Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/95

 MOLIERE , We do not reckon it any great temptation to Moliere that the Academy should have opened its arms to receive him, under condition that he would aban- don the profession of an actor ; but the reason which he assigned for declining to purchase the honor at the rate proposed is worthy of being mentioned. " What can induce you to hesitate ? " said Boileau, charged by the Academicians with the negotiation. " A point of honor," replied Moliere. " Now," answered his friend, " what honor can lie in blacking your face with mustachios and assuming the burlesque disguise of a buffoon, in order to be cudgelled on a public stage ?" " The point of honor," answered Moliere, " consists in my not deserting more than a hundred persons, whom my personal exertions are necessary to support." The Academy afterward did honor to themselves and justice to Moliere by plac- ing his bust in their hall, with this tasteful and repentant inscription : " Nothing is wanting to the glory of Moliere. Moliere was wanting to ours ! " That Moliere alleged no false excuse for continuing on the stage, was evi- dent when, in the latter years of his life, his decaying health prompted him strongly to resign. He had been at all times of a delicate constitution, and liable to pulmonary affections, which were rather palliated than cured by submission during long intervals to a milk diet, and by frequenting the country, for which purpose he had a villa at Auteuil, near Paris. The malady grew more alarming from time to time, and the exertions of voice and person required by the profes- sion tended to increase its severity. On February 17, 1673, he became worse than usual. Baron, an actor of the highest rank and of his own training, joined with the rest of the company in remonstrating against their patron going on in the character of Argan. Moliere answered them in the same spirit which dic- tated his reply to Boileau. " There are fifty people," he said, " who must want their daily bread, if the spectacle is put off. I should reproach myself with their distress if I suffered them to -sustain such a loss, having the power to prevent it" He acted accordingly that evening, but suffered most cruelly in the task of disguising his sense of internal pain. A singular contrast it was betwixt the state of the actor and the fictitious character which he represented. Moliere was disguising his real and, as it proved, his dying agonies, in order to give utterance and interest to the feigned or fancied complaints of Le Malade Imaginaire, and repressing the voice of mortal sufferance to affect that of an imaginary hypo- chondriac. At length, on arriving at the concluding interlude, in which, assent- ing to the oath administered to him as the candidate for medical honors in the mock ceremonial, by which he engages to adminster the remedies prescribed by the ancients, whether right or wrong, and never to use any other than those ap- proved by the college, as Moliere, in the character of Argan, replied, "Juro," the faculty had a full and fatal revenge. The wheel was broken at the cistern- he had fallen in a convulsive fit. The entertainment was hurried to a conclu- sion, and Moliere was carried home. ' His cough returned with violence, and he was found to have burst a blood-vessel. A priest was sent for, and two scrupu- lous ecclesiastics of Saint Eustace's parish distinguished themselves by refusing