Tarte à la crême, Monsieur, tarte à la créme. 'The king, on receiving intelligence of this aflront, was highly indignant, and reprimanded the dake with great asperity. He, at the same time, encouraged Molière to defend himself with his own weapous; a privilege of which he speedily availed himself, in a caustic little satire in one act, entitled Jmpromptu de Versailles, “The marquis,” he says in this piece, “is nowadays the droll (le plaisant) of the comedy ; and as our ancestors always introdaced a jester to furnish mirth for the audience, so we must have re- course to some ridiculous marquis to divert them.”
It is obvious that Molière could never have main- tained this independent attitude if he had not been protected by the royal favour. Indeed, Louis was constant in giving him this protection; and when, soon after this period, the character of Molière was blackened by the vilest imputations, the monarch testified his conviction of his innocence by publicly standing godfather to his child—a tribute of respect equally honourable to the prinee and the poet. ‘The king, moreover, granted him a pension of a thousand livres annually; and to his company, which hence- forth took the title of “comedians of the king,” a pension of seven thousand. Oar author received his pension, as one of a long list of men of letters, who experienced a similar bounty from the royal hand. The curious estimate exhibited in this document of the relative merits of these literary stipendiaries af- fords a striking evidence that the decrees of contem- poraries are not unirequently to be reversed by pos-
