xample of misanthropy; whereas Alceste is only a
misanthrope of the circle he finds himself placed in: he has a touching
faith in the virtue residing in the country, and a critical love of sweet
simpleness. Nor is he the principal person of the comedy to which he
gives a name. He is only passively comic. Celimene is the active
spirit. While he is denouncing and railing, the trial is imposed upon
her to make the best of him, and control herself, as much as a witty
woman, eagerly courted, can do. By appreciating him she practically
confesses her faultiness, and she is better disposed to meet him half-way
than he is to bend an inch: only she is _une ame de vingt ans_, the world
is pleasant, and if the gilded flies of the Court are silly,
uncompromising fanatics have their ridiculous features as well. Can she
abandon the life they make agreeable to her, for a man who will not be
guided by the common sense of his class; and who insists on plunging into
one extreme--equal to suicide in her eyes--to avoid another? That is the
comic question of the Misanthrope. Why will he not continue to mix with
the world smoothly, appeased by the flattery of her secret and really
sincere preference of him, and taking his revenge in satire of it, as she
does from her own not very lofty standard, and will by and by do from his
more exalted one?

Celimene is worldliness: Alceste is unworldliness. It does not quite
imply unselfishness; and that is perceived by her shrewd head. Still he
is a very uncommon figure in her circle, and she esteems him, _l'homme
aux rubans verts_, 'who sometimes diverts but more often horribly vexes
her,' as she can say of him when her satirical tongue is on the run.
Unhappily the soul of truth in him, which wins her esteem, refuses to be
tamed, or silent, or unsuspicious, and is the perpetual obstacle to their
good accord. He is that melancholy person, the critic of everybody save
himself; intensely sensitive to the faults of others, wounded by them; in
love with his own indubitable honesty, and with his ideal of the simpler
form of life befitting it: qualities which constitute the satirist. He
is a Jean Jacques of the Court. His proposal to Celimene when he pardons
her, that she should follow him in flying humankind, and his frenzy of
detestation of her at her refusal, are thoroughly in the mood of Jean
Jacques. He is an impracticable creature of a priceless virtue; but
Celimene may feel that to fly with