Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/653

Rh MOLIERE 625 and a number of his biographers in our own day, have attempted to prove that Armande Bejard was not the sister, but the daughter of Madeleine, and even that Moliere s wife may have been his own daughter by Madeleine Bejard. The arguments of M. Arsene Houssaye in sup port of this abominable theory are based on reckless and ignorant confusions, and do not deserve criticism. But the system of M. Loiseleur is more serious, and he goes no further than the idea that Madeleine was the mother of Armande. This, certainly, was the opinion of tradition, an opinion based on the slanders of Montfleury, a rival of Moliere s, on the authority of the spiteful and anonymous author of La Fameuse Comedienne (1688), and on the no less libellous play, fllomire Hypochondre. In 1821 tradition received a shock, for Beffara then discovered Moliere s &quot; acte de mariage,&quot; in which Armande, the bride, is spoken of as the sister of Madeleine Bejard, by the same father and mother. The old scandal, or part of it, was revived by M. Fournier and M. Bazin, but received another blow in 1863. M. Soulie then discovered a legal document of 10th March 1643, in which the widow of Joseph Bejard renounced, in the name of herself and her children, his inheritancej chiefly a collection of unpaid bills. Now in this document all the children are described as minors, and among them is &quot; une petite non encore baptisee.&quot; This little girl, still not christened in March 1643, is universally recognized as the Armande Bejard afterwards married by Moliere. We reach this point, then, that when Armande was an infant she was acknowledged as the sister, not as the daughter, of Madeleine Bejard. M. Loiseleur refuses, how ever, to accept this evidence. Madeleine, says he, had already become the mother, in 1638, of a daughter by Esprit Raymond de Moirmoron, comte de Modene, and chamberlain of Gaston due d Orleans, brother of Louis XIII. In 1642 Modene, who had been exiled for political reasons, &quot; was certain to return, for Richelieu had just died, and Louis XIII. was likely to follow him.&quot; Now Madeleine was again this is M. Loiseleur s hypothesis about to become a mother, and if Modene returned, and learned this fact, he would not continue the liaison, still less would he marry her, which, by the way, he could not do, as his wife was still alive. Madeleine, therefore, induced her mother to acknowledge the little girl as her own child. In the first place, all this is pure unsupported hypothesis. In the second place, it has always been denied that Bejard s wife could have been a mother in 1643, owing to her advanced age, probably fifty-three. But M. Loise leur himself says that Marie Herve was young enough to make the story &quot; sufficiently probable.&quot; If it was probable, much more was it possible. M. Loiseleur supports his contention by pointing out that two of the other children, described as legally minors, were over twenty-five, and that their age was understated to make the account of Armande s birth more probable. Nothing is less likely than that Modene would have consulted this document to ascertain the truth about the parentage of Armande, yet M. Loise leur s whole theory rests on that extreme improbability. It must also be observed that the date of the birth of Joseph Bejard is unknown, and he may have been, and according to M. Jal (Dictionnaire Critique, p. 178) must have been, a minor when he was so described in the docu ment of 10th March 1643, while Madeleine had only passed her twenty-fifth birthday, her legal majority, by two months. This view of Joseph s age is supported by Bouquet (Moliere a Rouen, p. 77). M. Loiseleur s only other proof is that Marie Herve gave Armande a respectable dowry, and that, as we do not know whence the money came, it must have come from Madeleine. The tradition in Grimarest, which makes Madeleine behave en femme furieuse, when she heard of the marriage, is based on a juster appreciation of the character of women. It will be admitted, probably, that the reasons for supposing that Moliere espoused the daughter of a woman who had been his mistress (if she had been his mistress) are flimsy and inadequate. The affair of the dowry is insisted on by M. Livet (La Fameuse Comedienne, reprint of 1877, p. 143). But M. Livet explains the dowry by the hypothesis that Armande was the daughter of Madeleine and the comte de Modene, which exactly con tradicts the theory of M. Loiseleur, and is itself contra dicted by dates, at least as understood by M. Loiseleur. Such are the conjectures by which the foul calumnies of Moliere s enemies are supported in the essays of modern French critics. To return to the order of events, Moliere passed the year 1643 in playing with, and helping to manage, the Theatre Illustre. The company acted in various tennis- courts, with very little success. Moliere was actually arrested by the tradesman who supplied candles, and the company had to borrow money from one Aubrey to release their leader from the Grand Chatelet (13th August 1645). The process of turning a tennis-court into a theatre was somewhat expensive, even though no seats were provided in the pit. The troupe was for a short time under the protection of the due d Orleans, but his favours were not lucrative. The due de Guise, according to some verses printed in 1646, made Moliere a present of his cast-off wardrobe. But costume was not enough to draw the public to the tennis-court theatre of the Croix Noire, and empty houses at last obliged the Theatre Illustre to leave Paris at the end of 1646. &quot;Nul animal vivant n entra dans notre salle,&quot; says the author of the scurrilous play on Moliere, jZlomire Hypo chondre. But at that time some dozen travelling companies found means to exist in the provinces, and Moliere deter mined to play among the rural towns. The career of a strolling player is much the same at all times and in all countries. The Roman Comique of Scarron gives a vivid picture of the adventures and misadventures, the difficulty of transport, the queer cavalcade of horses, mules, and lumbering carts that drag the wardrobe and properties, the sudden metamorphosis of the tennis-court, where the balls have just been rattling, into a stage, the quarrels with local squires, the disturbed nights in crowded country inns, all the loves and wars of a troupe on the march. Perrault tells us what the arrangements of the theatre were in Moliere s early time. Tapestries were hung round the stage, and entrances and exits were made by struggling through the heavy curtains, which often knocked off the hat of the comedian, or gave a strange cock to the helmet of a warrior or a god. The lights were candles stuck in tin sconces at the back and sides, but luxury sometimes went so far that a chandelier of four candles was suspended from the roof. At intervals the candles were let down by a rope and pulley, and any one within easy reach snuffed them with his fingers. A flute and tambour, or two fiddlers, supplied the music. The highest prices were paid for seats in the dedans (cost of admission fivepence) ; for the privilege of standing up in the pit twopence-halfpenny was the charge. The doors were opened at one o clock, the curtain rose at two. The nominal director of the Theatre Illustre in the provinces was Du Fresne ; the most noted actors were Moliere, the Bejards, and Du Pare, called Gros Rene. It is extremely difficult to follow exactly the line of march of the company. They played at Bordeaux, for example, but the date of this performance, when Moliere (according to Montesquieu) failed in tragedy and was pelted, is variously given as 1644-45 (Trallage), 1647 (Loiseleur), 1648-58 (Lacroix). Perhaps the theatre prospered better else where than in Paris, where the streets were barricaded in YVT. _ -70