r existence by assuming that the public is meant for them:
now, this is just the illusion that lies at the root of solemnity.
Almost everything comic in Moliere's doctors comes from this source.
They treat the patient as though he had been made for the doctors, and
nature herself as an appendage to medicine.

Another form of this comic rigidity is what may be called PROFESSIONAL
CALLOUSNESS. The comic character is so tightly jammed into the rigid
frame of his functions that he has no room to move or to be moved like
other men. Only call to mind the answer Isabelle receives from Perrin
Dandin, the judge, when she asks him how he can bear to look on when
the poor wretches are being tortured: Bah! cela fait toujours passer
une heure ou deux.

[Footnote: Bah! it always helps to while away an hour or two.]

Does not Tartuffe also manifest a sort of professional callousness when
he says--it is true, by the mouth of Orgon: Et je verrais mourir frere,
enfants, mere et femme, Que je m'en soucierais autant que de cela!

[Footnote: Let brother, children, mother and wife all die, what should
I care!]

The device most in use, however, for making a profession ludicrous is
to confine it, so to say, within the four corners of its own particular
jargon. Judge, doctor and soldier are made to apply the language of
law, medicine and strategy to the everyday affairs of life, as though
they had became incapable of talking like ordinary people. As a rule,
this kind of the ludicrous is rather coarse. It becomes more refined,
however, as we have already said, if it reveals some peculiarity of
character in addition to a professional habit. We will instance only
Regnard's Joueur, who expresses himself with the utmost originality in
terms borrowed from gambling, giving his valet the name of Hector, and
calling his betrothed Pallas, du nom connu de la Dame de Pique;
[Footnote: Pallas, from the well-known name of the Queen of Spades.] or
Moliere's Femmes savantes, where the comic element evidently consists
largely in the translation of ideas of a scientific nature into terms
of feminine sensibility: "Epicure me plait..." (Epicurus is charming),
"J'aime les tourbillons" (I dote on vortices), etc. You have only to
read the third act to find that Armande, Philaminte and Belise almost
invariably express themselves in this style.

Proceeding further in the same direction, we discover that there is
also such a thing as a professional logic, i.e. cer