of truth, to follow the example of M. Bazin and M. Larroumet, and devote some little space to an examination of the charges which have brought so much unmerited odium upon the memory of Armande Béjart.

The first lover attributed to Armande is the Abbé de Richelieu, great-nephew of the famous cardinal, a gentleman of a very gallant disposition, with a marked predilection for actresses: "There was no one at the Court who did not endeavour to...