calumny, and acknowledging that I was an honest
women."[1]

This took place between 1653 and 1658, consequently only a few years
before the representation of Moliere's _Tartuffe_, who wrote the three
first acts in 1664. Everything leads us to believe that such
adventures were not rare at that period. Tartuffe, Orgon, and all the
other personages of this truly historical piece, are not abstract
beings, pure creations of art, like the heroes of Corneille or Racine;
they are real men, caught in the act, and taken from nature.

What strikes us in Mademoiselle de Bourignon's Flemish Tartuffe is his
patience to study and learn mysticism in order to speak its language;
and, again, his perseverance in associating himself for whole years
with the thoughts of the pious maiden.

If Moliere had not been confined in so narrow a frame, if his
_Tartuffe_ had had the time to prepare better his advances, if he had
been able (the thing was then, no doubt, too dangerous) to take the
cloak of Desmarets and Quietism in its birth, he might have advanced
still further in his designs without being discovered. Then he would
not in the very beginning have made to the person he wants to seduce
the very illogical confession, that he is a cheat. He would not have
ventured the expression, "If it be only heaven" (Act iv. scene 5).
Instead of unmasking abruptly this ugly corruption, he would have
varnished it over, and unveiled it by degrees. From one ambiguous
phrase to another, and by a cunning transition, he would have contrived
to make corruption take the appearance of perfection. Who knows? He
might perhaps at last have succeeded, like many others, in finding it
unnecessary to be a hypocrite any longer, and have finished by imposing
on himself, cheating and seducing himself into the belief that he was a
saint. It is then he would have been Tartuffe in the superlative
degree, being so not only for the world, but for himself, having
perfectly confounded within himself every ray of good, and reposing in
evil with a tranquillity secured by his ignorance, counterfeit at
first, but afterwards become natural.

[1] The two accounts given by Mademoiselle de Bourignon are abridged
and united. See at the end of Vol. I. of her OEuvres (Amsterdam,
1686), pp. 68-80, and pp. 188-197.

CHAPTER VII.

APPARITION OF MOLINOS, 1675.--HIS SUCCESS AT HOME.--FRENCH
QUIETISTS.--MADAME GUYON.--HER DIRECTOR.--THE TORRENTS.--MYSTIC
DEATH.--DO WE R