by Molière
CÉLIMÈNE. How you weary me with such a whim! Is there any justice in what you ask? And have I not told you what motive prevents me? I will be judged by Éliante, who is just coming.
SCENE III.
ÉLIANTE, PHILINTE, CÉLIMÈNE, ORONTE, ALCESTE.
CÉLIMÈNE. Good cousin, I am being persecuted here by people who have concerted to do so. They both demand, with the same warmth, that I should declare whom my heart has chosen, and that, by a decision which I must give before their very faces, I should forbid one of them to tease me any more with his attentions. Say, has ever such a thing been done?
ÉLIANTE. Pray, do not consult me upon such a matter. You may perhaps address yourself to a wrong person, for I am decidedly for people who speak their mind.
ORONTE. Madam, it is useless for you to decline.
ALCESTE. All your evasions here will be badly supported.
ORONTE. You must speak, you must, and no longer waver. ALCESTE. You need do no more than remain silent.
ORONTE. I desire but one word to end our discussions.
ALCESTE. To me your silence will convey as much as speech.
SCENE IV
ARSINOÉ, CÉLIMÈNE, ÉLIANTE, ALCESTE, PHILINTE, ACASTE, CLITANDRE, ORONTE.
ACASTE. [To CÉLIMÈNE] We have both come, by your leave, Madam, to clear up a certain little matter with you.
CLITANDRE. [To ORONTE and ALCESTE] Your presence happens fortunately, gentlemen; for this affair concerns you also.
ARSINOÉ. [To CÉLIMÈNE] No doubt you are surprised at seeing me here, Madam; but these gentlemen are the cause of my intrusion. They both came to see me, and complained of a proceeding which I could not have credited. I have too high an opinion of your kindness of heart ever to believe you capable of such a crime; my eyes even have refused to give credence to their strongest proofs, and in my friendship, forgetting trivial disagreements, I have been induced to accompany them here, to hear you refute this slander.
ACASTE. Yes, Madam, let us see, with composure, how you will manage to bear this out. This letter has been written by you, to Clitandre.
CLITANDRE. And this tender epistle you have addressed to Acaste.
ACASTE. [To ORONTE and ALCESTE] This writing is not altogether unknown to you, gentlemen, and I have no doubt that her kindness has before now made you familiar with her hand. But this is well worth the trouble of reading.
“You are a strange man to condemn my liveliness of spirits, and to reproach me that I am never so merry as when I am not with you. Nothing could be more unjust; and if you do not come very soon to ask my pardon for this offence, I shall never forgive you as long as I live. Our great hulking booby of a Viscount . . .” He ought to have been here. “Our great hulking booby of a Viscount, with whom you begin your complaints, is a man who would not at all suit me; and ever since I watched him for full three-quarters of an hour spitting in a well to make circles in the water, I never could have a good opinion of him. As for the little Marquis . . . ” that is myself, ladies and gentlemen, be it said without the slightest vanity, . . . “as for the little Marquis, who held my hand yesterday for a long while, I think that there is nothing so diminutive as his whole person, and his sole merit consists in his cloak and sword. As to the man with the green shoulder knot ...” [To ALCESTE] It is your turn now, sir. “As to the man with the green shoulder knot, he amuses me sometimes with his bluntness and his splenetic behavior; but there are hundreds of times when I think him the greatest bore in the world. Respecting the man with the big waistcoat...” [To ORONTE] This is your share. “Respecting the man with the big waistcoat, who has thought fit to set up as a wit, and wishes to be an author in spite of everyone, I cannot even take the trouble to listen to what he says; and his prose bores me just as much as his poetry. Take it for granted that I do not always enjoy myself so much as you think; and that I wish for you, more than I care to say, amongst all the entertainments to which I am dragged; and that the presence of those we love is an excellent relish to our pleasures.”
CLITANDRE. Now for myself.
“Your Clitandre, whom you mention to me, and who has always such a quantity of soft expressions at his command, is the last man for whom I could feel any affection. He must be crazed in persuading himself that I love him; and you are so too in believing that I do not love you. You had better change your fancies for his, and come and see me as often as you can, to help me in bearing the annoyance of being pestered by him.”
This shows the model of a lovely character, Madam; and I need not tell you what to call it. It is enough. We shall, both of us, show this admirable sketch of your heart everywhere and to everybody.
ACASTE. I might also say something, and the subject is tempting; but I deem you beneath my anger; and I will show you that little marquises can find worthier hearts than yours to console themselves.
SCENE V.
CÉLIMÈNE, ELIANTE, ARSINOT, ALCESTE, ORONTE, PHILINTE.
ORONTE. What! Am I to be pulled to pieces in this fashion, after all that you have written to me? And does your heart, with all its semblance of love, plight its faith to all mankind by turns! Bah, I have been too great a dupe, but I shall be so no longer. You have done me a service, in showing yourself in your true colors to me. I am the richer by a heart which you thus restore to me, and find my revenge in your loss. [To ALCESTE] Sir, I shall no longer be an obstacle to your flame, and you may settle matters with this lady as soon as you please.
SCENE VI.
CÉLIMÈNE, ÉLIANTE, ARSINOÉ, ALCESTE, PHILINTE.
ARSINOÉ. [To CÉLIMÈNE] This is certainly one of the basest actions which I have ever seen; I can no longer be silent, and feel quite upset. Has any one ever seen the like of it? I do not concern myself much in the affairs of other people, but this gentleman [pointing to ALCESTE], who has staked the whole of his happiness on you, an honorable and deserving man like this, and who worshipped you to madness, ought he to have been ...
ALCESTE. Leave me, I pray you, Madam, to manage my own affairs; and do not trouble yourself unnecessarily. In vain do I see you espouse my quarrel. I am unable to repay you for this great zeal; and if ever I intended to avenge myself by choosing some one else, it would not be you whom I would select.
ARSINOÉ. And do you imagine, sir, that I ever harbored such a thought, and that I am so very anxious to secure you? You must be very vain, indeed, to flatter yourself with such an idea. Célimène’s leavings are a commodity, of which no one needs be so very much enamored. Pray, undeceive yourself, and do not carry matters with so high a hand. People like me are not for such as you. You will do much better to remain dangling after her skirts, and I long to see so beautiful a match.
SCENE VII.
CÉLIMÈNE, ÉLIANTE, ALCESTE, PHILINTE.
ALCESTE. [To CÉLIMÈNE] Well! I have held my tongue, notwithstanding all I have seen, and I have let everyone have his say before me. Have I controlled myself long enough? and will you now allow me . . .
CÉLIMÈNE. Yes, you may say what you like; you are justified when you complain, and you may reproach me with anything you please. I confess that I am in the wrong; and overwhelmed by confusion I do not seek by any idle excuse to palliate my fault. The anger of the others I have despised; but I admit my guilt towards you. No doubt, your resentment is just; I know how culpable I must appear to you, that everything speaks of my treachery to you and that, in short, you have cause to hate me. Do so, I consent to it.
ALCESTE. But can I do so, you traitress? Can I thus get the better of all my tenderness for you? And although I wish to hate you with all my soul, shall I find a heart quite ready to obey me? [To ÉLIANTE and PHILINTE] You see what an unworthy passion can do, and I call you both as witnesses of my infatuation. Nor, truth to say, is this all, and you will see me carry it out to the bitter end, to show you that it is wrong to call us wise, and that in all hearts there remains still something of the man. [To CÉLIMÈNE] Yes, perfidious creature, I am willing to forget your crimes. I can find, in my own heart, an excuse for
all your doings, and hide them under the name of a weakness into which the vices of the age betrayed your youth, provided your heart will second the design which I have formed of avoiding all human creatures, and that you are determined to follow me without delay into the solitude in which I have made a vow to pass my days. It is by that only, that, in everyone’s opinion, you can repair the harm done by your letters, and that, after the scandal which every noble heart must abhor, it may still be possible for me to love you.
CÉLIMÈNE. What! I renounce the world before I grow old, and bury myself in your wilderness!
ALCESTE. If your affection responds to mine what need the rest of the world signify to you? Am I not sufficient for you?
CÉLIMÈNE. Solitude is frightful to a widow of twenty. I do not feel my mind sufficiently grand and strong to resolve to adopt such a plan. If the gift of my hand can satisfy your wishes, I might be induced to tie such bonds; and marriage . . .
ALCEST. No. My heart loathes you now, and this refusal alone effects more than all the rest. As you are not disposed, in those sweet ties, to find all in all in me, as I would find all in all in you, begone, I refuse your offer, and this much-felt outrage frees me for ever from your unworthy toils.
SCENE VIII.
ÉLIANTE, ALCESTE, PHILINTE.
ALCESTE. [To ÉLIANTE] Madam, your beauty is adorned by a hundred virtues; and I never saw anything in you but what was sincere. For a long while I thought very highly of you; but allow me to esteem you thus for ever, and suffer my heart in its various troubles not to offer itself for the honor of your acceptance. I feel too unworthy, and begin to perceive that Heaven did not intend me for the marriage bond; that the homage of only the remainder of a heart unworthy of you would be below your merit, and that in short . . . ÉLIANTE. You may pursue this thought. I am not at all embarrassed with my hand; and here is your friend, who, without giving me much trouble, might possibly accept it if I asked him.
PHILINTE. Ah! Madam, I ask for nothing better than that honor, and I could sacrifice my life and soul for it.
ALCESTE. May you, to taste true contentment, preserve for ever these feelings towards each other! Deceived on all sides, overwhelmed with injustice, I will fly from an abyss where vice is triumphant, and seek out some small secluded nook on earth, where one may enjoy the freedom of being an honest man.
PHILINTE. Come, Madam, let us leave nothing untried to deter him from the design on which his heart is set.
DOVER • THRIFT • EDITIONS
FICTION
FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS, Edwin A. Abbott. 96pp. 0-486-27263-X
SHORT STORIES, Louisa May Alcott. 64pp. 0-486-29063-8
WINESBURG, OHIO, Sherwood Anderson. 160pp. 0-486-28269-4
PERSUASION, Jane Austen. 224pp. 0-486-29555-9
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen. 272pp. 0-486-28473-5
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen. 272pp. 0-486-29049-2
LOOKING BACKWARD, Edward Bellamy. 160pp. 0-486-29038-7
BEOWULF, Beowulf (trans, by R. K. Gordon). 64pp. 0-486-27264-8
CIVIL WAR STORIES, Ambrose Bierce. 128pp. 0-486-28038-1
WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Brontë, 256pp. 0-486-29256-8
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, John Buchan. 96pp. 0-486-28201-5
TARZAN OF THE APES, Edgar Rice Burroughs. 224pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 0-486-29570-2
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, Lewis Carroll. 96pp. 0-486-27543-4
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, Lewis Carroll. 128pp. 0-486-40878-7
MY ÁNTONIA, Willa Cather. 176pp. 0-486-28240-6
O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather. 128pp. 0-486-27785-2
FIVE GREAT SHORT STORIES, Anton Chekhov. 96pp. 0-486-26463-7
TALES OF CONJURE AND THE COLOR LINE, Charles Waddell Chesnutt. 128pp. 0-486-40426-9
FAVORITE FATHER BROWN STORIES, G. K. Chesterton. 96pp. 0-486-27545-0
THE AWAKENING, Kate Chopin. 128pp. 0-486-27786-0
A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS AND OTHER STORIES, Kate Chopin. 64pp. 0-486-29264-9
HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad. 80pp. 0-486-26464-5
LORD JIM, Joseph Conrad. 256pp. 0-486-40650-4
THE SECRET SHARER AND OTHER STORIES, Joseph Conrad. 128pp. 0-486-27546-9
THE “LITTLE REGIMENT” AND OTHER CIVIL WAR STORIES, Stephen Crane. 80pp. 0-486-29557-5
THE OPEN BOAT AND OTHER STORIES, Stephen Crane. 128pp. 0-486-27547-7
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, Stephen Crane. 112pp. 0-486-26465-3
MOLL FLANDERS, Daniel Defoe. 256pp. 0-486-29093-X
ROBINSON CRUSOE, Daniel Defoe. 288pp. 0-486-40427-7
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Charles Dickens. 80pp. 0-486-26865-9
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH AND OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES, Charles Dickens. 128pp. 0-486-28039-X
A TALE OF Two CITIES, Charles Dickens. 304pp. 0-486-40651-2
THE DOUBLE, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 128pp. 0-486-29572-9
THE GAMBLER, Fyodor Dostoyevsky 112pp. 0-486-29081-6
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 96pp. 0-486-27053-X
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN AND OTHER STORIES, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 80pp.0-486-29558-3
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Arthur Conan Doyle. 128pp. 0-486-28214-7
THE LOST WORLD, Arthur Conan Doyle. 176pp. 0-486-40060-3
1 Molière’s play L’École des maris, first performed in 1661.