of
play-goers of your date might cry, could they see him, that Moliere had
come again. But, with all respect to the efforts of the fair, I doubt if
Mdlle. Barthet, or Mdme. Croizette herself, would reconcile the town
to the loss of the fair De Brie, and Madeleine, and the first, the true
Celimene, Armande. Yet had you ever so merry a _soubrette_ as Mdme.
Samary, so exquisite a Nicole?

Denounced, persecuted, and buried hugger-mugger two hundred years ago,
you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more servility
and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than you may
approve. Are not the Molieristes a body who carry adoration to
fanaticism? Any scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), any
anecdote even remotely touching on your life, any fact that may prove
your house was numbered 15 not 22, is eagerly seized and discussed by
your too minute historians. Concerning your private life, these men
often write more like malicious enemies than friends; repeating the
fabulous scandals of Le Boulanger, and trying vainly to support them by
grubbing in dusty parish registers. It is most necessary to defend you
from your friends--from such friends as the veteran and inveterate M.
Arsene Houssaye, or the industrious but puzzle-headed M. Loiseleur.
Truly they seek the living among the dead, and the immortal Moliere
among the sweepings of attorneys' offices. As I regard them (for I
have tarried in their tents) and as I behold their trivialities--the
exercises of men who neglect Molieres works to write about Moliere's
great-grandmother's second-best bed--I sometimes wish that Moliere
were here to write on his devotees a new comedy, 'Les Molieristes.' How
fortunate were they, Monsieur, who lived and worked with you, who saw
you day by day, who were attached, as Lagrange tells us, by the kindest
loyalty to the best and most honourable of men, the most open-handed in
friendship, in charity the most delicate, of the heartiest sympathy! Ah,
that for one day I could behold you, writing in the study, rehearsing
on the stage, musing in the lace-seller's shop, strolling through the
Palais, turning over the new books at Billaine's, dusting your ruffles
among the old volumes on the sunny stalls. Would that, through the
ages, we could hear you after supper, merry with Boileau, and with
Racine,--not yet a traitor,--laughing over Chapelain, combining to gird
at him in an epigram, or mocking at Cotin, or talking your favour