intended him so great an honour." This fact, as has been well intimated by La Harpe, furnishes the best reply to Rousseau's invective.
The relations in which Molière stood with his wife at the time of the appearance of this comedy gave to the exhibition a painful interest. The levity and extravagance of this lady had for some time transcended even those liberal limits which were conceded at that day by the complaisance of a French husband, and they deeply affected the happiness of the poet. As he one day communicated the subject to his friend Chapelle, the latter strongly urged him to confine her person; a remedy much in vogue then for refractory wives, and one, certainly, if not more efficacious, at least more gallant than the "moderate flagellation" authorized by the English law, He remonstrated on the folly of being longer the dupe of her artifices, "Alas!" said the unfortunate poet to him, "you have never loved!"
A separation, however, was at length agreed upon, and it was arranged that, while both parties occupied the same house, they should never meet except at the theatre. The respective parts which they performed in this piece corresponded precisely with their respective situations; that of Célimène, a fascinating, capricious coquette, insensible to every remonstrance of her lover, and selfishly bent on the gratification of her own appetites; and that of Alceste, perfectly sensible of the duplicity of his mistress, whom he vainly hopes to reform, and no less so of the unworthiness of his own passion, from
