Molière was very favorably received by the Prince of Condé, who was holding the States of Languedoc. He next visited Grenoble and Rouen, and from the latter place came to Paris under the protection of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, who introduced him to Louis XIV. and the queen.

Molière obtained permission to open a theatre in the metropolis, and the guard-room in the old palace of the Louvre was first allotted him for that purpose. In 1660 it was changed for that in the Palais Poyal, and in 1665 he was placed in the service of the king. He continued to rise in reputation as a writer. The new pieces which he presented to the public became more perfect as he advanced in experience and observation. By the general consent of Europe, he is placed at the head of that genuine comedy which has for its subject the ridiculous in character and manners. His more serious compositions, and those written in verse, are, by his countrymen, esteemed his masterpieces, especially the "Misanthrope," and the "Tartuffe." The latter is a masterly exposure of religious hypocrisy, which brought upon him great clamor from the courtly pretenders to devotion, who had interest sufficient to procure from the Parliament a prohibition of its second representation. Some time after, the Italian comedians having performed a very licentious farce, entitled "Scaramouche Hermite," Louis, who had been a spectator of it with the Prince of Condé, remarked, "I should be glad to know the reason why those who are so much scandalized with Molière's play take no notice of this 'Scaramouche.' "Because," answered Condé, "the latter offends God alone; but the former offends the hypocrites." This temporary prohibition could not prevent the "Tartuffe" from taking its permanent place as one of the great ornaments of the French stage.

Some of Molière's comedies, such as "Le Malade Imaginaire," "Le Médecin Malgré Lui," "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" and "George Dandin," notwithstanding their liveliness, are chargeable with degenerating into broad farce. But his comedies, as a whole, though they do not support his fame at the extravagant height to which his countrymen have raised it, are yet fully sufficient to justify his rank as at once one of

the most brilliant and skillful of comic dramatists, and as the best that has written comedies on the formal French model. Such praise especially belongs to "L'École des Femmes," in which is his favorite character of Agnes; "Le Misanthrope" and "Le Tartuffe," already mentioned; "Les Femmes Savantes," in which groundless pretensions to learning are ridiculed with great force of humor.

In 1662 Molière married the daughter of the actress Béjart, who followed the same profession, and was but seventeen years of age. Her light-minded coquetry embittered his comfort, and he is said to have incurred the same ridicule that he so plentifully bestowed upon poor husbands in his comedies. It is remarkable that his death was the immediate consequence of his acting the principal part in his "Le Malade Imaginaire." He was laboring under a pulmonary complaint, and was strongly urged by his wife, and Baron, the actor, to defer the performance. "What," exclaimed Molière, "must then become of so many poor people who depend upon it for their bread? I should reproach myself for having neglected a single day to supply them with necessaries." He exerted himself on the stage with unusual spirit, and his efforts brought on the rupture of a blood-vessel, by which he was suffocated. This happened in February, 1673, when he was fifty-one years of age.

Harlai, the Archbishop of Paris, a man of loose morals, but desirous of pleasing the rigorists of the Church, refused the playwright and actor Christian burial, and the King's authority was requisite to procure him private interment in a chapel of the church of St. Eustache. The bigotry of the populace impeded even this obscure ceremonial; for they collected in great crowds before the door of his house and would not suffer the funeral to proceed till money had been thrown among them. Such was the treatment of a man who was an honor to his country, and who will ever rank among the principal ornaments of the age in which he lived. No one was more sensible of his merits than the great Condé, who said to a miserable rhymer, who brought him an epitaph on Molière, "Would to heaven he had presented me with thine !" Five years later the French Academy erected

Molière's bust, with the appropriate line from Saurin: "Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manquait à la nôtre.” "Nothing is wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.'

Molière's private character was, in many respects, estimable. He was kind, obliging and generous. Various instances of his liberality are mentioned, of which the following is, perhaps, a fair example. Having one day given to a beggar, by mistake, a piece of gold, which was at once returned to him by the poor man, "In what hole," said the poet, "is virtue going to hide herself? Here, my friend, here is another for your honesty!" Molière numbered among his personal friends not only men of wit, but some of the greatest courtiers of France. No one ever united more pleasantry in dialogue and incident with more good sense and penetration in selecting just subjects for comic satire, and seizing the true point of the ludicrous. In his department of the drama he was not only unsurpassed, but even unapproached.

"TARTUFFE" AND "THE MISANTHROPE.'
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"Le Tartuffe" has always been considered the masterpiece of Molière. In this play the author had undertaken a very difficult and delicate task; that of exposing the hypocrisy of those dangerous impostors who would make use of the outward forms of piety and religion to advance their fortunes in the world,-whose vindictive malice is the more to be feared in that they fight with weapons which in themselves command respect. Of such men there were but too many at the Court of Louis XIV.; and the time was to come when the king himself would give ear to the false teachers on whose tongues the words "les intérêts du ciel" were a formula under which they worked out their own evil designs of bigotry, intolerance and pride. The confounding of appearance with reality, the circulation of the false coinage of cant, for the true money of honest striving after virtue in life and action-fanaticism and hypocrisy quoting Scripture for a purpose, and pursuing vile and selfish ends under the cloak of holiness-such was the vice that Molière dared to drag into the daylight in this his greatest work.

The first three acts were written early in 1664, and first played in May of that year; and so startling was the effect, and so many were the remonstrances addressed to the king himself, on what was considered by the Tartuffes of the day the unwarrantable license of the writer, that Louis thought it best to avoid scandal by prohibiting the piece, which was accordingly "shelved" for a time. In another piece, "Le Festin de Pierre," the plot of which was afterwards used for Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Molière takes occasion to speak his mind against the hypocrites who moved heaven and earth to prevent the theatrical exposure they feared. "At the present day," says Don Juan, the cynical hero of the "Festin de Pierre," "the profession of a hypocrite has marvelous advantages. It is an art whose imposture is always respected; and though it may be found out, no one dares say anything against it. All other vices of mankind are exposed to censure, and every one has full license to attack them boldly; but hypocrisy is a privileged vice, whose hand shuts every one's mouth, and which therefore enjoys a sovereign impunity."

In the same year the piece was privately played before the king and several of the royal family at the Prince de Condé's. Louis had far too much discernment not to see through the selfishness that animated the violent faction against the piece and its author. Gradually the interdiction was removed, after several appeals by the author to the prince, and the opponents of the piece had the mortification to find, when the "Tartuffe" was at length represented in public, in 1667, that the delay, and the difficulties they had thrown in the way, had only made the Parisians more eager than ever to see it.

"Tartuffe," or the "Impostor," brings before us a group of thoroughly lifelike personages. There is the cheat himself, supple, wary, and sanctimonious; sour and starched of aspect towards the dependents such as Dorine, on whom he thinks he can easily make an impression; but assuming an appearance of pious resignation and unmerited suffering in the presence of his patron, Orgon, whom he dupes most egregiously. "I must needs mortify myself," is his pious ejaculation, when he is called upon to accept the nomination as heir to all his patron's property; the son of Orgon, Damis,