the piece on the night of its first representation, indignantly exclaimed, Ris donc, parterre! ris donc! "Laugh then, pit, if you will!" and immediately quitted the theatre.
Molière was not slow in avenging himself of these interested criticisms, by means of a little piece entitled La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, in which he brings forward the various objections made to his comedy, and ridicules them with unsparing severity, These objections appear to have been chiefly of a verbal nature, A few such familiar phrases as Tarte a la crême, Enfans par Corelle, &c., gave particular offence to the purists of that day, and, in the prudish spirit of French criticism, have since been condemned by Voltaire and La Harpe as unworthy of comedy, One of the personages introduced into the Critique is a marquis, who, when repeatedly interrogated as to the nature of his objections to the comedy, has no other answer to make than by his eternal Tarte a la crême. The Duc de Feuillade, a coxcomb of little brains but great pretension, was the person generally supposed to be here intended. The peer, unequal to an encounter of wits with his antagonist, resorted to a coarser remedy. Meeting Molière one day in the gallery at Versailles, he advanced as if to embrace him; a civility which the great lords of that day occasionally condescended to bestow upon their inferiors, As the unsuspecting poet inclined himself to receive the salute, the duke, seizing his head between his hands, rubbed it briskly against the buttons of his coat, repeating, at the same time,
